OVP: Ball of Fire (1941)

Film: Ball of Fire (1941)

Stars: Gary Cooper, Barbara Stanwyck, Dana Andrews, Oskar Homolka, SZ Sakall, Henry Travers, Dan Duryea

Director: Howard Hawks

Oscar History: 4 nominations (Best Actress-Barbara Stanwyck, Score, Sound, Motion Picture Story)

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

We are running behind again this month (I'll try to be more timely in 2023, as we'll be kicking off our fifth season in the next week), but I'm going to attempt to do two Stanwyck movies today and get ahead of her films in the coming days so we have a full five movies in December (she's too big of a star to skip one of our Saturday's).  We're going to start with a conversation about 1941, inarguably the best year of Barbara Stanwyck's career.  We last left Stanwyck with Baby Face, which was a hit during the Pre-Code era for its saucy content, but by the early 1940's Stanwyck didn't need gimmicks to get people into their movie seats-she was a headliner in every aspect.  She got her first Oscar nomination for the 1937 weepie Stella Dallas, and despite not having a studio contract during this era, was in such demand (and so well-respected) that she was cranking out major hits, including three iconic ones in 1941: The Lady Eve, Meet John Doe, and Ball of Fire, for which she won her second Oscar nomination and which is our film today.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie has a rather preposterous setup for a romantic comedy, even by rom-com standards.  Gary Cooper plays Bertram Potts, a grammarian who along with a number of other dotty professors (seven, to be exact, mirroring the seven dwarves), are writing an encyclopedia.  Through a chance encounter, they come across Sugarpuss O'Shea (Stanwyck), a nightclub performer who is involved with a gangster named Joe Lilac (Andrews).  As Lilac is wanted by the police, she goes into hiding for a few days to stay out of sight, during which time she stays with Potts, who is studying her vernacular to try to include modern slang in the encyclopedia.  They start to fall for each other, but Sugarpuss has a problem-Lilac wants to marry her, not out of love but so she can't testify against him, and he eventually kidnaps all of the professors to blackmail her into it.  Thankfully, through ingenuity, they free themselves, save the day, and Bertram & Sugarpuss end up together.

The movie is cute, as cute as you'd assume given those involved and the silliness of the plot.  Though they're all interchangeable, the old men who are, even in their advanced age, shellshocked by the appearance of a beautiful woman and encouraging of the relationship Bertram can have with her, steal a lot of scenes.  The movie, though, never rises to the level of a classic-this is a good movie, not a great one, not as sharp as it should be or quite as funny as it ought to be (it's not The Philadelphia Story).  I think, like so many films like this of the era, the nominations for Sound & Score are fine.  There's nothing special there, but it got in because everyone else did (they would have over 20 nominees in some categories, including in Best Score for Ball of Fire's year, so a lot of middling amongst the genius).  The Story nomination makes more sense, especially over screenplay, as the idea behind it is far cuter than the execution.

With Stanwyck & her "year of classics," while I will admit that The Lady Eve is the best of these three (both in terms of the actual movie and in terms of what Stanwyck was doing onscreen), Ball of Fire is some great stuff from Stanwyck.  She plays well off of an against-type Cooper, and has such sass & pizzazz that this would've made a fine win for her.  I partially wonder if Stanwyck missed with Oscar overall because she didn't have a studio rooting for her to get a trophy in the way that Ginger Rogers or Jennifer Jones would've in the same era, but in 1941, I honestly think the only people who were going to take trophies were the De Havilland's.  Oscar made a huge stink about Olivia & Joan competing against each other, and it delivered in both of their star legends for the decades to come as the sisters...did not handle it well when the younger Joan beat her big sister for the statue.

OVP: Sergeant York (1941)

Film: Sergeant York (1941)

Stars: Gary Cooper, Walter Brennan, Joan Leslie, George Tobias, Margaret Wycherly

Director: Howard Hawks

Oscar History: 11 nominations/2 wins (Best Picture, Director, Actor-Gary Cooper*, Supporting Actor-Walter Brennan, Supporting Actress-Margaret Wycherly, Original Screenplay, Art Direction, Cinematography, Film Editing*, Score, Sound)

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 Walter Brennan: click here to learn more about Mr. Brennan (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Walter Brennan only lost one Oscar in his whole Academy career.  By 1941, it had become something of a running joke with the Academy giving Brennan trophies every year.  His statue for The Westerner, in particular, was considered a big upset against films like Foreign Correspondent and The Great Dictator which had gotten more Academy love.  His one loss, oddly enough, came for the film that would be the most-lauded of his quartet of nominations, and indeed perhaps the most honored film (in terms of Oscar) of Brennan's whole career: Sergeant York.  Made in 1941, Sergeant York was a gargantuan hit, getting Warner Brothers the #1 movie of the year, and was nominated for 11 Oscars, making it one of the frontrunners for the trophy that would eventually go to How Green was My Valley (and famously not Citizen Kane).  This is also a weird collective moment for me, as this is one of the first original "extended" lineups that I have finished watching for Best Picture (the plethora of Best Song & Score nominations those years cover up that I've seen most of the major movies of 1941).  I was intrigued given its reputation as one of the signature war films of this era what Sergeant York would end up looking like as I finished up both Oscar's Best Picture lineup that year and their romance with Brennan, who despite working another 25 years in Hollywood would never be cited again.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is unusual for a war film in that it focuses for most of the movie on Alvin York's (Cooper) life outside of World War I.  We see his humble beginnings, first as a wastrel who is raised by a pious mother (Wycherly) who then finds god under the guidance of Pastor Pile (Brennan), and aspires to make a life for himself on a farm.  When World War I breaks out, he enlists, though before that he becomes engaged to his sweetheart Gracie (Leslie), and though he is a conscientious objector at first on religious grounds, decides ultimately to become a soldier who uses his gun.  This invites an outstanding act of bravery, where he holds the line singlehandedly against the Germans, and takes dozens of them prisoner with only a few of his fellow American soldiers.  He is awarded dozens of medals for this, including the Medal of Honor, but his greatest reward is getting to go home to Gracie, get married, and start a family on the farmland he spent the first half of the movie trying to buy.

It's hard for people today to realize, but in 1941 Alvin York was something of a household name.  Much of the bravery exhibited in this movie (and the honors he received after) was based on actual fact-York would become one of the most decorated US Army soldiers of World War I.  Particularly in the midst of World War II, a dose of patriotism was probably not a hard sell for theatergoers who wanted to see an American hero on the big-screen.  The problem for me with the film, though, is that it's unfathomably boring for the first 90 minutes of its run.  The scenes that are at-home with York drag and while the war scenes themselves are quite thrilling & interesting (York became a legend for a reason-this is fascinating stuff), they feel like an almost afterthought on the movie.  The war parts keep it from getting a 1-star situation, but man is the rest of this dreadful.

The film won 11 nominations, and for-the-most part they're a bust.  The best aspect of the film is probably the art direction, as the bunkers look quite well-constructed, and give you a sense of the closeness to danger York was encountering, and how these men lived...though that's again just for 15 minutes or so of the picture.  The Sound, Score, & Cinematography are routine-you couldn't find anything much different than any other picture of the era, and I dare you to find anything interesting about it.  The Editing has not so much as a fascinating cut (even in the war scenes)...this beat Citizen freaking Kane?  Come on now Oscar.  The script is tired, the direction lousy (Howard Hawks, the man who made genuine classics like Bringing Up Baby, Rio Bravo, Scarface, Red River, and Gentleman Prefer Blondes got his sole directing nomination for this)?  And the performances are a snooze.  Brennan doesn't even get to have some of his goofier comedy bits in this, and Wycherly looks like she's on novocaine the entire film-apparently you could win an Oscar nomination just by standing and looking penitent for the run of your movie in 1941.  Gary Cooper, whose acting style is more miss than hit for me, is not Will Kane here-this is a one-note piece of work, and don't get me started on something thinking this is better than what Orson Welles was doing that same year.

