OVP: Two Girls and a Sailor (1944)

Film: Two Girls and a Sailor (1944)

Stars: Van Johnson, June Allyson, Gloria DeHaven, Jimmy Durante

Director: Richard Thorpe

Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Original Screenplay)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

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

June Allyson's career in Hollywood started rather conventionally.  She was originally a chorus girl on Broadway, getting a spot as an understudy to Betty Hutton in Panama Hattie, and after Hutton got the measles (and Allyson got to go on), she caught the eye of a Broadway director, who put her as the lead in his next show.  From there, she went to Hollywood, where an MGM screen test put her under contract immediately.  Her first real breakthrough role was in today's film, Two Girls and a Sailor, where she was paired off with Van Johnson.  Johnson was known as the "boy next door" at MGM, and got to play these parts regularly, and Allyson was soon after referred to as "the girl next door" on the lot.  The two would make six films together in all (this is the only one I am planning we'll get to this month as Allyson made a lot of movies), most of them quite successful, including today's film, which would make Allyson a leading lady for the next thirteen years.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is about two sisters Patsy (Allyson) and Jean (DeHaven) who grew up in a show business family, sometimes performing as children opposite comedian Junior Kipp (Durante).  When they get older, they are a successful singing duo who want to open up a club, but they can't because they don't have the money.  What they do have is a crew of handsome soldiers & sailors following them around (great problem if you can get it), and one of them is John Dyckman Brown III (Johnson), an extremely wealthy man who is also in the Navy.  They don't know that John has been sending Jean flowers, and when they spend a night getting to know each other, he buys them their dream venue, not revealing that he's actually a wealthy heir to a $60 million fortune.  The problems arise when it's clear that Patsy and John are in love, but she thinks he loves her sister (and that he's penniless).  Before the film ends, Jean goes off with one of her other suitors, pushing Patsy & John (whom she now knows is rich) into each others arms.

The film's original screenplay nomination is kind of silly, even if it's a genuinely lovely little movie.  The plot makes no sense if you assume that, during the time that both sisters were smitten with Johnny, they never bothered to ask him his last name or anything about his family.  But this will be a problem for when I get to that chapter of the Oscar Viewing Project later, as otherwise Two Girls and a Sailor is lovely.  The music is really great.  This is one of many MGM musicals in the 1940's that would use big names of the era and singers under star contracts (such as Lena Horne) to add a touch of excitement & glamour to the film.  Horne is wonderful, as is Harry James (who does trumpet with Allyson to the tune "The Young Man with the Horn," which I believe is the first appearance of this song that would become a James staple), and Jimmy Durante.  The funniest number is a skit that Gracie Allen does where she just plays two notes as the star pianist to an otherwise very busy orchestra; though she'd continue to do radio & television with her husband George Burns for another two decades, this would be her final film appearance.

As for our star of the month, I'm instantly enamored.  I've seen a couple of June Allyson movies, but because she isn't an "Oscar-nominated actress" I honestly haven't seen a lot of her.  Watching her here, it's intoxicating to understand why this role, in particular, made her such a big name in Hollywood.  Every scene she owns, and she does it effortlessly, like the camera is drawn to her.  After watching the most recent Hunger Games picture, my friend Cody said of Rachel Zegler (and I agreed), "this (star power) is the kind of special effect that money can't buy"...that's what Allyson is doing here.  There's something in her singing, her husky voice, her warm expression...you want to see it again-and-again.  Allyson oftentimes disparaged her abilities (she once said of herself "My voice is funny, I don't sing like Judy Garland and I don't dance like Cyd Charisse"), but it's easy to see why America disagreed with her.

Ministry of Fear (1944)

Film: Ministry of Fear (1944)

Stars: Ray Milland, Marjorie Reynolds, Carl Esmond, Hillary Brooke, Dan Duryea

Director: Fritz Lang

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

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

While film noir has its roots as early as the mid-1930's, the 1940's were really when the genre took off, and frequently 1944 is considered to be the first year it crossed over from B-Movies (though, to be fair, a film like The Maltese Falcon is about as storied as they come) into proper classics.  Pictures like Laura, Double Indemnity, Murder My Sweet, and The Woman in the Window all came out that year, the latter being directed by Fritz Lang, who more than any other director of the era became synonymous with the film noir genre, and I couldn't do a season of this series without one of his movies.  This year, I selected Ministry of Fear, which was also in 1944, and is one of the bigger classics of the genre I haven't seen (it even has a Criterion Collection!).

