OVP: The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939)

Film: The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939)

Stars: Bette Davis, Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland, Donald Crisp, Alan Hale, Sr., Vincent Price, Harry Stephenson, Nanette Fabray

Director: Michael Curtiz

Oscar History: 5 nominations (Best Art Direction, Cinematography, Visual Effects, Sound, Scoring)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2026 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the men & women who created the Boom!-Pow!-Bang! action films that would come to dominate the Blockbuster Era of cinema.  This month, our focus is on Errol Flynn: click here to learn more about Mr. Flynn (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Errol Flynn lasted as a movie star for decades, but as one who was pretty much unimpeachable in terms of his box office, this period lasted roughly from 1935-1942, at which point he was oftentimes the biggest star on the Warner Brothers lot, give or take Bette Davis & James Cagney.  During this time, Flynn was married to the same woman, actress Lila Damita, but he had a history of womanizing.  Like Gary Cooper before him, he had an affair with Lupe Velez, and would get drunk off of William Randolph Hearst's vodka.  This reputation as a party boy was in stark juxtaposition to the men he'd play onscreen, frequently honorable scoundrels, or in the case of today's movie, a truly honorable man stuck in an impossible situation between two women.  This would also pair Flynn with both of the actresses that he'd be most associated with in his career: Olivia de Havilland, whom he would have a largely amicable relationship with, and Bette Davis...with whom he would not.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film is a glossy historical melodrama, one where facts should not get in the way of a good monologue.  Private Lives is about an aging Queen Elizabeth (Davis, in de facto kabuki makeup), who is clearly desperately in love with the handsome, popular Earl of Essex (Flynn), but cannot have him in the way that she wants because it would put at risk her power.  She instead constantly finds herself at odds with him, usually in open court, and has fights with him, using her lover as a pawn in a number of battles, oftentimes risking his life as punishment for not returning her love in the way that she wants, because he's also power-hungry.  This all happens while the beautiful Lady Penelope (de Havilland) is also pursuing the Earl, which in the film's final moments we're led to believe was nothing, and that Elizabeth was his own true love.  Of course, at that point Elizabeth has publicly demanded the Earl's head for trying to be her equal, and there is no way out for the Queen, doomed to forever remain unmarried & unloved (except by England).

This is territory we've been to cinematically-Elizabeth's inability to find love because she is not beautiful and demands power instead has been informed by everyone from Helen Mirren to Glenda Jackson to Cate Blanchett to Margot Robbie (even Bette would go to this well twice).  Davis, at the peak of her power and beauty, wears intense makeup that makes her look, well, hideous (and years older than she was), in some ways foreshadowing her later triumph in Baby Jane Hudson.  But the movie, despite looking divine (the costumes, art direction, & cinematography are all a triumph, though why it got a special effects nomination at the Oscars is beyond me...the Scoring nomination is a bit cheeky given there's a song sung by Olivia de Havilland's character written by the actual Walter Raleigh, here played by Vincent Price in an early role), is kind of a snore.  Davis overacts to the rafters (with diminishing returns), de Havilland is fun but too small of a part, and Flynn's performance is a bit underwhelming.  Flynn is so grand in swashbuckling roles, but (as we'll see in the coming weeks), he was a somewhat limited actor when it came to going beyond that ken.  He is breathtakingly beautiful in this-it takes an actress as confident as Davis to appear in this kind of makeup against Flynn, who looks like a Raphael painting in some scenes, and risk being thought ugly, but I don't think he can land some of the scenes, save for the last 15 minutes, when he's betrayed by Davis & they both seem to be in a much better movie.

Offscreen, Davis and Flynn were not close in the same way that he was with de Havilland, and it's hard to pinpoint the exact nature of their relationship given that Davis would outlive him by decades, and therefore be able to go on talk shows (and discuss in memoirs) what she thought of him, and regularly change her mind.  She seemed to not like his ethics as an actor (finding he preferred celebrity more than the serious craft that Davis believed screen-acting), and also thought it beneath her to share billing with him in the film (you'll note, watching it now, that Davis, not Flynn, gets top billing, which makes sense in retrospect given her legend, but at the time would've been a genuine debate as both were equally valuable to Warner Brothers).  Davis wanted Laurence Olivier, who wasn't famous enough to get a role like this in 1939 (Wuthering Heights had not come out when production was in motion), and at one point (according to Hollywood legend) actually slaps Flynn for real in one scene, rather than faking it as would be typical on a production, which caused Flynn to become ill.  Davis, though, had kinder words about Flynn than I do in this movie, conceding that she thought him very good years after the fact while watching the movie, and telling de Havilland "he can act!"

Destry Rides Again (1939)

Film: Destry Rides Again (1939)

Stars: Marlene Dietrich, James Stewart, Mischa Auer, Charles Winninger, Brian Donleavy, Una Merkel

Director: George Marshall

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 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 Marlene Dietrich: click here to learn more about Ms. Dietrich (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Since we took last weekend off due to the Easter holiday, we're doubling-up with Marlene this week to give this star her full menu of Saturday's.  You might be wondering at this point "when are we going to get to the westerns?" and you'd be right to do so-for the first decade of Dietrich's career, she largely eschewed the genre, and was focusing on continuing to make large-scale epics with (and then without) the skilled hand of Josef von Sternberg, and by 1939 her celebrity was going out of style.  She was one of the major stars in 1938 listed as Box Office Poison alongside people like Joan Crawford, Greta Garbo, & Katharine Hepburn.  Like these legends, Dietrich would prove that she was not box office poison, and in short-order, when she took an against-type role in a Universal Pictures' western called Destry Rides Again, where she would play a saloon girl.  This was against type for both she and her leading man, Jimmy Stewart (Stewart, our star in February, would not be a huge fixture in westerns until the 1950's & 60's...he actually wouldn't do another western until Winchester 73 in 1950, and this was the first time he'd worn spurs onscreen).  Though she had to have a pay cut to do the role, the film would revive her career-a huge hit with both critics & audiences, it got her a smash song on the radio ("See What the Boys in the Back Room Will Have," which would become a staple in her cabaret act years later), and opened up a new genre for her that she'd continue to explore for several years: the western.