OVP: Meet John Doe (1941)

Film: Meet John Doe (1941)

Stars: Gary Cooper, Barbara Stanwyck, Edward Arnold, Walter Brennan, Spring Byington, James Gleason

Director: Frank Capra

Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Motion Picture Story)

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 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.

Last week we talked about Spring Byington's long success in The Jones Family films, a B-Picture comedy series that is almost completely forgotten today despite 17 films being made in the franchise.  During the time that she was making The Jones Family, though, Byington was working on more serious or better-remembered films.  One of those movies was You Can't Take It With You, which won her her only Oscar nomination.  Despite the film being a Best Picture winner, Byington lost that statue to Fay Bainter, and I have seen it multiple times (you can read my review of it here) so it wouldn't be eligible for this month's series (all of the screenings for Saturdays with the Stars are "new to me" viewings).  But I wanted to acknowledge this period of her career, and lo-and-behold, Frank Capra (who liked to repeat his actors) made another well-regarded film a few years after You Can't Take It With You called Meet John Doe, which is our movie selection for today.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is about a newspaper reporter named Ann Mitchell (Stanwyck), who is being fired from her job as part of a recent merger from noted millionaire DB Norton (Arnold).  In her final article, she makes up a man named "John Doe" who proclaims he is going to jump off of city hall on Christmas Eve because he is protesting society's ills.  The news story goes, to use modern parlance, "viral" and Ann is hired back to profile the guy...but the problem is he doesn't actually exist.  Ann & her editor Henry Connell (Gleason) do a casting call, and find Long John Willoughby (Cooper), a former baseball player who has become a railway tramp to take the job.  Despite the protestations of his friend the Colonel (Brennan), he does the job to get money to fix his arm so he can play baseball again, and he begins to make a pitch for a kinder, more decent America where we are friendly to our neighbors, and says that's what it'll take for him not to commit suicide.  When the John Doe movement catches on, becoming insanely popular, Willoughby & Ann find out that the whole movement, which has been paid for by Norton, is a sinister plot to launch the millionaire's presidential career, using Willoughby's goodwill endorsement as leverage to a campaign.  After Willoughby refuses, Norton outs him as a conman, and soon the John Doe Movement comes tumbling down.  Willoughby then finds himself actually trying to commit suicide on Christmas Eve, but before he can both Ann and members of the remaining John Doe clubs beg him to stop, saying that this movement is now bigger than him or Norton.  He stops, and he & Ann walk off together into the Christmas night.

Frank Capra liked to repeat himself, and just based on that description, you'll assume (correctly) that this is just an amalgamation of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and the soon-to-come It's a Wonderful Life.  While generally well-regarded, this is not considered in the same league as those movies by most modern cinephiles, and for my money it's because it's a bit mucky in its politics.  It's hard to imagine the deeply conservative Barbara Stanwyck signing off on a script that is pro-union & honestly has something of a socialist message, with neighbors giving their fellow citizens part of their money or a job when they're down on their luck...this film would give Tucker Carlson a heart attack.  But it's also a bit of American propaganda, heavily implying it's the pluck & determinism of the "common" American people (and notably it's white people-the only people of color we see are servants, and not part of the "John Doe" clubs) that causes this grit.  Let's just say that the film's politics are messy, and kind of deter from the more clear-cut messaging of Mr. Smith and Wonderful Life.

The film is otherwise fine.  Stanwyck is the standout, but Cooper & Arnold are also serviceable in these roles.  Stanwyck & Cooper were having big years: they both made Ball of Fire together (for which Stanwyck was nominated for an Oscar), Stanwyck was making the comedy classic The Lady Eve with Henry Fonda, and Cooper was winning his first Oscar for the biggest film of the year, Sergeant York.  Not too shabby.  You'll notice I haven't mentioned our star Spring Byington, and that's because she's not in much of the movie.  She plays Stanwyck's overly sweet mother (John Doe's spirit was largely an extension of Ann's generous-to-a-fault parents), and is only in like 3-4 scenes.  Her best scene is late in the picture with Cooper, where she convinces him that he needs to ask Ann to marry him, as she knows (even if Ann doesn't yet) that Willoughby is in love with her daughter.  Byington has a bit of melancholy in this scene (knowing she's about to lose her daughter to the next stage of her life, and as a result will enter the last stage of hers) that I really liked, and showed how she was the kind of actress who made an impression even with the smallest of parts.

HM Pulham Esq. (1941)

Film: HM Pulham, Esq. (1941)

Stars: Hedy Lamarr, Robert Young, Ruth Hussey, Charles Coburn, Van Heflin, Bonita Granville

Director: King Vidor

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 Robert Young: click here to learn more about Mr. Young (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Last week we talked about how Robert Young's early work was largely unremarkable, and while he was a leading man for most of his career, he was oftentimes overshadowed by the women in his career.  Indeed, Young, in a similar vein to someone like Robert Taylor (who, it's worth noting was a MUCH bigger deal than Young in his day) was a star who coasted off of the considerable charms of his leading ladies for over twenty years.  Today we're going to find the rare movie that was the exception to that rule.  While if you look at the poster for HM Pulham, Esq, you'd find that Hedy Lamarr is the top-billed player in the movie, it's Young who is at the center of this film.  Directed by King Vidor, HM Pulham Esq. was arguably the best chance that Young would've had to actually distinguish himself and become like the other actors of his era (the Spencer Tracy's and Clark Gable's) who could genuinely command the screen without the assistance of a Barbara Stanwyck or Joan Crawford.  Unfortunately for Young, he didn't have the charisma to pull off such a heavy lift.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is about Harry Moulton Pulham, Jr. (Young), who is a middle-aged businessman in a loveless marriage to his wife Kay (Hussey).  After being asked to organize his 25-year reunion from college, he begins to reminisce about his long lost love Marvin (Lamarr, and yes despite the name this is not to a queer love story though after writing that I really wish there was enough to the allegory to make that case as it'd be a far more interesting movie).  The two were from different castes, and while they love each other, it's clear that Harry is as much a product of his posh Boston upbringing as his seemingly stuffy parents are.  Marvin & Harry eventually reconnect, even sharing a passionate kiss, but they are both married & there's nothing there anymore-they made the right decision 25 years earlier when they decided to go separate ways.  In the end, Kay comes to Harry & seemingly acts differently, determined to have another go at the romance that has left their marriage, and the film ends with them hopefully getting a second chance at life.

HM Pulham Esq. reads as more interesting than it actually is when you look at that description, as well as what Vidor tried to do with the story structure.  Based on a novel by John P. Marquand, the book is told in the first person, and Vidor tries to emulate that by having everything in the movie from Harry's point of view.  Young is in every scene of the movie, and things like telephone calls you only hear what Harry hears (i.e. when Marvin calls her husband while Harry is in the room, we only hear her side of the conversation).  It's a neat trick, and combined with the sort of "lovers that couldn't make it work" trope that I love in this era's films (think Brief Encounter), this would normally be up my alley.

But it's not, and honestly it's mostly Young's fault.  I was worried when I picked Young for this series that I'd have to admit that I don't historically like Young as an actor, but I figured going through four of his undiscovered movies I'd find something to love...but so far I'm bankrupt.  Young doesn't have enough style or leading man flare to pull this off.  Someone like Robert Taylor whose insane handsomeness gave him a romanticism even when his acting didn't, would've been a better choice (or someone like Robert Montgomery, who frequently succeeded in the types of roles that Young couldn't, primarily because Montgomery was a significantly better actor, and would've given this part more callous regret).  But Young isn't capable of such things, and while Lamarr is better, her parts are usually so underwritten because the filmmakers are reliant on her otherworldly beauty, that she's unable to give Marvin (who doesn't even show up until a third of a way through the movie) much grounding.  The film flops with such underwhelming leads, and no amount of plot potential can get by a lack of chemistry.