(Spoilers Ahead) Film noir always has a lot of plot and twists to go with it, but even by the standards of the genre this one is a bit convoluted, so hang on.  Stephen Neale (Milland) has recently been released from an asylum after murdering his wife (it was a mercy killing as she was ill, as Milland is our hero & it's 1944).  He visits a village carnival of sorts, and is told by a palm reader that he should bet on the "weigh the cake" contest outside, and he correctly guesses the weight.  However, it becomes clear that he's not the man the palm reader was looking for when another blonde man (Duryea) comes and tries to win the cake back.  After eating the cake on a train, he's accosted by a blind man (who is instead looking through the cake, and when he awakens, the cake is missing).  This sets him on a track where he meets another medium, as well as a brother-and-sister who may or may not all be part of a Nazi syndicate.

The movie is based on a novel by Graham Greene (of the same name), and it's relatively dark for a film noir of this era (you'd get to far bleaker film noir in the late-1940's and early 1950's with things like Nightmare Alley and The Big Heat)...or at least as dark as a movie where a dessert serves as a key plot point.  The camera shots are intriguing, and Milland's backstory is intense for someone playing the hapless loser who stumbles upon a fascist syndicate (weirdly not the only movie that does something with this trope...it was kind of the "body swapping" genre of the 1940's).

It works though.  The plot is too tailored for the 87 minutes (the novel has a lot more intensity, including that Milland's Stephen killed his wife for less generous reasons, and Marjorie Reynolds' love interest is also a Nazi, which honestly would've helped as her character is a bit too peaches-and-cream for my taste).  But overall, this is well-constructed, with decent camera work and a fun performance from Hillary Brooke as a second medium trying to seduce Milland.  The biggest complaint-Dan Duryea, who is one of my favorite character actors of Classical Hollywood, gets virtually nothing to do as one of the hoods involved with the Nazis.

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

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

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

Murder, My Sweet (1944)

Film: Murder, My Sweet (1944)

Stars: Dick Powell, Claire Trevor, Anne Shirley, Otto Kruger, Mike Mazurki

Director: Edward Dmytryk

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

Throughout the month of June, in honor of the 10th Anniversary of The Many Rantings of John, we will be doing a Film Noir Movie Marathon, featuring fifteen film noir classics that I'll be seeing for the first time.  Reviews of other film noir classics are at the bottom of this article.

If we're going to start a film series about my favorite genre, film noir, we have to include at least one film from 1944, basically the creative beginning of the classic noir, and home of some of the best noir films ever made (Double Indemnity, Laura, The Woman in the Window).  The biggest title I was still missing from 1944 was Edward Dmytryk's Murder, My Sweet, which along with those other three titles, are generally considered to be four of the foundational movies in the genre.  Murder, My Sweet, though, was a movie that I actually knew well.  During the quarantine I'd actually watched Farewell, My Lovely, a version of this story by Raymond Chandler, and I was curious what a picture made by RKO at the height of the Hays Code would do with such a violent tale.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is told by narration, with detective Philip Marlowe (Powell) being interrogated by the police about two murders.  We go in flashback to learn the story of how Marlowe is hired as a bodyguard for a man who is transporting some valuable jewels.  During their transport, Marlowe is bludgeoned (Dick Powell gets several concussions in this movie), and the other man killed, with the jewels missing.  Marlowe is asked by the police not to investigate his own crime, but he does, which leads him to meet Jules Amthor (Kruger), a frail, wealthy man, his daughter Ann (Shirley) with whom he becomes sweet on even if she finds him crude, and Helen (Trevor), a bombshell who is married to Amthor, clearly for his money.  The film unfolds as most film noirs do with double-crossing, mistaken identities, and eventually Claire Trevor looking glamorous as hell holding a gun before joining a pile of corpses on the floor.

Generally I'm not a fan of Dick Powell's, but he works well as Marlowe.  He's not particularly sexy, but then again is Philip Marlowe supposed to be conventionally sexy, or is he just supposed to be sexy because he can't be tamed?  Either way, it works, and this movie handles the story of Chandler's gritty novel better with parameters than 1975's, which gets lost in the many, many plot pivots of the novel by also needing to include more sex & violence for a modern audience.  Without that pull, Murder, My Sweet has more focus.