(Spoilers Ahead) The town of Bottleneck is run by a lawless group of men, and the powers-that-be intend to keep it that way when they appoint Wash Dimsdale (Winninger), the town drunk, as the new sheriff.  Saloon owner Kent (Donlevy) thinks that this is the end of his problems with the law, but Dimsdale has an ace-up-his-sleeve in the form of Tom Destry, Jr. (Stewart), the son of a legendary lawman who comes to town as Dimsdale's new deputy.  Destry is competent, honorable, & intent on following the law...all of which are anathema to Kent, and initially to his beautiful saloon gal girlfriend Frenchy (Dietrich).  But slowly, it becomes clear the town needs to uproot Kent and his crew, and even Frenchy understands this (as she also realizes that she's in love with Tom).  The film ends with a riot, as the women of the community decide to end the violence by subduing Kent's gang, but in the process both Kent & Frenchy are killed in a shootout, thus ending Tom's relationship with the reformed singer.  The film ends with him likely marrying a different (more respectable) girl who has long pined for him as a wagon of kids passes by, singing one of Frenchy's songs showing her legend will live on.

Destry is a comedy despite that rather somber ending, and it's quite well-done largely because of the chemistry between Dietrich & Stewart.  The two allegedly had an affair (Peter Bogdonavich claimed later that Dietrich confided in him that she had to have an abortion as a result of her affair with Stewart), and there's a mountain of heat between the two, with Stewart playing the hapless, awe-shucks fella to Dietrich's more seasoned sexuality.  It's dynamite-Destry Rides Again occasionally has plot issues (maybe one too many side characters), but that central romance between the two main characters is electric...I wanted to watch Dietrich & Stewart flirting for hours afterward.

This was not the first film that Marlene Dietrich sang in, nor would it be the last, but we can't have a month devoted to Dietrich without at least mentioning her very successful side hustle as a singer, which would become her primary gig in the 1950's when she would largely leave movies in favor of her wildly successful cabaret act (which would feature arrangements by a very young Burt Bacharach).  Dietrich's range wasn't big (she's certainly not, say, Jeanette MacDonald if you want to pick one of her 1930's contemporaries), but it's intoxicating.  I love Dietrich's voice and songs ("Cherche la Rose" is my favorite), and am so glad that she found this niche in the movies where it could last forever.

The Jones Family in Hollywood (1939)

Film: The Jones Family in Hollywood (1939)

Stars: Jed Prouty, Spring Byington, Kenneth Howell, George Ernest, June Carlson, Florence Roberts

Diretor: Malcolm St. Clair

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

As we mentioned in our kickoff article about Spring Byington, the actress was never really a leading star in the way that many of her era were.  Even compared to a character actress like Marie Dressler, she wasn't a leading woman in a traditional sense, and mostly spent her career playing mothers-and-wives until her big break in December Bride in the 1950's.  That doesn't mean, though, that she wasn't at one point a household name, and that came about rather early in her film career.  While Byington was in big movies throughout the 1930's that are remembered today like the 1933 Little Women (with a young Katharine Hepburn) and the 1938 Best Picture You Can't Take It With You (for which she won her only Oscar nomination), Byington's chief fame during this era was actually in a series of pictures that are almost nonexistent today: The Jones Family movies.  We're going to talk about why these were such a big deal in a second, but I'm going to unorthodoxly kick off our film first, today's being the 13th of the seventeen films that were made in the series.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie starts out in a small town where Mr. Jones (Prouty), an important member of the American Legion and seemingly the town's mayor, has been invited to go to Hollywood.  Initially he has only intentions of taking his wife Mrs. Jones (Byington), but soon his entire family, including children Jack (Howell), Roger (Ernest), and Lucy (Carlson), as well as his mother Granny Jones (Roberts) are along with him.  Once there, Lucy and Jack both fall for movie stars, but neither realize these relationships aren't on the up-and-up.  Jack's girlfriend is trying to use him to better understand how small town girls think for a role she's playing, while Lucy's beau, is well, he's trying to get laid but obviously a movie from 1939 isn't going to be that overt.  The film ends with them all realizing, after a lot of confusion, that they're better off back in their small town life than trying out the big wheels of Hollywood.

The movie has a couple of fun gags (Roberts as the grandmother gets all of the good one-liners...Byington, our June star who normally would get this type of part, is mostly just window dressing), perhaps because it was written by Buster Keaton, at this point in the twilight of his film career.  But for the most part it's pretty banal (though I want to point out for the record that if Roger wasn't meant to read as gay, the filmmakers failed in that enterprise with my modern lens).  In a lot of ways this recalls something like the Blondie pictures over at Columbia or MGM's successful Andy Hardy movies.  In a couple of decades, this would've been an Ozzie & Harriet style sitcom, but without the advent of television, this was just a second feature for some of Fox's more successful films in a double billing.

You might ask why I watched this film, nearing the end of Byington's time with the series (she'd appear in all 17 of the films, and in fact Prouty was the only actor of the main family who didn't appear in all of the movies).  The reason is that the Jones Family movies are basically forgotten, in a way that the Andy Hardy and Thin Man movies of the era have not been.  It has never been released on home video, and I watched this one on YouTube.  If there's a copy of Every Saturday Night, the first film in the series, I can't find it online, and these have such little cultural cache that The Jones Family Go to Hollywood is about to get its first review ever on Letterboxd as soon as I click publish on this.

Maisie (1939)

Film: Maisie (1939)

Stars: Ann Sothern, Robert Young, Ruth Hussey, Ian Hunter, Cliff Edwards, John Hubbard

Director: Edwin L. Marin

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 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.

Ann Sothern spent most of her early career, after moving from Minneapolis to Los Angeles after dropping out of college, jumping from studio to studio with none of them feeling like a good fit.  RKO, Columbia, & finally MGM were her home throughout the 1930's and it honestly looked like Sothern at the age of thirty was going to be one of those actors who got a chance at Hollywood but couldn't graduate to proper stardom.  That was until Maisie came along.  Originally intended as a vehicle for Jean Harlow (who had starred in a different Wilson Collison property, Red Dust, to legendary success), when Harlow died unexpectedly the movie went to Sothern.  To the surprise of many, it was a smash hit for the studio, and Sothern quickly signed a star contract with MGM making in total ten Maisie pictures for the studio over the following decade.  We're going to do just one of the films this month, the first one, which starred Sothern opposite Robert Young, another future TV star.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is about Maisie (Sothern), a burlesque dancer lured out to Wyoming under the pretense of being the star in a new show there, only to find out that the show has already closed, leaving her penniless in the middle-of-nowhere.  She meets a guy named Slim (Young), who has no use for women, but thanks to tagging along with him she finds work as a maid for Slim's employer Cliff's (Hunter) wife Sybil (Hussey), who is having an affair despite promising her husband she'd be more faithful.  Slowly Slim & Maisie fall for each other, their initial dislike turning into attraction, but a tragic car accident leads Cliff to find out his wife is still having an affair, and in the process, he kills himself.  Meanwhile, Sybil, prior to Cliff's death, tricks Slim into thinking that it's Maisie having the affair (with Cliff) and after he confronts her she storms off, only to return when Slim is tried for Cliff's murder.  In the end, Slim & Maisie end up together after Cliff's death is ruled a suicide, and find out that Cliff left the two of them the ranch in his will so they can have a proper happily ever after.