OVP: The Invisible Woman (1940)

Film: The Invisible Woman (1940)

Stars: Virginia Bruce, John Barrymore, John Howard, Charles Ruggles

Director: A. Edward Sutherland

Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Special Effects)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

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

Horror in the 1930's & 40's has a tendency to read as a bit comical to modern audiences.  Because we are so used to horror being genuinely scary, anything that falls short of that is camp.  This is how films like Young Frankenstein are so successful in retrospect-because they feed off of this unintentional humor that read (at the time) as straight drama.  As the genre continued, though, we did see even contemporaneously movies acknowledging this (Bride of Frankenstein and The Invisible Man have characters that are so wry it is clearly intentional), though today's film, The Invisible Woman, takes it a step further; this is, despite being billed above as a "horror" film (it does feature an "invisible woman," a monster trope from Universal during the era), not a horror picture but a romantic-comedy.  Though it has a supernatural element, no one could be scared by what is happening in The Invisible Woman, but instead I'm glad to report they can be charmed by it, as The Invisible Woman is sweet & fun.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film starts with Richard Russell (Howard), a wealthy attorney, funding his friend Professor Gibbs (Barrymore) and his experiments in making people invisible.  Russell is potentially going to cut Gibbs off, so Gibbs has to find a subject for his invisibility for free.  He gets that in Kitty Carroll (Bruce), a beautiful model who wants to enact revenge on her boss who treats his employees like garbage. Professor Gibbs' experiment is successful, and Kitty goes & haunts her old boss (who changes his ways).  In the process, though, we learn of a side effect of Kitty's experiment-while she can return to normal, if she drinks alcohol she'll go invisible again, giving her less of a science experiment and more of a superpower.  There's a side story involving a group of criminals trying to steal Gibbs' machine to use for their criminal endeavors, but the main story is Kitty learning to love herself & fall in love with Russell, a playboy who meets his match in the sassy Bruce.

The film's plot reads as a standard-issue romantic comedy with a twist, and that's what it is.  Though Bruce is onscreen only for a handful of sequences (unlike most of the "invisible" movies, we actually get to see her visibly for chunks of the picture), her voice work is excellent, and I thought she was fun with both Barrymore & Howard.  Barrymore, at this point in his career his stardom a shell of his former glory, is the best part as a doddering eccentric, playing him less mad and more quirky.  Barrymore is an actor that I really enjoy, and despite alcoholism ravishing him of his movie star looks & shortening his life, his talent still shines here with a showy, fun part.  The movie's side plot with the criminals feels a bit tacked-on and underwritten, but the central trio work well together & it's fun.

The film was cited for one Oscar, a rarity among the Universal Monster movies, for Best Special Effects.  I honestly thought the invisibility tricks were impressive.  The best of the bunch would be when Bruce (or whomever is her stand-in her) throws a live cat at another actor, convincingly selling that the (real) cat is floating in the air before getting a rude surprise.  The actual invisibility scenes are a bit of a "turning the lights off & on" but with the sets being kind of playful, you won't really mind.  All-in-all, this is one of the better monster sequels even if it can't possibly be billed as horror.

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

Mr. and Mrs. Smith (1941)

Film: Mr. and Mrs. Smith (1941)

Stars: Carole Lombard, Robert Montgomery, Gene Raymond, Jack Carson

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Oscar History: No nominations

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

Last week we discussed Carole Lombard's sojourn into more dramatic pictures with Vigil in the Night, one of several attempts Lombard made from 1939-40 to win an Academy Award.  Lombard, though, didn't take that Oscar & the public didn't appreciate her in such a role, so she went back to making comedies.  This, weirdly enough, led her to Alfred Hitchcock.  Hitchcock had initially wanted to direct Lombard in a dramatic picture, something that would be inline with what she'd been attempting, but Lombard wanted a comedy.  The result is one of the Master of Suspense's most unusual films.  While Hitch oftentimes would put black humor into his films, this is a straight-up romantic comedy with very little hinting on either side of the conversation of something more macabre, and wasn't the film that Hitchcock wanted to make (he was dismissive of the picture in later years).  It is, however, a very good movie, and a solid showcase for Lombard & Robert Montgomery as the leads.

(Spoilers Ahead) This is not, for the record, a precursor to the Brad Pitt/Angelina Jolie film (which I like, btw-that's a guilty pleasure movie).  It is instead the story of Ann (Lombard) and David (Montgomery), a couple who have been married for a bit, and while they love each other, bicker constantly.  One morning, David tells Ann over breakfast rather nonchalantly that he wishes they'd never gotten married, because he misses his independence.  David gets his wish, finding out that due to a quirk in Idaho law (where they wed) they didn't actually legally get married.  Ann finds out about this as well, but realizes that David isn't going to tell her (and perhaps make her a "bad girl" by sleeping together while they aren't married), and kicks him out of their house.  Ann then decides to start dating other people, with David attempting to win her back by getting her fired from her new job (allowing for no financial independence) and trying to bust up her relationship with his former friend Jeff (Raymond).  Things come to a head when the three of them are trapped at a ski lodge together, and they realize that despite their constant bickering, they love each other, and the film ends happily.

The movie is charming, and winning mostly because of the two leads.  I give-or-take on Robert Montgomery for the most part, but apparently love him in 1941 between this and Here Comes Mr. Jordan (both of which I thoroughly enjoyed).  He definitely plays his part well here as a man who doesn't realize that he batted out-of-his-league on the first go, and thinks that the grass is greener (when it isn't).  This is shrewd direction from Hitch/Montgomery, capturing the essence of such a man who we can tell from the outside got a good deal, and it's wonderfully underlined by Lombard.  Our star plays this well, reminding not only David but also herself that she's worthy of love, and can get a life beyond herself if she wants...even if she really does just want David.  Filled with lovely comic set-pieces & fun back-and-forth, Mr. and Mrs. Smith is a winner & makes you wonder what would've happened if Hitchcock had made more comedies in his later years.

The film, tragically, would be the last movie starring Lombard to be released in her lifetime.  She would make one more movie (the classic To Be or Not To Be), before her death.  On January 16, 1942, Lombard, her mother, and press agent, were coming home from a war bonds fundraising event, when the plane crashed into the side of a mountain outside of Las Vegas, killing everyone on board.  Her husband Clark Gable was bereft when he realized his wife had died, and though he'd remarry twice after her, he would end up buried next to her when he died some two decades later.  Joan Crawford replaced Lombard in the last film she'd been scheduled to make, They All Kissed the Bride, and gave her entire salary to the Red Cross in honor of their work in the aftermath of Lombard's death, and her final movie To Be or Not To Be had to be edited (to great expense) to cut one line from the film where Jack Benny proclaims "What could happen on a plane?", an eerie query in conjunction with Lombard's tragic death.  Carole Lombard, a screen legend & one of the best of her era, was only 33 when she died.

Next month, we're going to jump a little bit out of chronology into the 1950's (we'll do one more of Hitch's 1940's leading ladies in July but because of the depth of her career I wanted a month with five Saturday's, which June doesn't have), so we'll instead move to an actress that jumped from genre-to-genre throughout the 1940's, but ended up finding her footing later in her career with two massive Best Picture nominees that would seal her stardom.  We'll find out who that is on Tuesday!