Of the two leading ladies, Claire Trevor comes out the best, and honestly steals the movie.  She's used judiciously-despite a top billing slot, she's very much a supporting player (this is Powell's movie), but she uses every inch of the screen, slowly seducing Marlowe & everyone around it.  I always take it as a sign that a femme fatale has been successful if you secretly want them to get away with everything as the movie ends...that's very much the case here.  Anne Shirley is fine but too much of a wallflower by comparison.  Weirdly, despite being only 26 at the time & regularly working in movies, this was her last film even though she'd live for another fifty years.  Shirley, who had become an actress in movies as a teenager & struck unexpected success in Anne of Green Gables (hence her stage name), had never intended to make this her career, and after an Oscar nomination & a high-profile failed marriage to actor John Payne, she decided she was done with Hollywood

Previous Films in the Series: The Woman in the Window, The Killers, The Big Sleep, Nightmare Alley, Ride the Pink Horse, Night and the City, They Live By Night, Gun Crazy, In a Lonely Place, Sweet Smell of Success, The Big Heat, Pickup on South Street, The Killing, The Long Goodbye, Body Heat, 

The Mummy's Curse (1944)

Film: The Mummy's Curse (1944)

Stars: Lon Chaney, Jr., Dennis Moore, Kay Harding, Virginia Christine

Director: Leslie Goodwins

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 1/5 stars

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

We are finishing off The Mummy series with The Mummy's Curse, the fifth in the long line of increasingly similar Mummy movies.  I will be honest here-I'm struggling with how to discuss this particular movie mostly because the movie has virtually nothing to differentiate it from the remainder of the Mummy franchise features.  It's shocking watching these movies to understand just how identical the movies are not just to each other, but how frequently the 1999 tale of The Mummy borrows from this plotline (with better effect).

(Spoilers Ahead) Once again, we are told the story of Kharis (Chaney) & his doomed love with Ananka (Christine).  The movie takes place in New Orleans, which you'd think might add some ambience to the tired plot (I'm honestly not going to go over the story in-depth here, suffice it to say the Mummy & Ananka do not end up together or happy by the film's ending), but instead it just lands us a solid amount of racism to go along with our traditional Mummy motif.  Kharis storms about, trying once again to reunite with Ananka, the villagers are initially skeptical (to their ridiculous doom), and in the end Kharis is crushed, this time for real since we would not get another Lon Chaney, Jr. movie in the franchise (famed stuntman Eddie Parker would don the guise in Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy, a considerably better film we'll get to next week).

If you can't tell, I'm not enthused by this.  We might do a bit of a retrospective at the end of this series (I'm debating whether or not to do a list on the three-years of horror films or not, particularly when it comes to the canon Universal Monster movies, as I'll have seen all thirty by the time this month is done), but of all of the series, The Mummy is easily the one with the most diminishing returns.  With the exception of Boris Karloff's initial picture, they are virtually indistinguishable from each other.  Even here, when the movie completely (and without warning) changes both the location of the swamp from our last movie and the time frame (this movie, if we were to go with the chronology presented in the movie, takes place in the 1990's), there's not much that makes it disappear from the other Mummy's hand/tomb/ghost.

So what we're left with is a pretty disposable picture, and I kind of wonder if the endless cascade of sequels might be why horror doesn't get the respect that it deserves today in film.  We have seen in recent years a lot of elevated horror performances like Toni Collette in Hereditary or Lupita Nyong'o in Us that the Academy ignores, despite these being among the best films of the year.  There are some solid performances in the Universal canon, especially in the early years.  I haven't finalized my lists from the respective years (lots more to see before I finish the "My Ballots"), but know that Boris Karloff, Elsa Lanchester, & Claude Rains are all on my shortlists for performances they've given in these films.  One wonders if genre bias & the horror genre getting treated so nonchalantly (not entirely without merit, as this movie indicates) has caused some of that prejudice today.  Something to consider as we close out the remaining week of our season of horror, particularly next week when we get into one of the more famous horror films of this era.

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 Invisible Woman, The Wolf Man, Cat People, The Ghost of Frankenstein, Invisible Agent, The Mummy's Tomb, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, Phantom of the Opera, Son of Dracula, The House of Frankenstein, The Invisible Man's Revenge, The Mummy's Ghost, The Uninvited, 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

The Mummy's Ghost (1944)

Film: The Mummy's Ghost (1944)

Stars: Lon Chaney, Jr., John Carradine, Robert Lowery, Ramsay Ames

Director: Reginald Le Borg

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 1/5 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.

Lon Chaney, Jr. is not an actor of great distinction, but he is an actor with a great distinction.  Chaney's career was marked by horror.  Though he initially had some success as a serious actor (his most famous role was as Lennie in Lewis Milestone's classic Of Mice and Men), after he signed a long-term contract with Universal Studios & had success using his father's moniker in The Wolf Man, Chaney would make horror films for the remainder of the career.  As a result, he would become the only actor in film history to play the Wolf-Man, Frankenstein's Monster, Count Dracula, & the Mummy in English-language studio films.  Chaney's life was plagued by alcoholism, but he worked up until his death; though he lived longer than his rivals Boris Karloff & Bela Lugosi, he died younger than them.  We won't have time to get to these films this month, but like these two men Chaney also went into independent film as his career waned, making his final picture Dracula vs. Frankenstein in 1971 for exploitation filmmaker Al Adamson.