The movie is cute, if predictable, and it's easy to see why audiences fell for Sothern in this role.  Up until this point in her career, a lot of her work had been in the wrong genre, but Sothern was made for romantic comedy, and this fits her like a glove.  She gets a lot of the great one-liners off here, playing Maisie as a sassy broad, perhaps in a way that better suits the role than even Harlow would've been able to achieve.  While Harlow was always a damaged blonde star, frequently in her best roles feeling like she's got a little bit of desperation behind the bottle blonde look (I'm such a fan of hers, she was a previous star in this series and was mesmerizing in Red Dust and Dinner at Eight), this material needs someone to play it more broadly, and Sothern understands that.  This isn't breaking new ground, but it's harmless & fun.

The Maisie films would become Sothern's calling card until her turn in television.  Over the coming weeks we'll continue to look at her work in film, but I wanted to point out that she is a weird entry in this year's series.  Unlike someone like Lucille Ball, she wasn't unsuccessful in this era-the Maisie films kept some of MGM's more prestigious, expensive-and-less-profitable classic dramas of the era from bankrupting the studio.  But she wasn't really a seriously-considered actress, not in the way that women like Joan Crawford & Greta Garbo had been for the studio, and despite her successes isn't really thought of today for her work during this era.  Keep that in mind in the coming weeks; Sothern isn't the tale of a woman who couldn't make it in pictures, but instead was a star who always felt like she got the short end of the stick until television gave her a second chance.

At the Circus (1939)

Film: At the Circus (1939)

Stars: Groucho Marx, Chico Marx, Harpo Marx, Kenny Baker, Florence Rice, Eve Arden, Margaret Dumont

Director: Edward Buzzell

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 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 Eve Arden: click here to learn more about Ms. Arden (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Eve Arden's film career, as I mentioned when I kicked off our month devoted to her, is an unusual one for this series that poses some challenges.  Over the past three years & two months, we've devoted our series exclusively to headliners.  Though sometimes we've had them in smaller parts (Lena Horne comes to mind), by-and-large I've been able to pick out films that were significant to these actors' careers or at least picked films where they dominated the picture.  But Arden was never a traditional headliner in movies the way she ended up being in television.  Instead, especially in the earlier days of her career, she was a scene-stealing character actor, and so it's difficult to find movies where she had a significant part without royally spoiling the movie for myself (which I'm not going to do as that's half the fun of watching movies-finding out what comes next).  During the period between Stage Door and Mildred Pierce (which would win her her only Oscar nomination), in particular, she was in a lot of movies but not all of them were signature parts.  So we're going to instead hedge our bets as we start out this month by picking a movie where Arden had significant costars, three to be precise: Groucho, Harpo, & Chico Marx in At the Circus.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is about Jeff Wilson (Baker), a man who is hopelessly in love with his circus performer girlfriend Julie (Rice), who has been disinherited by his aunt Susanna Dukesbury (Dumont) for disgracing the family name by pursuing a woman not of their family's stature.  Jeff owns the circus Julie works at, and is about to lose the circus to a ruthless businessman, and the only way he can keep it is by getting back $10,000 that was stolen from a gorilla cage (it sounds stupid, it mostly works in the confines of the script, though).  Jeff, of course, enlists the help of the Marx brothers: Attorney Cheever Loophole (Groucho), circus employee Tony Pirelli (Chico), and performer Punchy (Harpo).  This involves them eventually swindling the money out of Jeff's aunt, and a standoff not only with Aunt Susanna, but also the businessman and the gorilla...which allows Jeff to come out on-top with both the circus & his now-fiancee.

The movie is silly fun.  At the Circus is not generally considered one of the more important Marx Brothers movies, and critics at the time were less-than-kind.  While their criticism fell more on the Brothers, who had been doing this schtick for a while in 1939, honestly the biggest bummer for a modern audience who doesn't always get a Marx Brothers comedy every year, is that they felt the need to put a vapid love story central stage rather than give us more time with Groucho & Harpo (Chico, as always, is a love-it-or-leave-it scenario).  The best parts of the movie are of course Groucho pitching fake woo at Margaret Dumont (or is it real...you can never quite tell with Groucho), and his marvelous singing of "Lydia the Tattooed Lady."  While the rest of the musical score is largely forgettable, "Lydia" (which I first heard a year later in The Philadelphia Story) is fully-realized hilarity, and I loved it.

As for our star Eve Arden?  We came up a bit of a goose egg in terms of Arden's importance to this plot.  The actress is in only a couple of scenes, the primary one being with Groucho where she has to trick him so that he doesn't find the $10,000 she's hidden (she's the spy within the circus operation), which she does successfully by getting him to be part of her acrobatic act.  Arden nails a small role, and looks quite impressive aboard the trapeze in this movie, using her tall frame for maximum grace & comic effect.  You're left wishing that they would've gotten rid of Jeff & Julie all-together, and given Arden's villainous acrobat more to do.