OVP: Sun Valley Serenade (1941)

Film: Sun Valley Serenade (1941)

Stars: Sonja Henie, John Payne, Glenn Miller, Milton Berle, Lynn Bari

Director: H. Bruce Humberstone

Oscar History: 3 nominations (Best Cinematography, Original Song-"Chattanooga Choo Choo", Scoring)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 1/5 stars

This summer, LeBron James will star in a sequel to the 1996 film Space Jam.  James is one of the greatest basketball players of all time (if not the best), but he's hardly achieved massive success (to date) in the realm of acting.  While athletes from OJ Simpson to Hulk Hogan have taken their shot at film stardom, very few actually find proper, sustainable success on the big screen.  One of the few that did, though, was Norwegian skater Sonja Henie.  Henie won gold medals in figure skating at three successive Olympics and was a world champion ten years running between 1927-1936.  She then went on to be a major star for 20th Century Fox during the late 1930's/early 1940's, featured mostly in skating extravaganza pictures that were basically just an excuse to get her to skate (think Esther Williams but on frozen water).  Henie's career would probably be worth a conversation for a Star of the Month segment, particularly her unusual connections to Adolf Hitler, but as I was watching I realized this is the first time I've ever seen he in an actual movie, and so I want to focus today just on her as a screen presence, and how being a novice with her as an actor greatly influences the way you watch a film like Sun Valley Serenade.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie focuses on Ted Scott (Payne), a down-on-his-luck band pianist who can't get a gig.  He lucks into one when Vivian Dawn (Bari), a beautiful big-name singer, takes a shine to the handsome Ted.  They start to date, but there's a problem.  Ted's manager Nifty (Berle) arranged for him to take in a refugee to get good publicity, however the refugee isn't a child, but instead a grown woman named Karen (Henie), who quickly decides she wants to marry Ted.  The remainder of the film is Karen getting into a series of hijinks (many that trade in on her skating & skiing abilities), trying to sabotage Ted & Vivian's relationship, which end up working as Ted eventually marries Karen (and then they have a winter spectacular to round out the movie).

The film is predicated on you really enjoying Henie, who at this point as I mentioned above, was a big star in Hollywood.  Having her as the adorable lead would've likely been something the screenwriters could bank upon with the audience, but modern audiences who aren't as familiar with her as a screen persona (like me) don't have that currency, and as a result this movie reads as really problematic.  Karen is essentially stalking Ted, to the point where she ruins his relationship, and there's no real chemistry between the two other than a shared love of skiing.  She basically ruins Ted's life, and then he thanks her for it.  In a normal movie I'd have a problem with them portraying strong, confident Vivian as "a successful woman who needs to learn her place" (that's basically how she's portrayed), and that'd turn me off for the film, but that's to be expected in a film in the 1940's.  What isn't is that Henie's Karen, were she a man, would almost certainly be portrayed as a villain & a sexual predator, and it totally turned me off for the film-it felt icky & gross.

This is a pity because I don't really have a problem with the film's trio of Oscar nominations.  The cinematography is good-if-not-outstanding, with Henie's giant ice ballets a standout (and the skiing scenes look like they're actually skiing in at least half of them, which is an accomplishment for a movie like this).  The Score is excellent.  Glenn Miller (yes, the Glenn Miller) plays a band leader in the film, and he brings classics like "In the Mood," "Moonlight Serenade," & "It Happened in Sun Valley" to the screen.  Best of all is "Chattanooga Choo Choo," which is broken up into two parts, the first featuring some of the Orchestra, and the latter featuring a song-and-dance routine between Dorothy Dandridge & the Nicholas Brothers (Dandridge and Harold Nicholas would marry soon after this movie).  This is one of only two times the Glenn Miller Orchestra would ever be in a movie, and so it's a special spot if you're a fan of their music (which I am).  Unfortunately, the movie surrounding it is not worthy (and even the songs, classics all, aren't mounted as well as they could be save for the Dandridge/Nicholas Brothers tap number).

OVP: Lydia (1941)

Film: Lydia (1941)

Stars: Merle Oberon, Joseph Cotten, Hans Jaray, Alan Marshal, Edna May Oliver, George Reeves

Director: Julien Duvivier

Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Score)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

One of the more daunting aspects of the Oscar Viewing Project comes from the films of the late 1930's & early 1940's.  This is one of my favorite Hollywood eras.  It is also exhausting when it comes to just how many films were nominated for Academy Awards during this time frame, principally because the music categories had so many pictures that were cited.  The song & score categories could have as many as twenty nominees at the time due to quirks in the Academy bylaws, and this results in at least 100 of the remaining films I have left for the project solely coming from being nominated for a music award in this ten year stretch.  One of those films (up until this past weekend) was Lydia, a largely forgotten Merle Oberon melodrama, cited for its score.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is told largely in flashback, after Michael (Cotten) and Lydia (Oberon) meet.  They were once young lovers who could never get the timing right, and Michael has spent his whole life loving her while she has embraced her "spinsterhood" by improving the lives of the less fortunate.  Michael assembles a team of her other former beaus, and they all reminisce about her youth, how she came to romance them all (and then how they left her), and then telling the secret of her romance with Richard (Marshal), where she essentially lived-in-sin with him (there's strong indications they had sex as they lived together in a seaside home despite not being married).  The film ends tragically, with the three men doting upon Lydia but her still in love with Richard, and then when Richard comes, she's ready to forgive him but he doesn't remember her-their love only meant something to Lydia.  She realizes that her life has always been a story of different "Lydia's" and she never truly was herself.

The film is a bit of a bore, honestly.  While I generally like Joseph Cotten, Merle Oberon is a star that has virtually no appeal to me, even in movies I've liked of hers (specifically Wuthering Heights).  Her accent work is dreadful (is she British?  From Connecticut?  Just exceedingly rich?) and the backstory on all of the men is confusing.  Oberon's feelings for all of these men, particularly Cotten, is bizarre-she plays her character as alternating between Katharine Hepburn style independence or Celia Johnson-esque forlornness.  Neither of these things work, and while the ending is brutal (when we find out the one true love of Lydia' life never loved her the way the other three men did), and would've been a killer ending to a better movie, Lydia suffers from a lack of investment in these characters.

The film's sole Oscar nomination is unearned as well.  Miklos Rozsa was one of the finest composers of the era, a classically-trained conductor who, despite over 100 film scores, saw this as simply a "second career" to his traditional classical conducting.  His music here is lovely, but it's overbearing & doesn't fit the movie-it's too grand for such a trifle, and oftentimes feels like it's undercutting a script & acting that is not able to keep up with the film's designs.  As a result, it likely sounds terrific outside of the movie, but within the context it's a poor fit, and an unworthy citation no matter how many nominations studios were afforded in the music categories in the 1940's.

OVP: When Ladies Meet (1941)

Film: When Ladies Meet (1941)

Stars: Joan Crawford, Robert Taylor, Greer Garson, Herbert Marshall, Spring Byington, Rafael Storm

Director: Robert Z. Leonard

Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Art Direction)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

One of the things that I miss about Classical Hollywood (a nostalgia that requires time travel, since while I'm getting older, I am not quite old enough to have lived through Classical Hollywood cinema when it was being released), is the way that it makes a point of having major film actresses of the era play opposite each other.  While this is getting (somewhat) better, it's rare that modern films put two major female stars as the leads of a movie.  Oftentimes women are paired (usually romantically) with male stars of the era, and so it's a treat when we have a movie like When Ladies Meet (see, it's right there in the title) that puts together two of the biggest stars of the era, Joan Crawford & Greer Garson (Robert Taylor is just along for the ride) on the screen at the same time. And adding to this excitement is the fact that the two of them (despite big stylistic differences in their onscreen approach) are dynamite when teamed up.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film is about Mary Howard (Crawford), a novelist (how often did Crawford play a writer-this seems like a theme?) who writes frequently about marriage & love, but hasn't quite experienced it until the opening of the film, when it's revealed she's in love with her married publisher Rogers (Marshall).  Mary's pal Jimmy (Taylor) has been wild about her for years, but knows that she could slip away here, so he decides to play a trick on her by having her meet (through circumstance) Rogers' wife Claire (Garson), in a decadent country home owned by their mutual friend Bridgie (Byington).  Once there, Mary & Claire become friends, until it's evident that Claire knows who Mary is, and that while she's become aware of Rogers affairs, she cannot stand the site of Mary with him, understanding that their marriage is effectively over (though the film ends with Rogers, perhaps understanding the error of his ways, pursuing Claire after Mary also dumps him, knowing that she'd always worry about his cheating ways). The film ends with Jimmy & Mary finally realizing they are perfect for each other, as Bridgie beamingly cheers them on.