(Spoilers Ahead) Like most of the Mummy films, we have two concurrent plots that are being set up for a showdown.  On one hand you have Yousef Bey (Carradine), who is trying to bring back Kharis (Chaney) aka the Mummy and reunite him with Ananka, his one true love.  On the other hand we have a young student named Tom Hervey (Lowery) who is romancing a beautiful Egyptian woman named Amina (Ames).  When Kharis is awakened, he also entrances Amina, and this continually happens throughout the film as Kharis kills others & is able to keep Amina under his spell.  As is the wont of these movies, we soon learn that Amina is the reincarnation of Ananka, and though Tom protests, this is her inescapable doom.  Yousef Bey kidnaps her (and briefly falls in love with her), but after Kharis kills him too, Amina starts to age, and therefore resemble the mummy, aging until her eventual death.  A horrified Tom looks on as his love & the mummy sink into a swamp (more than likely just waiting for the sequel).

The Mummy franchise, of all of the Universal Monsters, is the franchise with the most diminishing returns.  This is partially because it's the weakest initial entry (even if it's still a good movie), and also because unlike Dracula, the Wolf Man, or even Frankenstein's monster, there's not a lot of personality in the sequels (in the first film, Boris Karloff gives him much more sway but he also gets to speak...that ends in the sequels).  As a result, you need side characters to invest in, and this franchise didn't have an Ygor or a shrieking Una O'Connor to keep you interested.  Even John Carradine's spooky priest is largely sidelined throughout the movie even if he's the only character you care about.

As a result, even with a morbid & melancholy ending, this is dull & uninventive.  We have one more Mummy film left which we'll do on Thursday, but I will admit right now that I don't have a lot of hopes for it before we switch into some better-reviewed fare & finish out the month with a classic.  For now, though, Lon Chaney's name continues to be an "ehh" for me-after seeing almost a dozen of his movies, I just don't understand why he became such a big, bankable name in show business other than luck of having a famous father & some fantastic makeup artists.

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 Invisible Woman, The Wolf Man, Cat People, The Ghost of Frankenstein, Invisible Agent, The Mummy's Tomb, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, Phantom of the Opera, Son of Dracula, The House of Frankenstein, The Invisible Man's Revenge, The Uninvited, 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

The Invisible Man's Revenge (1944)

Film: The Invisible Man's Revenge (1944)

Stars: Jon Hall, Leon Errol, John Carradine, Alan Curtis, Evelyn Ankers, Gale Sondergaard, Lester Matthews

Director: Ford Beebe

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 1/5 stars

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

We are today not only hitting the halfway point of our Golden Age Horror marathon (hopefully you've been enjoying the series!), but also hitting the finale of our many Inivisible Man franchise installments.  In the original run of the series, Universal made five pictures that are part of the "Canon" for the franchise, though they were loosely connected, with strange interludes into romantic comedy (The Invisible Woman) and wartime propaganda (Invisible Agent).  The finale of their original run, though, is focused back on the mad man fantasies of someone the world can't see...though sadly it is also a complete failure, losing a lot of the "sacrificed humanity" angles of the picture by making the titular character too vicious to redeem.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is about Robert Griffin (Hall), who has just escaped from a sanitarium after murdering two orderlies, and goes to visit his old friends Sir Jasper (Matthews) and Lady Irene Herrick (Sondergaard), who were supposed to safeguard a joint diamond mine venture the three had, but the fortune has been lost while Robert was locked up.  Robert says as recompense, they have to let him marry their beautiful daughter Julie (Ankers), but they refuse & have him ejected from their home.  Robert gets his revenge by coercing Dr. Peter Drury (Carradine) to make him invisible, and he uses this to blackmail the Herricks, forcing them to sign over their entire estate to him & let Robert marry Julie...if he can get his visibility back.  Robert can get it back, but only through the blood of another human being (which would kill them), and only for a short while.  He does this at first through killing Dr. Drury, and then by trying to kill off Mark (Curtis), Julie's real intended.  Before he can kill Mark, though, he is attacked by Dr. Drury's (invisible) dog, and is killed, never fulfilling his revenge.