OVP: The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939)

Film: The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939)

Stars: Charles Laughton, Maureen O'Hara, Walter Hampden, Alan Marshal, Thomas Mitchell, Edmond O'Brien, Cedric Hardwicke, Harry Davenport

Director: William Dieterle

Oscar History: 2 nominations (Best Score, Sound)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2021 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different one Alfred Hitchcock's Leading Ladies.  This month, our focus is on Maureen O'Hara-click here to learn more about Ms. O'Hara (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

As I mentioned last week, Maureen O'Hara is a strange choice to do in a retrospective about Alfred Hitchcock.  In 1939, she did have her first major role in his Jamaica Inn, but it didn't bring the kind of mainstream success that later films would bestow on Hitchcock's leading ladies, and as a result it's not one of the films that we'd consider a "major" picture in her career (O'Hara might be the only actress all year where if I was making a list of her most important movies, I'd skip Hitch).  The first really important film of her career, instead, came about in 1939, and would star her Jamaica Inn costar Charles Laughton in one of his most iconic roles, as Quasimodo in a retelling of Victor Hugo's classic The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

(Spoilers Ahead) This is one of the most famous (and longest) stories in all of fiction, so I'm going to breeze through this, but for those who are new to the story, get ready to head to 15th Century France.  Here we have King Louis XI (Davenport) who is overseeing tumult in Paris as a group of gypsies have entered the city, some without a permit.  One of these is Esmerelda (O'Hara), a beautiful young woman who takes refuge in Notre Dame Cathedral (where she can claim "sanctuary" from the law) and it's here that she meets Quasimodo (Laughton), a man suffering from facial deformities & deafness who spends his days ringing the bells of Notre Dame.  She also meets young Captain Phoebus (Marshal) with whom she falls in love, Gringoire (O'Brien), a young man she marries out of pity, and the cruel Claude Frollo (Hampden), who becomes obsessed with her even though he assumes her beauty is a temptation from the devil to drive him mad.  This is indeed the case, as he murders Phoebus out of jealousy, but frames Esmerelda for the crime.  Quasimodo saves Esmerelda from the gallows, and watches as people lay siege to Notre Dame Cathedral as he defends it...all-the-while the king realizes that Frollo was the one who murdered Phoebus, and sets the guards on him, with Esmerelda to go free.  The film ends with Esmerelda joining her husband Gringoire, now in love with him, and Quasimodo looking on from afar, wishing to be a stone gargoyle so he does not feel the abandonment of Esmerelda, his love.

The film is considered a landmark today, and did launch O'Hara's career, but little about her rings true for Esmerelda.  Her performance here requires her to be beautiful (check), but not much else, and O'Hara wasn't always at her best when the script wasn't asking more from her.  She also has the slightest hints of her Irish accent here, which reads even more ridiculous for a woman playing a gypsy dancer.  Charles Laughton is considerably better, and genuinely inhabits his Quasimodo...I know this might be controversial both because it's a bit overacting & also because his portrayal of Quasimodo strips the character of a good chunk of his humanity (especially toward the end), but I was fascinated by his work here, and think it's one of the better performances that Laughton gave.  It's him who lifts this story to classic status in a way she doesn't, but it's a middling classic at best...in a year like 1939, you gotta stand out.

We're going to jump quite a bit ahead in O'Hara's very long career next week, so I'll talk more about what her life was like after Hunchback then, but I'd be remiss if I didn't touch on the film's two Oscar nominations.  Of the two, the Sound nomination feels better.  The siege of Notre Dame, and of course the infamous, omnipresent bells add presence & a bit of depth to the film, and I was impressed with the way that the designers found ways to make them gain some of the symbolism of Hugo's novel.  The Scoring nomination feels odd.  Yes, Alfred Newman did a fine score, but that's not really what the goal of the "Scoring" category is, which is a look at both the score itself but also additional original music (usually this featured musicals or films with musical plots, which Hunchback isn't).  Church music does show up to a slight degree, but it does feel like this was simply nominated on Newman's reputation alone, and while his score is good, it is a strange fit for this category.

Jamaica Inn (1939)

Film: Jamaica Inn (1939)

Stars: Charles Laughton, Leslie Banks, Maureen O'Hara, Robert Newton, Marie Ney

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 1/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2021 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different one Alfred Hitchcock's Leading Ladies.  This month, our focus is on Maureen O'Hara-click here to learn more about Ms. O'Hara (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

We are going to start our conversation about Maureen O'Hara with the film that elevated her to leading lady status, if not entirely star status; not by coincidence, it is also the film that connects us to our 2021 theme of Alfred Hitchcock movies, as Jamaica Inn was the sole film that O'Hara made with the Master of Suspense.  At this point she was under contract to Charles Laughton, and his fledgling production company, and so was cast as his leading lady (the two were good friends, and O'Hara considered him a father-figure throughout her career).  The film has an interesting reputation as perhaps the worst movie Alfred Hitchcock ever made, and O'Hara's onscreen persona (stubborn, redheaded, fiery) is the antithesis of what we'd consider the "Hitchcock prototype" for his leading ladies, so I was definitely more intrigued than usual to understand what might be happening in this movie.

(Spoilers Ahead) I will try to ground you a little bit in the plot here, but I'll be real-the story is kind of a mess, and as a result it's hard to summarize.  Joss (Banks) is a boorish innkeeper who lives with his meek wife Patience (Ney).  Their beautiful niece Mary (O'Hara) has come unexpectedly to live with them at Jamaica Inn, a place of ill-repute that houses thieves who purposefully ground ships against the shores of a nearby port, plunder what's onboard & kill the seamen (basically, pirates).  What is not known is that respectable justice of the peace Pengalian (Laughton) is actually behind their criminal enterprise, and has become somewhat obsessed with young Mary.  As the film unfolds, Mary & a new gang member Jem (Newton) are involved with accusations of betrayal from the gang, and accidentally out themselves to Pengalian, who captures them.  He then kills Joss & Patience after they escape, kidnapping Mary & wanting to take her as his captive (it's 1939, but you get the impression he wants her to be his sex slave), but after she escapes & he's cornered, he jumps off of the mast of the ship they are on, to his death.

Jamaica Inn isn't your typical Hitchcock film, despite coming a year after his first real masterpiece, The Lady Vanishes.  Hitch rarely worked in period pieces, and part of that's easy to see here, as his most indulgent ticks are on full-display here (the older man obsessed with a beautiful woman, the cheeky asides & indulgent humor, the many misdirects) don't work in a different era.  Jamaica Inn's plot is tonally imbalanced, particularly when it comes to Laughton's dastardly villain-is he a joke?  Is he a rake?  An evil genius, or just mad?  You can't really tell, and the film falls apart in a way that I've never seen from a Hitchcock film.  On top of that, well...it's super boring, and movies with Charles Laughton might be off-the-rails, but they are never boring.

O'Hara in her first really significant role doesn't make much impression.  She's beautiful, almost shockingly so (you honestly gasp the first time you see her onscreen), but her character is overwhelmed by a meandering plot & Laughton chewing the scenery.  Laughton & O'Hara would be good friends, and make a number of films together, but based on this film alone you have to wonder why-it wasn't like this was a hit (it was ravaged by critics at the time & as I said above is generally considered to be Hitchcock's worst movie,  which after watching it it's definitely the worst I've seen), but perhaps the next film they did together (which we'll look at next week) will give us more clues as to their chemistry.