I quite liked this movie, even though I knew nothing about it.  Obviously at this point all three stars were at different points in their careers.  Crawford just a few years previously had been proclaimed "box office poison" (we were several years away from her creative comeback in Mildred Pierce), while Garson was on the upswing & Taylor was a major star.  Still, Crawford got top billing and (on-paper) the best part as the "other woman" who must choose between her own happiness & destroying Garson's scorned wife.  However, it's Garson who is the best of the three, totally charming & witty in the third lead (or is it a top supporting...a category fraud discussion for another day), who also has to be terribly tragic when she realizes that Crawford's Mary is not like the other girls, and isn't a flight-of-fancy.  Spring Byington is also delicious as a fool (or is she?) who is clearly having an affair with a younger man & is very into the wicked escapades happening around her (Byington's silly nods give you a lot more innuendo than a post-Code film like this should be able to do).

The film was nominated for one Academy Award, and it's one of the weirder nominations you'll ever have.  While in recent years designers like Stuart Craig or Dan Henneh have been nominated for different installments of movie series, they are still different parts of the same series-an extended sequel & stories.  Here, however, Cedric Gibbons had actually done the art direction on the original When Ladies Meet from 1933 with Ann Harding & Myrna Loy, and he was also nominated for that, making this one of the few (probably only?) times someone has been nominated for the same craft for the same story.  The art direction initially seems like an odd citation (it's just a series of drawing rooms), until we get to Byington's Bridgie's house.  In the film it's intended to be a renovated barn, and honestly it's beautiful-it's the kind of thing that would arguably be more fashionable now than it is then (Joanna Gaines would love this place if you want an idea of what it's like), and I couldn't get enough of the way it felt like an actual home & not just a continuous set.  I haven't seen the 1933 film (yet), so I don't know how similar the two are (and if Gibbons essentially cheated giving us the same idea twice), but I thought it was great-very cool, modern design that adds an almost maze-like ambience to the film's many love triangles.

OVP: Blues in the Night (1941)

Film: Blues in the Night (1941)

Stars: Richard Whorf, Priscilla Lane, Lloyd Nolan, Betty Field, Jack Carson, Elia Kazan

Director: Anatole Litvak

Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Original Song-"Blues in the Night")

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

We hit Day #4 of our look at Oscar-nominated music today with our biggest pull back in time, to the early 1940's and the Best Original Song nominee Blues in the Night.  After decades of watching hundreds of different films, it's a little weird for me to find something like Blues in the Night, which is perhaps in a genre by itself.  The movie has a number of different songs, so it definitely comes by our conversation honestly, but it's dark, oftentimes morose, in its treatment of its cast, and it has the complete trappings of a different genre; Blues in the Night might be the only Golden Age "film noir musical" I have ever seen, and was such a weird experience I don't entirely know what I think of it.  I'll try to sort through it this morning with you.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is about a jazz ensemble, created somewhat on the fly between pianist Jigger Pine (Whorf), clarinetist Nickie Haroyen (Kazan, and yes, it's that Elia Kazan in his pre-director days), and the husband-and-wife team of trumpeter Leo Powell (Carson) & his good-hearted wife Character (Lane).  The group start to have success, but are brought to the next level when they meet gangster Del Davis (Nolan), who has them singing at his club, which he runs like a murderous tyrant.  Del has an on-again-off-again flame named Kay (Field), who is trying to get back at Del, and does so through romantic entanglements first with married Leo, and then (after Character announces she's pregnant) she goes after Jigger, who is obsessed with her.  She brings Jigger down, though, as he quits the band amid an alcohol-fueled binge with Kay, and the band suffers more heartache when Character's newborn baby dies.  They eventually find themselves when Jigger catches wise to Kay (who is then brutally killed by another paramour who wants to end both of their lives in a vehicular murder-suicide), and they go back to playing a happier, truer form of jazz.

The film is tonally bizarre.  Lane's Character is sugar-sweet, so much so that you'd be able to confuse her with Ginger Rogers in Swing Time, and completely at odds with Field's bitter, broken-down femme fatale, to the point where it's clear they're in different movies.  This almost works because it's so weird.  I spend a great deal of my time watching old movies, and I don't know that I've ever seem a film that feels so "experimental," of this era, particularly not from a studio as tried-and-true as Warner Brothers.  I don't mind experimental, and I liked the twists on the formatting, but it doesn't quite jive properly.  Maybe if Lane was recast it might work (or if Field's character wasn't so lost in the film's final moments), but as they are the whole reason to watch this movie (the men add little), the fact that they aren't matching the inconsistent tone of the film makes this a failed-but-fascinating experiment.

That being said, the nominated song is good.  The song would become a pop standard in the years that followed, covered by everyone from Dinah Shore to Artie Shaw to Shirley Bassey, but in the actual confines of the film it's in arguably the strangest scene of an odd movie.  Essentially the whole band is in jail, and several black men in a neighboring cell start singing this rich, melancholy ballad, and the band decides that this is the kind of music they should be making.  I'm docking a few points because the  music doesn't really match what they end up creating, and also because the scene feels so juxtaposed to the rest of the movie (I should also knock them down a peg or too for cultural appropriation, but it's 1941 & I have to grade on a curve here), but it's a good song, and well-performed in the movie.

OVP: Penny Serenade (1941)

Film: Penny Serenade (1941)
Stars: Irene Dunne, Cary Grant, Beulah Bondi, Edgar Buchanan
Director: George Stevens
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Actor-Cary Grant)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Cary Grant is an unusual star if you just look at his career from the lens of Oscar.  Grant is a true movie star, absolutely one of the best and longest-lasting stars of Classical Hollywood, running from the early sound films (in his work with Mae West & Marlene Dietrich) to being a posh romantic comedy star in the 1930's & 40's to his stint with Alfred Hitchcock reaching into the late 1950's.  His Hollywood classics list is unrivaled by pretty much anyone: The Awful Truth, Bringing Up Baby, His Girl Friday, The Philadelphia Story, Notorious, North by Northwest,...brilliant movie after brilliant movie.  Yet when it comes to Oscar, he received only two nominations, and they were for none of these films, but in fact two little-remembered (by comparison) dramas of the era, 1944's None But the Lonely Heart and today's film 1941's Penny Serenade.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie starts out as something of a light romance between Julie (Dunne) and Roger (Grant), both of whom meet by chance (Julie is a salesgirl in a record shop, Roger buys a record from her even though he doesn't have a record player), and they fall fast in love.  When they are married, though, they understand the complications that come with this as Roger's career flounders (and Julie doesn't know how to teach him to be more sensible with his money), and then an earthquake destroys their home, causing Julie to miscarry and then become infertile.  The remainder of the movie is centered around their struggles with adopting, particularly as a couple with money troubles, who fight for their adopted daughter Trina to stay in their home.

The movie, despite starring two of the great rom-com stars of the era, isn't a comedy or even that much of a "romantic" romance.  This is a straight-up melodrama, and one with a lot of sad twists.  Not only does Julie lose her first baby during the earthquake, but she & Roger are forced to give up their second child because Roger lost his job, a decision Roger eventually pleads with the judge to reverse...and then Trina still ends up dying as a young girl from a sudden illness.  The family goes through hell before eventually adopting an infant boy, willing to give their relationship & parenting another go, and the film is supposed to have a happy ending, but this film toes the line between melodrama and abject cruelty to the poor leads, and despite loving other work from these actors in the past, I couldn't get beyond this even when their movie star charisma finds ways to shine.

Grant likely won his Oscar nomination for two reasons-the first is the courtroom scene, as he's atypically dramatic, and Oscar is impressed when comedians try drama, and second, he had missed for his glorious work in The Philadelphia Story the year before, when his costars Katharine Hepburn, James Stewart, & Ruth Hussey all were cited (Stewart even won).  The problem with this nomination is that Grant is one of those actors who views drama as monochromatic, and his flare in these scenes isn't what it is in his comedic work; the courtroom scene is impossible not to watch and wonder what, say, Henry Fonda could have done with it.  Additionally, he plays Roger with too many swings in his character; honestly, though it's not remotely as showy of a part, Irene Dunne is considerably better than Grant in the world of a straight drama.  While Grant might well have won my Oscar for The Philadelphia Story (he's better than Stewart), I can't count past snubs when considering the OVP, so I don't suspect Grant, one of my favorite actors, will do too well at his first Best Actor race when we get to it.