As I mentioned, this movie hues more closely to what we'd expect from the earlier pictures in the Invisible Man franchise, but it also is pretty limp.  Hall is not Claude Rains or Vincent Price, and that shows when he basically just plays his creepy lead character as uncomplicated & filled with hate.  It doesn't help that his revenge is gross on-the-surface.  He's not a wronged man for much of the film (it's never clear if Jasper & Irene actually misused his money or just lost it while he was gone), and trying to blackmail their daughter into a lifetime of servitude seems unusually gross.  That the heinousness of his demands feels so glossed over is the weirdest part of The Invisible Man's Revenge.

The movie features two actors who were regular players in the Universal canon.  John Carradine here plays the mad scientist, and is the best part of the movie.  Carradine made hundreds of films (his Wikipedia page lists 233 movies, and it's almost certain he made appearances in more), making him one of the most prolific actors in Hollywood (unlike someone like Eric Roberts, who I feel makes independent films as stunts, virtually all of Carradine's films were for either major studios-he only occasionally was part of Poverty Row films, which makes Carradine's achievement more impressive in my estimation).  He's always good, but is sidelined for much of the picture, taking away his joy.

Evelyn Ankers also appeared here, and has appeared throughout our three seasons.  I'll be honest, I couldn't pick out Ankers in a lineup despite seeing all of these films-the women's roles, unless you get something where they're an actual monster like Bride of Frankenstein or Dracula's Daughters, are so underwritten in Universal Monster movies you can have someone like Ankers, who appeared as the love interest of the Invisible Man, the Frankenstein Monster, & the Wolf-Man without making much of an impression.  On Tuesday, we'll go with arguably the king of the Universal Studios lot during this era, and talk about the contributions of the one man who donned virtually every guise in the Universal Monster canon.

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 Invisible Woman, The Wolf Man, Cat People, The Ghost of Frankenstein, Invisible Agent, The Mummy's Tomb, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, Phantom of the Opera, Son of Dracula, The House of Frankenstein, The Uninvited, 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

OVP: The Uninvited (1944)

Film: The Uninvited (1944)

Stars: Ray Milland, Ruth Hussey, Donald Crisp, Cornelia Otis Skinner, Gail Russell

Director: Lewis Allen

Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Cinematography)

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.

We are going to move briefly away from the Universal Monster movies of the month (don't worry, we've got six left before we finish off October with two late horror films from this era) to go into a classic horror movie that I had never seen before, but has enjoyed a strong reputation in the decades since its release.  The Uninvited was part of a series of supernatural-films that happened toward the end of World War II, when the studios were coming up with "elevated" horror content (a trend we're also seeing in today's movie market with pictures like The Conjuring and Hereditary).  It was a hit in 1944 at the box office for Paramount (who was already enjoying a solid year with Going My Way and Double Indemnity keeping the coffers full), and its champions have kept it alive in the decades that followed, leading it to be considered one of the best horror films of its era by modern audiences, even getting a Criterion Collection edition.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is a bit confusing on its surface, but I'll try to ground it for you here.  Wealthy brother-and-sister Rick (Milland) and Pamela (Hussey) Fitzgerald decide to move into a palatial estate called the Windward House, sold to them by Commander Beech (Crisp), despite the protestations of Beech's granddaughter Stella (Russell).  It turns out that Beech's daughter (and Stella's mother) threw herself to her death 17 years earlier from the cliff near Windward House.  Despite the orders to avoid the Fitzgeralds, Stella becomes infatuated with Rick & visits the home.  It turns out that Windward House is haunted by the ghost of Mary, who stays behind because it wasn't suicide but murder that kept her in the house...we are initially told that Mary was killed by her husband's lover Carmel, a Spanish gypsy who pushed her from the cliff.  What we later understand is that Carmel is in fact also haunting the house, both because she was the one who was actually murdered (by Mary's friend Miss Holloway, played by Skinner), but also because she is Stella's mother, and gave birth to her before she died.  Both spirits leave the house upon this news, leaving Stella & Rick to a presumed happily ever after.

The Uninvited is fascinating for a variety of reasons, so let's get into the two things that don't work first before we jump to the remainder, as overall Uninvited is a winner.  The film miscast Gail Russell in this role.  Russell ended up having a relatively successful career though a troubled personal life would cause her premature death at the age of only 36 (she died as the result of chronic alcoholism)-her best film is the 1948 classic Moonrise.  So early in her career, she's miscast as Stella, feeling too much like a little girl to be believable as Milland's love interest, and based on on-set stories, this was a troubling shoot for the actress.  You need someone with a little bit more mystery to play her, particularly against an actress as good as Ruth Hussey.