OVP: When Tomorrow Comes (1939)

Film: When Tomorrow Comes (1939)

Stars: Irene Dunne, Charles Boyer, Barbara O'Neil

Director: John M. Stahl

Oscar History: 1 nomination/1 win (Best Sound Recording*)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

The list of films that beat Gone with the Wind at the Oscars is short.  The film, considered by many to be the definition of a Classical Hollywood film, was nominated for 13 Academy Awards, winning eight, though one of those losses was against itself (in Supporting Actress, Hattie McDaniel beat Olivia de Havilland).  The list of films that beat it include classics like Goodbye Mr. Chips and The Wizard of Oz, but it also includes When Tomorrow Comes, a movie that I'd never really heard of before I noticed it leaving Criterion Streaming (if you wanna catch it, get there by the end of the month!) & that it was on my OVP "tough to find films" list.  As a result, I wanted to see who the film was that could possibly beat the landmark epic for an Oscar, and while I come away enjoying the picture, I more so come away confused.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film is really two halves of a movie, as the film plays around quite a bit with genre.  The first half has Helen (Dunne), a waitress who is part of a group of striking servers demanding their due (right on!) meeting Philip (Boyer), a man she initially thinks is a spy from management but turns out to be a man who is smitten with her.  They get to know each other, and after one night (in which they scandalously spend the night together, chastely, in a church) they have fallen in love.  It turns out, though, that Philip is married to Madeleine (O'Neil), a woman who suffers from some sort of depression, and relies on Philip to keep her from spiraling.  Madeleine warns Helen off from her husband, or from Helen being his mistress, and despite the fact that she loves him, she knows she cannot breakup this marriage & look herself in the mirror.  The two refuse to say goodbye, instead simply saying "I'll see you in a bit" when Philip leaves for a flight, knowing that they likely will never see each other again.

Dunne & Boyer had earlier in 1939 made the classic Love Affair, so audiences were desperate to see more, and so this movie made sense as they'd shown they had chemistry.  If you read this blog often, you'll know I have divergent opinions on these two actors-Irene Dunne is almost always a treat, owning the screen, while I find Boyer's overwrought romance too hammy & done.  This is not quite the case for When Tomorrow Comes.  I don't like Boyer in this, but there are times he works with the film, perhaps just as well as Dunne, especially after it has a strange shift from screwball romantic comedy (complete with clumsy waitresses on a picket line!) into deep melodrama.  The film itself gave me whiplash-the shift in tones is too much, but both tones are good so I'm going with 3 stars as I liked it in spite of its clear technical flaws.

The film's Oscar win is a mystery to me, though.  Honestly-it's not a case of me not caring for the movie's sound, it's more that there is nothing specific about the sound work in the movie that caught my ear. I'm assuming it won for the hurricane scenes, but they're playing off-screen for the large part, and they are not anything different than what we'd seen in other films with large-scale storm sequences.  Boyer plays a piano player (sometimes they like musically-inclined films in this category), but he barely touches the keys the whole movie.  That this won over not just Gone with the Wind's burning of Atlanta, but also Mr. Smith's long filibuster & the bells of Notre Dame is one of the bigger Oscar mysteries I've come across in a while.

OVP: Drums Along the Mohawk (1939)

Film: Drums Along the Mohawk (1939)
Stars: Claudette Colbert, Henry Fonda, Edna May Oliver, Eddie Collins, John Carradine, Ward Bond
Director: John Ford
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Supporting Actress-Edna May Oliver)...there's some confusion over whether this was also cited for Best Cinematography, and I'd love if someone reading this might help me out on what is "official" in terms of nominations, as IMDB and Inside Oscar list this as being of the nominees for Best Color Cinematography in 1939, but the AMPAS database officially doesn't list it, saying the only unofficial nominees were Gone with the Wind and The Private Lives of Elizabeth & Essex.  I defer to the AMPAS database as my source-of-truth for the OVP, but if anyone has more clarification or sources, I'd love to read them.
Snap Judgment Ranking: 1/5 stars

We're continuing on our week devoted to the Best Supporting Actress category with Drums Along the Mohawk, a massive hit from that year that seemed to sprout a classic every week: 1939.  The film might have major, Oscar-winning stars headlining it (Fonda & Colbert), but it was actually character actress Edna May Oliver who won her sole Oscar nomination for her work in the film.  Oliver was not that old when she played Mrs. McKlennar in the film (she was just 56, and was clearly made up to be much older in the picture), but at that point she'd had a long career in both the stage & in pictures.  She originally made her name in the Hildegarde Withers films (about a spinster sleuth, and yes, please sign me up to watch all of those as "spinster sleuth" is about as much of a calling card as I can get), but if you recognize her today at all it's probably from the 1940 Pride & Prejudice where she played the quintessential Austen villain, Lady Catherine De Bourgh.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film is set during the Revolutionary War, and follows a young couple who are trying their hand at frontier life.  Lana (Colbert), is from a wealthy family, while her new husband Gil (Fonda) comes from more modest means.  Initially when they move out, Lana struggles, even screaming when a Native American that is friends with Gil shows up at her door.  She starts to adjust to life working the land, and they begin a family (though of course there is the initial miscarriage that seemed to always happen in movies of this era).  When the family becomes unable to stay on their land (due to raids from unfriendly Native Americans, who are led by an Englishman played by John Carradine), they move in with Mrs. McKlennar (Oliver), a spinster who enjoys their company, though during a late raid she is shot by an arrow & killed, leaving her farm to the young couple.  The film ends with a gigantic fight that the men win, aided in no small part by Gil, and the announcement of a new country (America) when Cornwallis surrenders to Washington.

The movie was John Ford's first Technicolor movie, and if you know me at all, you know that I love John Ford, and the man knew how to make a beautiful film in Technicolor (just look at something like The Quiet Man or Fort Apache), and this looks gorgeous.  As I mentioned above, this was kind of nominated for Best Cinematography (the best I can tell it was on what would have been the 1939 equivalent of a bakeoff), and it deserves it-Colbert, in particular, looks radiant in the moonlight.  That said, the movie ages badly (and probably wasn't progressive even at the time) for their depictions of the Native Americans, somehow both portrayed as cruelly cunning & as oafish, and it pulls you out of the movie.  The leads, two I generally like, don't help at all.  Fonda plays the character too flat, and Colbert's part was somehow written by a woman (Sonya Levian) & still she behaves like a damsel-in-distress every chance she gets, screaming & fainting & whining.  It's a pretty ugly, dated movie, and one that has little enjoyment save for the Cinematography.