OVP: Here Comes Mr. Jordan (1941)

Film: Here Comes Mr. Jordan (1941)
Stars: Robert Montgomery, Evelyn Keyes, Claude Rains, Rita Johnson, James Gleason
Director: Alexander Hall
Oscar History: 7 nominations/2 wins (Best Picture, Actor-Robert Montgomery, Supporting Actor-James Gleason, Director, Adapted Screenplay*, Motion Picture Story, Cinematography)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

We are going to finish our week-long look at the Supporting Actor category with another repeat in years (unlike the two 2003 films, this was completely accidental and had more to do with what movies were leaving Criterion than anything else).  Today's film is also unusual because it's not what you'd expect from a Supporting Actor lineup.  If you just looked at the "Stars" line up top, you would assume that the Supporting Actor nominee that was coming out of Here Comes Mr. Jordan would be Claude Rains.  Rains, after all, was nominated for four Academy Awards throughout his career, and this was in the sweet spot when he was getting those nominations.  However, it is in fact James Gleason who is the nominee in this bunch, getting his sole Oscar nomination.  Unlike Rains, who is a pretty common name amongst Classic Hollywood fans, Gleason isn't a character actor that's easily identifiable today, and one whose work I was super familiar with.  I'd seen him in two of his biggest classics (A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and The Night of the Hunter), but those are small parts and are overshadowed in my memory.  At the time, Gleason was famous in the way TV stars of the coming decades would be for his roles in the Hildegarde Withers and Higgins Family movie serials.  Was he a worthy nominee, and why precisely was he chosen over someone more Academy-friendly like Rains?  Let's find out, shall we?

(Spoilers Ahead) Here Comes Mr. Jordan is a tale you might already know, as it was remade in 1978 with Warren Beatty in the film Heaven Can Wait.  If you don't, here's the gist.  Joe Pendleton (Montgomery) is a world class boxer, someone who is poised to break out into the big time before he dies in a plane crash...or at least we initially think he dies in a plane crash.  It turns out when he gets to heaven that the angel who took him did so too early, as Joe was going to survive the crash, and live another fifty years.  Joe's body, though, has been cremated, and so the angel's superior Mr. Jordan (Rains) has to do something else-he has to find another body of someone who has just died for Joe to take over.  They settle on Bruce Farnsworth, a ruthless businessman who has just been murdered by his wife Julia (Johnson).  He chooses to do so to help Miss Logan (Keyes), a young woman whose father has taken the fall for Farnsworth, and thus will soon have both of their lives ruined.  Once in the body, he falls for Miss Logan and begins to train to become the champ as Farnsworth, eventually winning over with the help of Pop (Gleason), his old boxing trainer, the only person who knows Farnsworth's real identity.

Here Comes Mr. Jordan is clever and really sweet.  It's the sort of movie that I think if you were new to old Hollywood movies or easily jaded you'd mock pretty much from the start, but as I am neither new to this kind of movie nor jaded, I loved it.  Montgomery is not an actor I think of as particularly versatile, but he's well-cast as Joe Pendleton, a lug who has a big heart.  The story is ingenious, and the script is fun, getting in some solid one-liners (particularly from Rains & Gleason), and showing us a tale that could probably be remade a second time today, perhaps with a comic actor like Rebel Wilson or Tiffany Haddish.  The cinematography nomination is unusual (there's very little boxing in this boxing movie, which is usually where this might come from), but not bad (particularly the way that Farnsworth's mansion is lit), and the direction is tidy, if conventional.

The nomination for Gleason makes sense in some regards, though I did leave wondering more so why they didn't go to the more favored Rains.  Both actors have meaty parts-this isn't a case where Rains character is boring, and I preferred his performance to Gleason's in that it's more sophisticated & a-characteristic of the rest of the film.  But Gleason lands his comic bits, and is playing the more traditional role for Oscar; actors ranging from Burgess Meredith to Clint Eastwood to Paul Giamatti have been nominated for playing the tough-talking boxing trainer in the corner, as the sweet science is Oscar's favorite sport.  While this never rises above cliche and two-dimensional, it still works within the confines of the film, is quite amusing, and it's hard to begrudge a longtime character actor getting their moment in the sun.

OVP: The Devil and Miss Jones (1941)

Film: The Devil and Miss Jones (1941)
Stars: Jean Arthur, Robert Cummings, Charles Coburn, Edmund Gwenn, Spring Byington
Director: Sam Wood
Oscar History: 2 nominations (Best Supporting Actor-Charles Coburn, Original Screenplay)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

On Day 3 of our week devoted to the category of Best Supporting Actor, we're going to go way back, all the way to 1941, just six years into the category even existing.  This nomination happened during the peak of Jean Arthur's career, when she was practically printing money for the studio, and indeed, with The Devil and Miss Jones, Arthur was getting another hit.  I've always found Arthur's career to be kind of fascinating (she'd make an awesome "Saturdays with the Stars" figure in the future), considering her onscreen persona (bubbly, warm, the girl-next-door) was so different than what she was like in real-life (extremely private, bordering on the antisocial).  In many ways she was more comparable to Greta Garbo than Carole Lombard offscreen.  Her films oftentimes got nominated for major Oscars, though only once for her (1943's The More the Merrier), and that was the case for The Devil and Miss Jones, where Charles Coburn would get the first of his three Oscar nominations in the 1940's.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film is about John P. Merrick (Coburn), a tightfisted, cranky old millionaire who owns a string of department stores in New York.  He is trying to bust open a union that is forming in his store, which could deprive him of his profit margins, and so he goes undercover as a shoe clerk named Thomas.  There he finds out that the managers treat the employees very poorly, and his only friend is a woman named Mary (Arthur) whose boyfriend Joe (Cummings) is the union ringleader.  He also starts to fall in love with an elderly store clerk Elizabeth (Byington), and appreciate the travails of his employees.  However, when his identity is found out (and Mary & Elizabeth feel betrayed by his lying), he is forced by the board to choose between supporting his employees or continuing his lavish (lonely) lifestyle.

As you might imagine (this is a Classic Hollywood movie, after all), Merrick chooses to help his employees, marrying Elizabeth and living happily ever after (if a good deal less rich than before).  The movie is sweet, if totally predictable.  It's the kind of film where if you're open to a good time and something pleasant, it'll satisfy you, but if you can't take saccharine that day, I'd avoid.  The script is predictable but humorous (my favorite sight gag being when Merrick has to bribe a child to buy the most expensive shoes in the store...and she still doesn't want to wear them because they're so hideous), and the cast is charming.

The film has Arthur & Cummings as its leads, but they aren't really the central figures in the story.  Today Coburn's nomination would surely be accused of category fraud, as he's undoubtedly the film's central character and thus I'm going to take a point off for him being the lead as is my wont in these situations (though unlike, say, Brad Pitt, Coburn was in the category that most of his roles would end up being, just not this one).  Coburn is warm, curmudgeonly, and gives a full performance.  I feel like this is the type of performance he almost always ends up giving (he was definitely typecast), but that doesn't mean it's not effective within the script.  His cold thaw is the best part of the movie, and while this isn't legendary acting, it's sturdy character work that builds up a picture, which is what you'd hope for in a Supporting Actor.