The ending is also a miss for me in The Uninvited.  I think having the story end more ambiguously rather than explicitly underlining whether or not the house is haunted might have been the way to go, or at the very least not trying to shovel the ghost of Mary out so quickly would've worked.  As it is, it feels too rushed in the final moments to confirm everything with a tidy ribbon, when some looseness in the story would've behooved all involved.  That said, the rest of The Uninvited is marvelous, and weirdly untouched by time.  This is a genuinely spooky picture, not in the buckets-of-blood style horrors you might associate with the genre today, but instead the bump-in-the-night thrills.  With the exception of Russell, all of the actors are great, particularly Skinner as the haunted (probably lesbian, let's be real here) "devoted to Mary" nurse who kills Carmel.  It's a good picture, and one that I suggest watching at night as it has that kind of ambiance.

The movie was nominated for one Oscar, and it earned it-the Cinematography is moody & fascinating, using some of the shady silhouettes to great effect.  I don't love the way I saw it (it was an older print), so before we get to 1944 in the OVP (someday), I'll likely purchase this from Criterion to make sure I give it its proper due, but even in a lesser-quality print, this is something special.

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 Invisible Woman, The Wolf Man, Cat People, The Ghost of Frankenstein, Invisible Agent, The Mummy's Tomb, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, Phantom of the Opera, Son of Dracula, 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

OVP: Casanova Brown (1944)

Film: Casanova Brown (1944)

Stars: Gary Cooper, Teresa Wright, Frank Morgan, Anita Louise

Director: Sam Wood

Oscar History: 3 nominations (Best Score, Sound, Art Direction)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 1/5 stars

As you might have gathered, I watch a lot of movies, particularly from Classical Hollywood.  As a result of that, while I try to approach every film with an open mind, there are actors that I enjoy more than others from that era.  The studio system ensured that the actors that were coming at you were what you'd expect, something reliable & a familiar trope (very few actors of the era regularly stretched outside their wheelhouse).  But like all rules, there are exceptions, and one of them for me is Gary Cooper.  Cooper is a weird actor, partially because his career was so long that it mandated him having different chapters to it.  At one point an almost ungodly beautiful man, he played hapless, handsome leading men in romances & comedies for a great deal of his early career, before Sergeant York transformed him into the everyman hero, something that would eventually lead to his later work in complicated westerns.  Cooper is an actor I approach every film genuinely curious about because sometimes I love him, sometimes I think he adds nothing to the role.  Casanova Brown, unfortunately, is the latter camp.

(Spoilers Ahead) The plot of Casanova Brown is weirdly convoluted not on-paper, but in execution (more in a second), but I'll summarize a bit before we get into the critique.  Casanova Brown (Cooper), meets with his girlfriend Madge (Louise) after unsuccessfully publishing a book about his ancestor (the actual, legendary Casanova).  He asks Madge to marry him (despite her father JJ Ferris's, played by Frank Morgan, objections to the union weirdly on Casanova's behalf), and she says yes, but before the wedding happens, Casanova gets a letter from a maternity ward, learning that his ex-wife Isabel (Wright) has had a baby.  The two had a whirlwind romance/marriage, which was later annulled when Isabel's eccentric mother objected to the two's astrological compatibility, which accidentally leads to Casanova burning down their house (it's just as strange as it sounds in the movie, I promise you).  Casanova learns that Isabel wants to give the baby up for adoption, but objects to it as he wants to raise his daughter.  Madness ensues, including Casanova kidnapping the baby, but in the end Isabel & he are reunited, making everyone except for Madge happy, and the new family is reunited.

Casanova Brown could be cute, but it's not.  Made in the wake of the success of Pride of the Yankees, it made sense to re-team Wright & Cooper, but while I haven't seen that movie (I'm ashamed of it too-one of the most-nominated films at the Oscars I've never seen), the chemistry between the two leads here is more a fizzle than a tempest.  Wright doesn't have a clue how to play this underwritten part, and Cooper's intellect seems to swing wildly from scene-to-scene, not entirely sure if he's supposed to be taking Casanova all that seriously as a figure.  The result is a dull, meandering piece that never really makes sense.  Morgan is the best part of it, but he's not in it long enough for me to give much credit beyond that role.