That includes Oliver's work.  Her Mrs. McKlennar is welcome relief, to be sure-this film needs a jolt, and she's the kind of comic icing that provides such relief, but I don't know that it's fine acting in any capacity.  She rarely gets quiet moments, and her body & face are used as derision without it being earned (we don't feel she, or even the writers, are in on the joke).  It's a loud, brash performance that was pretty par for this category in its first decade, but even adjusting for modern tastes, this isn't all that funny or fun.

OVP: Bachelor Mother (1939)

Film: Bachelor Mother (1939)
Stars: Ginger Rogers, David Niven, Charles Coburn, Frank Albertson
Director: Garson Kanin
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Motion Picture Story)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

I interact a lot with "Film Twitter," a subset of the social media platform that focuses on movies, frequently related to awards season & the classical era of Hollywood.  In doing so, you discover a lot of hidden gems, and occasionally find people who put your own (over-zealous) movie-watching habits to shame.  You also learn that your own prejudices against certain old-time movie stars are not universally held.  I have not really found the right role to love Ginger Rogers, something that I'm in the minority here (she seems quite popular on Film Twitter), but she's not my cup-of-tea.  Her performances are too earnest, her dramatics paling to someone like Barbara Stanwyck or Joan Crawford.  But I'm open to new ideas, and always game for liking Rogers more than I currently do, and Bachelor Mother might have posed a turning point for me.  I loved this movie, even if it was as shallow as a teaspoon, and Rogers (with the help of David Niven) might be finally turning me around on her specific set of talents.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is short, so not a lot of plot, but here goes.  Polly (Rogers) is a salesgirl at the John B. Merlin and Son company in New York City.  She loses her job as a temporary sales clerk after the holidays, but on her way home she discovers a baby that someone has left on the steps of an orphanage.  Through a confusion that could only happen in the movies, the orphanage, as well as "the son" of her department store's name, David (Niven), assume the baby is hers, and it's born out-of-wedlock.  Not wanting to fire an unwed mother, and make her give up her baby, David rehires her, and starts to show an interest in this woman who keeps claiming the baby isn't hers.  As the film goes on, Polly & David start to fall in love, and David's father (Coburn) assumes the baby is his new grandson.  In the end, David claims the baby is his, making his father happy that he finally gets to be a grandfather, and Polly gets the untraditional family she wanted, having now fallen in love with both David and the baby.

The movie is silly, and if the plot sounds familiar, it was remade in the 1950's as Bundle of Joy with Debbie Reynolds & Eddie Fisher.  But silly is fine if it's done well, and Bachelor Mother is a really lovely little movie.  At this point in his career, Niven would've been teetering between stardom and becoming a high-profile character actor (just a few months before this movie was released, he'd taken on the third-billed Edgar Linton role in Wuthering Heights).  This movie was a major hit, and made him an established star.  There's a reason for that-Rogers & Niven have great chemistry onscreen.  While I always love David Niven in movies, Ginger Rogers steals several scenes from him & this is a plucky side of her that I've never seen done so well in a romantic comedy.  She's delicious when she's playing along as a Swedish girl who is trying to prove to Niven's ex that she's an improvement on her, and even in the film's softer moments she has a warmth that radiates & keeps the movie from going to darker places around her situation (like how, say, we shouldn't think too much on the biological mother who had to give up this baby, as she was likely in the actual scenario that Polly is only hypothetically in).

The film won one Oscar nomination, for Best Motion Picture Story (thus finishing off our theme week of writing nominations at the Oscars).  While the script isn't perfect (it's predictable & Rogers other love interest is underwritten), the story & idea behind are original and charming.  I left Bachelor Mother dually impressed how spry it was, and how a potentially repetitive plot is played for increasing absurdity & laughs.  Bachelor Mother is a good reminder after a week of heavy pictures & across-the-board reviews that movies sometimes work best when they simply allow you to forget your troubles & be entertained.

OVP: Babes in Arms (1939)

Film: Babes in Arms (1939)
Stars: Mickey Rooney, Judy Garland, Charles Winninger, Guy Kibbee, June Preisser
Director: Busby Berkeley
Oscar History: 2 nominations (Best Actor-Mickey Rooney, Scoring)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Young Best Actor nominees is not going to be the theme of this week (tomorrow our nominee is in his mid-fifties), but with yesterday's Saturday Night Fever won John Travolta a nomination at the age of only 23, it feels fitting that today we talk about a nominee that was even younger at the Oscars: Mickey Rooney.  Rooney is one of the most famous figures in classic American movies, and lived longer than almost any of his contemporaries, dying at the age of 93.  He is famous both for his stature, and because of his longevity, occasionally for his age, but at one point Rooney was a teen idol, and was the second-youngest Best Actor nominee ever at the age of 19 for today's movie Babes in Arms.  The film teams Rooney with his frequent costar Judy Garland, and like Saturday Night Fever, is another musical.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is about Joe Moran (Winninger) and his family, including his son Mickey (Rooney).  Moran is a longtime vaudeville hoofer who was once super successful on the stage, but has fallen on hard times as people have moved past vaudeville to movies.  All of the former vaudeville performers live in a neighborhood in the same town, and their children are somewhat ostracized, and considered poorly-taken-care-of by other local parents.  When the kids worry that the parents aren't willing to modernize their show, Mickey and his best girl Patsy (Garland) team up all of their friends to put on a show that might be able to raise the money their parents need to keep their homes/children, and of course while the parents are unsuccessful on the road, the kids put on a bravura performance and win over the town/parents, proving that they have what it takes to be a second generation of stars.

The movie at once is impossible to hate but way too slight to love.  Considering the score and the stars, you'd assume that Babes in Arms would be a timeless seasonal classic, rather than one that is only a classic when it's brought up (rather than instantly name-checked).  The plot is inconsequential to the movie, and the kids always being right (while the parents are always wrong) feels a bit hackneyed even for 1939.  Rooney's performance, in particular, feels too earnest for me.  There's little difference between this and his schtick as Andy Hardy, and it plays like the Oscar nomination (his first of four) was more because MGM wanted to get some sort of adult recognition for one of its most bankable leading men than because he'd earned it with serious talent.  One fun fact-in the film Rooney does (solid) impressions of both Lionel Barrymore and Clark Gable, the latter of whom was favored to beat Rooney at the Oscars that year but didn't when they both lost in a shocker to Robert Donat in Goodbye Mr. Chips.