OVP: You'll Never Get Rich (1941)

Film: You'll Never Get Rich (1941)
Stars: Fred Astaire, Rita Hayworth, Robert Benchley, John Hubbard, Osa Massen
Director: Sidney Lanfield
Oscar History: 2 nominations (Best Scoring, Original Song-"Since I Kissed My Baby Goodbye")
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 Rita Hayworth-click here to learn more about Ms. Hayworth (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

We are going to start our month-long look at the career of Rita Hayworth with arguably the film that catapulted her from being a notable side character in films like The Strawberry Blonde and Blood and Sand (where she was still getting out-billed by other actresses such as Olivia de Havilland and Linda Darnell) into being not just a proper leading lady, but arguably the most important film star on the Columbia lot throughout the 1940's.  She did this, weirdly enough, by teaming with someone whose career at the time was on the wane, Fred Astaire (someday we'll include Astaire as a "Star of the Month" because few actors this side of Frank Sinatra had so many "career lulls & comebacks" to profile).  Hayworth's early years on the lot, despite not being a trained singer (something that Hayworth resented the studio for not helping her with), were almost entirely based in musical comedies, and that was due to the immense success of You'll Never Get Rich.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film is a fluffy romp that puts Robert Curtis (Astaire), a tyrannical manager of a theater, into the firing line of Sheila Winthrop (Hayworth), the most promising dancer in his troupe. The theater's owner Martin Cortland (Benchley, and yes this is the "Robert Benchley" of Algonquin Round Table fame), is enamored with Sheila, and is trying to woo her, but there's a problem-he's married and his wife is in control of all of his money, so he can't get a divorce without ending up in the poorhouse.  Through a series of misunderstandings (You'll Never Get Rich is a movie where you have to suspend a lot of belief), Robert initially is thrown into a faux courtship with Sheila, and then to escape it he joins the army.  While in the army he reveals that he's madly in love with her, and tries to win her back even though she's being pursued by Captain Barton (Hubbard).  All the while, Martin keeps getting Robert in trouble with his philandering ways as he pursues a different showgirl Sonya (Massen).  The film ends with Martin finally confessing his role in keeping Sheila & Robert apart due to his own selfishness, and the two end up in each other's arms.

You'll Never Get Rich is a mess, but the best kind of mess.  The plot rarely makes sense (there's a series of random sight gags involving Astaire and two bumbling sidekicks of his played by veteran character actors Cliff Nazarro and Guinn Williams, but it's not entirely clear what binds the three other than convenience), and the romance at the center is a bit of a stretch (why, exactly, does Sheila love Robert?), but you won't care.  This is a fun movie, one filled with great dancing, and though the songs are less memorable (that Scoring nomination doesn't feel as earned as some of the other nominees that year), it's a joy to see Astaire & Hayworth together.  Astaire would later confess that his favorite onscreen dancing partner was not Ginger Rogers or Cyd Charisse, but instead Hayworth, with whom he'd make this film and one other, You Were Never Lovelier, which we won't get to this month, but it was nominated for several Oscars so it'll show up eventually.

The movie received a second Oscar nomination, for its original song "Since I Kissed My Baby Goodbye," which is unusual, though it doesn't involve our featured actress at all.  It is sung halfway through the film, with an all-black singing quartet called the Four Tones doing vocals while Astaire dances and sings a little bit nearby.  The scene is notable because it couldn't have possibly happened in real life-at the time, the army was segregated, and would remain so until the end of the 1940's.  It's hard to know what Columbia and director Sidney Lanfield were trying to do by sending a message of inclusivity in the film, insinuating that a white man like Astaire would be serving in the same unit as black soldiers, but I thought it was worth noting for having such a political message (for its era) in a movie that otherwise is pretty fluffy.

I Wake Up Screaming (1941)

Film: I Wake Up Screaming (1941)
Stars: Betty Grable, Victor Mature, Carole Landis, Laird Cregar
Director: H. Bruce Humberstone
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 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 Betty Grable-click here to learn more about Ms. Grable (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Obviously when it comes to creating a list of 12 famous sex symbols of the Classical Hollywood era, you're going to have to make cuts.  Hollywood is littered with beautiful women, oftentimes ones who are only appreciated (especially in their era) for their beauty, and so while I am very happy with the twelve women we'll be profiling this year, there were cuts I really wanted to include.  Toward the top of that list was Carole Landis.  Landis, almost completely forgotten today, was the sort of star that almost became a superstar in her era.  She starred in two films with Betty Grable in 1941, both today's I Wake Up Screaming and Moon Over Miami (both big hits), but unlike Grable, she didn't turn into a supernova as a result of her time at Fox.  This is almost entirely due to the casting couch, as Landis was sleeping with studio chief Darryl Zanuck, and when that affair fizzled, so did her career.  Landis would go from being a headliner in movies that might rival someone as legendary as Betty Grable to, at the end of her life just six years later, making Poverty Row films & committing suicide at the age of 29.  So today, while obviously we continue our look at the career of Betty Grable, I also wanted to acknowledge Landis, who herself was a sex symbol that Hollywood never gave the respect she craved.

(Spoilers Ahead) I Wake Up Screaming is a 1940's noir and as such, there's a lot of plot, so I'll try to summarize this as succinctly as possible.  We open with a beautiful murdered model named Vicky (Landis), who has in death become a sort of perverse tabloid sensation.  Initially we flashback both through visions from her promoter Frankie (Mature) and her younger sister Jill (Grable).  They're telling the police about Vicky's life before she died, but something is off in their story, and the police seem to know it.  We learn that Vicky was basically just a waitress with a pretty face but Frankie turned her into something of a local star, and she was about to head to Hollywood to use her newfound notoriety to translate into something more substantial.  The police are following both Jill & Frankie, particularly a portly, creepy-seeming detective named Ed Cornell (Cregar), who Jill remembered stalking she and Vicky before Vicky's death.  Cornell seems determined to pin the crime on Frankie, whom we're expecting is innocent, but the film's writers do a good enough job to ensure that we don't automatically discount him as the killer.  We find out eventually that it was the doorman who killed Vicky, but also that Cornell knew he was the killer the whole time.

This is where the film takes its best, and most shocking detour.  Cornell at this point has been super suspicious, but it wasn't clear why, and it felt like the directors were trying heavily to imply he was the one who really killed Vicky, and was trying to pin the crime on Frankie to get out of the crime.  What actually happened was that Cornell had been obsessed with Vicky since she was a waitress, visiting her and promising her a better life, but when Frankie actually delivered on that life, Cornell never forgave him.  We enter Cornell's apartment, and it's covered with framed photos of Vicky's various modeling shoots, a man obsessed with a dead woman whom he came close to securing for himself, but then had Frankie break him away.  In his mind, it was Frankie who killed Vicky because he took her away from him, never minding that of course Vicky had an actual murderer whom he let roam free.

This twist is awesome, and one I didn't see coming, and kind of makes the film.  It's short (82 minutes), and other than Cregar there's no truly spellbinding acting in this film, but no one is bad either, and even thankless roles like those given to Mature & Grable come out all right.  But the script is so compact, and really fun, and that ending is so twisted it's kind of hard not to love it.  I watched as Mature entered Cornell's apartment assuming he was in on the crime, and instead I got the sort of ending that I'd expect from a noir thriller in the 1990's, not in the 1940's where literally a film like Detour you have to have a fake ending just to get past the censors.

Grable rarely did drama, either before or after this, so it's interesting to see her outside of the typical rom-coms and musical numbers that would become her stock-in-trade.  She's good, though a bit mousy for my taste, and overshadowed by Landis (who gets the better part).  Landis does her best Ann Sheridan impression (Sheridan would have been an awesome Vicky), and is memorable despite being dead for most of the movie.  We won't be profiling Moon Over Miami (anyone who has seen in it can chime in in the comments, though), but if this is what happens when Grable was opposite female costars I get why she would spend most of the next decade not sharing the spotlight with other actresses.  Next week we'll jump significantly further into Grable's career, when she was the highest-paid woman in America and Landis would be near death's door.