The film won three Oscar nominations, and deserved none of them.  The Score is standard-fare stuff from Arthur Lange, not exceptional in any way.  It bounces a bit, and feels much lighter than the picture, sharing the tonal problems that are also rampant in Wright & Cooper's performances.  This was the penultimate year in the "let's nominate everybody" years of the music categories, which might explain its inclusion.  The Art Direction has some fun motifs to play with, including Isabel's parents' house (which is grandiose & has a lovely parlor), but the hospital scenes look like they were torn together from a 1950's sitcom set they're so generic & completely inauthentic.  I don't really get what the Academy was doing here-it feels like a tossaway nomination.  The final nod, though, for Sound, is the most egregious.  There is nothing compelling about the sound work here-nothing stands out, the score is not well-utilized, and we don't even have a gimmick to lean into...there is nothing all that impressive about what Casanova Brown is doing aurally to justify this random inclusion.

OVP: Mrs. Parkington (1944)

Film: Mrs. Parkington (1944)

Stars: Greer Garson, Walter Pidgeon, Edward Arnold, Agnes Moorehead, Cecil Kellaway, Gladys Cooper

Director: Tay Garnett

Oscar History: 2 nominations (Best Actress-Greer Garson, Supporting Actress-Agnes Moorehead)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 1/5 stars

We conclude our week devoted to Best Supporting Actress with one of the category's most beloved figures.  Few actors have made a bigger name for themselves in this category than Agnes Moorehead, who throughout the years received four Academy Award nominations (and four losses, never getting a trophy despite some close calls, particularly 1964's Hush...Hush Sweet Charlotte).  Moorehead is best-known for her work today on TV's Bewitched, but she was a presence in movies for decades, a key part of Orson Welles' Mercury Theatre (she played Charles Foster Kane's mother), and was the first woman to host the Academy Awards.  Today we go to possibly her least known nomination (and for me, the final one I hadn't seen), with her starring opposite one of Classic Hollywood's most beloved pairs, Greer Garson & Walter Pidgeon, in Mrs. Parkington.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film is told in large part through flashback, with Susie Parkington (Garson, both young & old) a wealth society dame, remembering her relationship with Major Parkington (Pidgeon), all while her relatives are visiting her, assuming she's near death's door & will soon be bequeathing their inheritance upon her.  As we see, Susie didn't have an easy life, starting her time in a boarding house and then meeting Major Parkington, a cutthroat businessman who cares little for the lives of his employees until his carelessness leads to Susie's mother's death, and he takes her under his wing, with the help of Baroness Aspasia Conti (Moorehead), his former lover who still has feelings for him.  The two have a troubled-but-happy marriage, oftentimes with Parkington's blunt demeanor & carelessness getting in the way of their happiness (even resulting in Susie having a miscarriage), but it's one that is built on love (eventually) and not money, and when Susie sees that money has corrupted her heirs, she tells them that she will disinherit them, giving the money to those her grandson-in-law has ripped off through a criminal enterprise, and will return to the modest beginnings she once had before she met Major Parkington.

Mrs. Parkington is, as you can tell from that star rating, kind of a catastrophe.  It's so boring, and I actually genuinely like Greer Garson (I know that this is a reaction a lot of people associate with the actress, who played similar roles across her heyday), but this movie is dense, and Pidgeon is at his charmless worst here.  The movie is preachy, frequently only valuing "the morals of the masses" and assuming that money is a completely corrupting force (it's preaching to the choir for the audience, but it's a little bit of an eyebrow raise to modern audiences watching these wealthy actors try to cater for profits in such a way).  It's also predictable, and most of the performances are wooden.

This is true for Garson (though worse for the non-nominated Pidgeon).  She doesn't bring much at all to Mrs. Parkington, and surely was a default nomination for one of the Academy's favorite actresses; her Susie is bland & without personality.  This isn't the case for Moorehead, the saving grace of the film.  Her Baroness steals every scene she's in, and while she's also tasked with a burdensome chore of a role (we know from the opening that these two women will be friends, but also that they're desperately in love with the same man but by sheer will of star billing Garson is going to get him), it's the one reason to see this film.  She's been better (her magnum opus two years earlier in The Magnificent Ambersons remains her career capper), but what a welcome relief in this unbearable movie.

OVP: Hollywood Canteen (1944)

Film: Hollywood Canteen (1944)
Stars: Joan Leslie, Robert Hutton, Dane Clark, Janis Paige...and enough star cameos to fill the Dorothy Chandler
Director: Delmer Daves
Oscar History: 3 nominations (Best Original Song-"Sweet Dreams, Sweetheart," Scoring, Sound)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

Weird coincidence time.  Yesterday we discussed Mr. Dodd Takes the Air, a largely forgotten musical picture that was nominated for Best Original Song and features Jane Wyman.  Today, we look at another largely forgotten musical picture...that was nominated for Best Original Song and features Jane Wyman.  Hollywood Canteen, though, isn't lacking for star power in the way Dodd does.  While Dodd's only recognizable face today is Wyman's, she'd be lucky to make the first page of the call sheet for Hollywood Canteen, a Hollywood propaganda (come on-I know that has pejorative connotations, but that's what this is) movie about the film community's contributions to the war effort, specifically Bette Davis & John Garfield's creation of the Hollywood Canteen.