The film's other nomination is much more earned.  Watching Babes in Arms now, it's really shocking how many of the musical numbers are also songs you hear in Singin in the Rain.  I didn't know this was coming, and was floored when four songs ("Good Morning," "You are My Lucky Star," "Broadway Melody," and "Singin in the Rain") showed up in the film.  I'd fault them for copying the great American musical, but this film came out 13 years before it so it's just ingenuity (and Stanley Donen owes Busby Berkeley a check).  Honestly, while the big ending number is problematic (Rooney & Garland appear in blackface), and a bit hammy, the rest of the musical numbers are a delight, and thus the Scoring nomination feels like an easy pill to swallow, even if Rooney's nomination in 1939 of all years feels wasteful.

OVP: Only Angels Have Wings (1939)

Film: Only Angels Have Wings (1939)
Stars: Cary Grant, Jean Arthur, Richard Barthelmess, Rita Hayworth, Thomas Mitchell
Director: Howard Hawks
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Special Effects)...there's some confusion over whether this film was also cited for Best Cinematography, and I'd love if someone reading this might help me out on what is "official" in terms of nominations, as IMDB and Inside Oscar list this as being one of ten nominees for Best Black & White Cinematography in 1939, but the AMPAS Database officially doesn't list it, saying the only official nominees were Wuthering Heights and Stagecoach.  I defer to the AMPAS database as my source-of-truth for the OVP, but if anyone has more clarification or sources, I'd love to read them.
Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

I'm sure there have been dozens of books and podcasts and articles about 1939, and it being the "greatest year in the history of the movies," but I always get a thrill getting to cross one of that year's movies off the list, as there's just that extra sheen of "one of the best" that comes with it.  Only Angels Have Wings is not one of the Best Picture nominees of 1939, but looking at that cast list & director, you have to assume it was close.  Jean Arthur had been on a stampede in recent years with Mr. Deeds Goes to Washington & You Can't Take it With You, while Cary Grant & Howard Hawks had made arguably one of the greatest comedies of all time the year before with Bringing Up Baby.  Combine in a "newcomer" in the form of Rita Hayworth & Thomas Mitchell the year he won his Oscar, and this is a pretty pedigreed movie.  What's surprising about it in hindsight, is how groundbreaking some of the effects are and occasionally deep the cast makes the picture.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is about Geoff Carter (Grant), who runs a piloting company in South America that delivers mail.  His flyers, including a pilot in the opening scenes, regularly die-this is a dangerous job, and one that Geoff loves, even when he hates it.  Of course, you can't have a film like this without a beautiful woman, and that's spunky Bonnie Lee (Arthur), who is a piano player who comes to this corner of the world and falls in love with Geoff.  Geoff eventually hires his former nemesis McPherson (Barthelmess), who let his partner "Kid's" (Mitchell) brother die in a plane crash, and coming with McPherson is his new wife Judy (Hayworth), who used to be romantically-involved with Geoff (and yes, this is the closest that Cary Grant ever came to the "Judy, Judy, Judy" line, though he only ever says the name to Hayworth twice-in-a-row, so that's an apocryphal quote in Grant lore).  The film continues with McPherson making a daring plane landing, this time initially saving the Kid's life (though he ends up dying of injuries eventually), and Geoff not being willing to admit to Bonnie that he wants her to leave.  However, he makes a bet with her with a trick coin (that only has heads) that she should "stay if it lands on heads," and once Bonnie realizes this is the closest he'll ever get to saying he loves her, she decides it's enough and stays with him.

Only Angels has some superfluous parts.  You know me-I love me some Rita Hayworth, but she's completely unnecessary to the plot of this movie, and you have to assume she got such key billing & the scenes she did because Harry Cohn was pushing for her.  The ending is also a bit saccharine for my tastes-I don't like women who are coming across as doormats, and Arthur isn't Lauren Bacall or Joan Crawford-we don't really know that she's "choosing to stay" even though she'd be fine on her own.  She plays Bonnie as too precious for my taste.

However, I liked Only Angels a lot.  It was disturbing initially to see Cary Grant play someone other than a gentleman, admittedly.  The way he doesn't instantly charm Arthur's Bonnie, you wonder if you've entered some sort of twilight zone, but as the movie progresses, he does a good job with this part.  Geoff is probably in love with Bonnie, but he's more in love with danger & the camaraderie of these men at the outskirts of their world, a makeshift family that understands the suicidal risks they need to take to feel alive.  It's a darker film than the call sheet & director would suggest, but that darkness, that underbelly, especially in Grant's performance, is what sells it.

If the film wasn't going to get in for Best Picture, Oscar paid attention to the nomination it did deserve (Special Effects) and the category it was shortlisted for but (apparently) wasn't nominated for (Cinematography).  The cinematography here is incredible.  The aerial shots are amazing, particularly through the mountains, and they blend perfectly with the special effects.  Yes, in hindsight you can see the strings attached (metaphorically) to the plane crash sequences, but given the time these are incredible shots, and the cinematography in my opinion doesn't age at all.  Unlike many sort of "stunt" films of Classical Hollywood, where the nomination (look at something like Beneath the 12-Mile Reef for an example) came just for the impressive sequences, this is still beautifully shot on the ground too.

Son of Frankenstein (1939)

Film: Son of Frankenstein (1939)
Stars: Basil Rathbone, Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, Lionel Atwill, Josephine Hutchinson
Director: Rowland V. Lee
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