High Sierra (1941)

Film: High Sierra (1941)
Stars: Ida Lupino, Humphrey Bogart, Alan Curtis, Arthur Kennedy, Joan Leslie, Henry Travers, Cornel Wilde
Director: Raoul Walsh
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

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

We continue on with our month of Ida Lupino this week with the film that is almost exclusively associated with someone else's legend, even though it's Lupino who earned top billing for the picture.  High Sierra is the final film that Humphrey Bogart ever made where he received less than top billing until his death in 1957, because as hard as it is to believe, at the time Ida Lupino was the bigger star for Warner Brothers.  Her career was on an upswing after They Drive By Night, and the studio wanted to capitalize on that by re-teaming her with George Raft, but Raft turned down this role, which would become one of the bigger mistakes of his career (he would go on to turn down The Maltese Falcon, and if urban legend is to believed, Casablanca, so it's clearly not the biggest mistake of his career).  Instead Raoul Walsh cast Humphrey Bogart in the lead, and though Bogart was resentful of Lupino getting the top spot on the poster (the pair did not like each other, and would never work together again despite two hits in a row), this film cemented him as a leading man in the eyes of audiences, as well as High Sierra's screenwriter John Huston, with whom Bogart would make most of his best pictures.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is a film noir, but one that weirdly doesn't center on the inner city, but instead takes place for long stretches in the outdoors.  Roy Earle (Bogart) is a gangster recently out of jail, is asked to take part in a heist at a luxury hotel, and agrees despite his recent pardon from the governor granting him a new lease on life.  He holes up in the country with three small-time criminals (Kennedy, Curtis, and Wilde), and one of their girlfriends, Marie, who is about as close to a prostitute as 1940's censors would have allowed (she worked at a "dance hall" before the movie).  They also live near a kindly family, the daughter of whom, Velma (Leslie) Roy takes a shine toward despite her clubbed foot.  He pays to have it fixed, but she spurns his advances and so he ends up with Marie, who adores him but he seems largely ambivalent toward even if he eventually finds he loves her.  The crime goes south when someone is shot during the holdup, and two of the three small-timers die in a car accident during the police chase, with the third squealing on Roy & Marie.  The film ends with Roy, on the run, climbing into the Sierra Nevada Mountains but of course because of the Hays Code at the time, he dies in a gunfight, surrounded by a sobbing Marie and an adorable dog named Pard who has been sweet on Roy the whole movie.

The film is engaging if a bit dull for a noir.  It's always hard to tell for a formative movie like High Sierra, which in a lot of ways invented a genre (along with other movies like The Maltese Falcon and Laura)-how do you judge something that was so inventive then but feels dull to modern eyes because so many people have borrowed from it?  But High Sierra has its attributes-the outdoors shots in the actual Sierra Nevada Mountains are breathtaking (there are even shots of the movie near Mt. Whitney, California's highest peak), and the love triangle is actually quite intriguing.  Roy never seems to entirely get over Velma's rejection, clearly picking up Marie as a rebound who ends up being the last love of his life, and while the ending wants them to be the "true soulmates" of the movie, Bogart's performance informs the audience that this isn't the case; either Roy was incapable of ever finding a true love, or his true love had to be someone like Velma, who made him feel like he was better than he was.

Bogart's mesmerizing in the role, and clearly understood the part in a way that Raft probably would have lacked (Bogie, despite his tough guy bravado, was always best playing guys with a rough outer shell but a soft heart).  He'd rarely play criminals after this, but it's a great role to go out on, and he gives the movie's best performance.  This isn't a knock on Lupino (who is only a borderline lead here despite her billing-Bogart gets considerably more screen-time), who is great as a lover who knows she's not his first choice, but Bogart really comes into his own here, and shows the greatness that would eventually lead to him taking on fascinating, complicated work in pictures like Casablanca and Treasure of the Sierra Madre.  Next week we will turn to what might be the most critically-acclaimed work of Lupino's career, and certainly the role for which many (including Warner Brothers) assumed she'd get that Oscar nomination that eluded her her entire career.

OVP: Blood and Sand (1941)

Film: Blood and Sand (1941)
Stars: Tyrone Power, Linda Darnell, Rita Hayworth, Alla Nazimova, Anthony Quinn, J. Carrol Naish, Lynn Bari, John Carradine, Laird Cregar
Director: Rouben Mamoulian
Oscar History: 2 nominations/1 win (Best Cinematography-Color*, Best Art Direction)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

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

As we spoke through in the kickoff to Linda Darnell month, Ms. Darnell's career essentially had two acts, one from 1940-43 where she was instantly praised for her unrivaled beauty and given little else to do in films but be ravenous, and then after a hiatus that nearly ended her career, she reclaimed her throne as a matinee idol in the late 1940's when she was given significantly better parts in pictures like Fallen Angel and A Letter to Three Wives before her personal demons made it impossible for any future comebacks.  Due to these gaps, I decided to spread our month into two halves as well, with our first two pictures coming from the fledgling years of Darnell's career, and the final two from after she mounted a comeback.  This week we take a look at another pairing of Darnell with Tyrone Power (whom we saw her with in The Mark of Zorro last Saturday), their final onscreen pairing after four successful pictures, and also a movie with her starring opposite one of the biggest icons of the 1940's, who at that point wasn't famous enough yet to get billing over Darnell, but would soon eclipse her career in pretty much every way imaginable: Rita Hayworth.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film is unique in its subject matter in a lot of ways, as it's the rare giant epic that also is clearly a message picture.  We follow Juan Gallardo (Power) from his years as a young child, defending his slain father who was once the greatest bullfighter in Spain.  As he ages, a cocky Juan Gallardo learns to in fact take his father's place, and subsumes him in the national consciousness as one of the greatest matadors of his era.  The movie counters this rise with Juan Gallardo's interactions with women, including his housemaid mother (Nazimova) and bratty sister (Bari, always playing the villainous role, and with three films now in our Saturdays with the Stars series, the unofficial "Forgotten Star" on a series about "forgotten stars" as she won't be getting her own month but probably should have at this point).  He also has two major romantic pursuits Carmen (Darnell), a pious woman whom he marries and has loved since they were children, and Dona Sol (Hayworth), a gorgeous heiress who seems to bounce from man-to-man and has a thing for matadors.

The film is really Power's, and probably shouldn't have been included in this series though technically he shares above-the-line billing with Darnell in virtually every poster I could find.  It was an important picture for both, a huge hit and one that kept them at the top of matinee screens for a few more years, but Power owns the picture in terms of screentime, and Darnell is given little to do.  Even in the ending of the movie, when Power's character dies in a surprisingly solemn finale (we see Anthony Quinn as the next successor to Juan Gallardo, certain to also die at the hands of a bull the same way his former friend did), Carmen has little to do but mourn and weep, and while some would argue that playing a pious woman was a nice change of pace compared to the latter aspects of Darnell's career, it's hard to think of this as her picture, and quite frankly it's not even banking that much on her looks, which was Darnell's complaint at the time.  Certainly when you compare her to Hayworth, given a seedier role but landing it with much more aplomb and glamour.  Hayworth, the superior actress, steals the movie in every conceivable way, and was clearly destined for stardom.  A few months later she'd appear in the massively successful You'll Never Get Rich with Fred Astaire, and wouldn't be relegated to third billing in a movie again for two decades.

The movie received a pair of well-earned Academy Award nominations that year, neither of which were reliant on the staid acting and repetitive screenwriting (though like I said-strong ending).  The cinematography is gorgeous-shot in Technicolor, the bullfight scenes gave me chills and though shot at wide angle (there's no plausible way you'd assume Power was actually onscreen with the dangerous bulls), it works brilliantly.  The love scenes are lensed compellingly, great melodramatic stuff, and honestly even the gaudy touches work with the film.  The same could be said for the art direction-it's terrific to watch all of the stadiums recreated, and you don't really feel like you're on a Hollywood sound stage even when you are.  It's obvious that Blood and Sand was borrowed by other epic directors years later, as the giant, expansive sets of the 1940's/50's are borrowing from this film as much as early DeMille, so there's clear influence going on here, and I loved the cavernous effect they occasionally make to imply Juan Gallardo's life is empty.  Technically the film is very impressive (sound work's great too), but aside from Hayworth the substance of the film is weirdly lacking.