We continue on our month of classic horrors with a film that made it on the marathon partially because it was already on my Netflix queue, but mostly because I was so shocked when researching this article how the studio system, while it was generally unkind to actors such as Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi when they stopped being bankable, also didn't exploit them as ferociously as I would have expected.  In an era when, say, Myrna Loy and William Powell were playing Nick & Nora every year, stars like Karloff & Lugosi didn't continually reprise their most iconic characters, instead only playing them a few times.  Karloff, for example, only donned the Frankenstein makeup thrice-first for his two classic outings (reviews listed below) and then one last time after Universal, who was suffering after ousting the Laemmles, wanted to take advantage of a recent revival in theaters of Frankenstein movies (a bankrupt LA theater ran Dracula, Frankenstein, and King Kong as a Hail Mary to make money and the gimmick worked, leading to a second wave of horror movies from Universal).  Son of Frankenstein would not be Karloff's last outing in a Frankenstein picture (he'd appear as a mad doctor in House of Frankenstein, which we'll get to later this month), but it was his last time in the monster's getup, and is famously considered the final "A-Grade" horror movie of its era, as soon the Universal horror films were being made cheaply and more generically.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film centers around, as the title suggests, the son of Frankenstein, named Wolf (Rathbone), who has come back to his father's castle to claim his inheritance, the estate and, most specifically, the laboratory.  The people in the local village loathe Wolf, as they view he and his family as bad omens, and so the only friend to Wolf, his wife Elsa (Hutchinson) and son Peter is a local lawman, Inspector Krogh (Atwill), who lost an arm to the monster as a child.  Despite clear reasons not to do so, Wolf is set to avenge his father, trying to prove his place in scientific history by reanimating the monster (Karloff), with the help of Ygor (Lugosi), who has taken control of the monster and is using him to murder members of a jury that once tried to have Ygor hanged.  As one could expect, Wolf's plans go awry as the monster kills and terrorizes the surrounding countryside, but is ultimately saved by Inspector Krogh, with the monster and Ygor dying while the Frankensteins leave the village, presumably forever (or at least until the next sequel).

One of the harder things about reviewing older movies is trying to figure out what is being played for laughs and what is genuinely supposed to be terrifying.  A contemporary review of the film at the time called it "the silliest picture ever made," but that's hard to digest since many of the horror movies of that era play for camp to modern audiences.  Still, you can see the way that articulate, Shakespearean-trained Rathbone feels a tad ridiculous as Wolf von Frankenstein.  The way that he descends so quickly into the same madness that doomed his father feels hackneyed and preposterous, but it's also quite fun.  Rathbone has such a theatrical flare that he fits right in and feels like an appropriate offspring of Colin Clive (it's alive, it's ALIVE!).  Atwill is a strange oddity in the film (and also feels weird when you think of the chronology of the picture as he feels too old to have been hurt as a child by the monster), and Hutchinson is as generic as you can get as Wolf's clingy, wispy wife.

But the whole point of these films is the monsters, and weirdly it's Lugosi's Ygor and not Karloff's Frankenstein that stands out in a major way here despite Karloff generally being the better actor.  Lugosi basically steals the picture, as Karloff's Frankenstein has been muted and is less defined than in the previous iterations of the series.  Ygor, though, is cruel, funny, and played as much for laughs as he is for fears.  It's hilarious to think that this creepy, nasty guy would so easily fool Wolf, and it's practically like he's breaking the fourth wall with his "behind Wolf's back" sorts of grimaces.  All-in-all, it is, as the Times put it, quite silly, but it's also more fun than I was suspecting, especially as Wolf goes mad, and not a bad way to spend a cloudy afternoon.

This Month We Are Seeing As Many Classic Horror Movies from the Pre-1970 Era as Possible.  If you want to check out some of our past reviews, here they are:

Frankenstein, The Bride of Frankenstein, The Wolf Man, Dracula, Mad Love

OVP: Eternally Yours (1939)

Film: Eternally Yours (1939)
Stars: Loretta Young, David Niven, Hugh Herbert, Billie Burke, C. Aubrey Smith, ZaSu Pitts, Broderick Crawford
Director: Tay Garnett
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Original Score)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Loretta Young is not a name that inspires a lot of confidence in me as a filmgoer.  When I told my brother I watched a Loretta Young movie the other night, in fact, his first comment was "an evening with the Republicans!" which is pretty accurate.  Young's films usually border on the overtly sincere and far too simplistic, and while her politics are hardly a reason to indicate that's the why behind this formula (there were far too many Republicans in Hollywood during the Golden Age to assume that all of them made puritanical films) it does always feel like the case, particularly in a film like Eternally Yours, which goes to incredible pains to underline Young's virtue even when her marriage to a successful magician goes on the rocks.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film follows Anita (Young) who is engaged to be married to Don (Crawford), but during her bridal shower she falls for a talented magician named the Great Arturo (Niven).  She eventually takes over as his assistant and they get married, but after a drunken night Arturo boasts to a reporter that he can jump, bound by chains, from a plane and get out of the trap to activate the parachute before he hits the ground.  The feat is easily the coolest scene in the movie (and is repeated multiple times as they clearly had a winner), and his Houdini routine is obviously a rousing success, but despite Anita's protestations he continues to do it again and again, gaining huge fame and wealth in the process.  When he has no time for her in face of his work, she runs away to Connecticut to a house she secretly had built and gets a divorce, or so she thinks.

The film then takes a rather ludicrous turn where poor, hapless Broderick Crawford (who, let's face it, can't remotely compare to David Niven) comes back into the picture, proposes marriage to Anita and then they get married on a boat.  The marriage is never consummated, though, through a series of ridiculous twists and turns that involve Arturo distracting Don's boss and we learn after a while that Anita is in fact not divorced, and she and Arturo, after a near-suicide attempt, are brought back together.

The film fails in so many ways, not least of which is that Anita sticks to exactly zero of her principles.  I know that bringing feminism into a film in the 1940's where the female character isn't a murderer is a tough sell, but seriously-Anita gets back together with Arturo despite having some fairly grounded objections against him constantly putting his life in danger.  The film also goes to eye-rolling pains to underline that she doesn't have sex with Don, despite the fact that they are married, which feels like it was something that the prim Young (the actress) threw into the film but it feels weirdly and bizarrely expositional and not really that important considering that Arturo feels a little bit like a cad who probably slept with his new assistant Lola (they don't go to the same levels to protect her virtue).

The movie received a sole Oscar nomination, for Werner Janssen, whose work I've never really taken to in the movies and I'm a bit surprised that he landed six nominations so seemingly-out-of-the-blue.  Though he had a pretty pedigreed career as a conductor (becoming the first American to ever lead the New York Philharmonic) his scores always feel a bit, well, pedantic, and Eternally Yours music is thin, omnipresent, and relies so heavily on a bassoon you half expect a dog to come bouncing out and for Loretta Young to randomly turn into Irene Dunne.  This was during the era when scores were nominated without much bound (there were thirteen nominations that year), and I feel like this was simply United Artists getting its seat at the table.

Those are my thoughts on this film-what about yours?  Do you have a similar sort of reaction to films that star Loretta Young?  Would having a dashing David Niven jump out of a plane cause you to divorce him?  And what precisely am I missing in the appeal of Werner Janssen-is there a film that will change my mind about him?  Share your thoughts in the comments!