(Spoilers Ahead) For those unfamiliar, during the war, Davis & Garfield helped lead a war effort that would include people from every single studio coming together and giving out dances, food, and entertainment to men that were about to ship out overseas to fight in World War II.  The canteen was ahead of its time in some ways (it was desegregated) and while it was totally publicity for the Hollywood stars who went there (and admittedly had a darker side, as seen in the unsolved homicide of Georgette Beaurdorf), it was genuinely something that stars actually worked at.  All of the actors in this film were people who in real life were helping to keep the lights on at the actual restaurant, so if a GI came to the Canteen, they'd be able to see proper movie stars right up close, potentially serving them dinner.

In this film, we have two GI's returned from the South Pacific, Slim Green (Hutton) and Sergeant Nolan (Clark) who are looking for a good time and, in Slim's case, the girl of his dreams, Joan Leslie.  Of course, when they get there, Slim meets Leslie (played by the actress herself) and he wins first a kiss with her, and then a weekend date with the actress (in real life this would have been strictly forbidden-there were rules about the girls going home with the soldiers).  They fall in love, while Nolan continually strikes out until he falls for a tour guide (played by Janis Paige in one of her very first roles), with Slim shipping out, but Joan promising they'll meet again after the war.

The movie is shameless in the way it tries to glamorize the dangerous aspects of the war.  There's literally a scene where Nolan claims that he could walk without a cane all thanks to meeting Janis Paige's character at the Hollywood Canteen.  The film's plot is flimsy, a little creepy (it sure feels like Joan Leslie is being forced, while not into prostitution, at least into uncomfortable situations with a man who borders on stalking her), and more-than-once feels like it's simply Hollywood trying to justify itself during a time of great moral duress & uncertainty.

Here's the thing though, you're not going to care, because the film in the first half is about as much fun as a classic film fan can have (the second half is where it makes the mistake of trying to have a plot).  You see more stars than I could count, some of the highlights being Davis, Garfield, Wyman, Barbara Stanwyck, Joan Crawford, Paul Henreid, Peter Lorre, Jack Benny, Sydney Greenstreet, Ida Lupino, Alexis Smith, and Roy Rogers all showing up in clever cameos, with Crawford arguably getting the best one (you can see her scene here), and it is divine.  This isn't like Around the World in 80 Days where you have to guess-the stars are very much introduced in ridiculously expository ways, but it's magical.  Never mind that some of these actors probably hated each other and weren't this nice & naturally charming in real life...it's bliss every time a new personality comes on to show us the star power going on at Warner Brothers during this era.

The film won three nominations, all of which are fine, if not groundbreaking.  The best of the three is Scoring, as a host of musicians and notable bands make cameos & bring us great numbers, including Rogers, the Andrews Sisters, Joan McCrackon, and the Jimmy Dorsey Orchestra.  It's not all original, but it's a blast.  The nominated song (sung in the film first by Leslie, and later by Kitty Carlisle), is kind of maudlin, and a bit too schmaltzy for my tastes, but all of the film with that music and the frequent crowd scenes handle the sound well.  All-in-all, this isn't a great movie, but man is it one I'd highly recommend for anyone who loves old cinema, as it's the closest you'll probably ever get to walking onto a backlot.

OVP: Going My Way (1944)

Film: Going My Way (1944)
Stars: Bing Crosby, Barry Fitzgerald, Frank McHugh, Jean Heather, Rise Stevens
Director: Leo McCarey
Oscar History: 10 nominations/7 wins (Best Picture*, Director*, Actor-Barry Fitzgerald, Actor-Bing Crosby*, Supporting Actor-Barry Fitzgerald*, Original Motion Picture Story*, Adapted Screenplay*, Cinematography, Original Song-"Swinging on a Star," Film Editing)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

The Oscar Best Pictures during America's involvement in World War II are different than almost any other era.  Vietnam had films as diverse as Midnight Cowboy and Oliver! winning back-to-back, while during the early days of the War on Terror, we saw the Academy go from fanciful fare (Chicago, Return of the King) down to darker pictures such as No Country for Old Men and The Hurt Locker.  But the four films that won Best Picture during World War II are decidedly similar.  How Green Was My Valley, Mrs. Miniver, Casablanca, and Going My Way are all films with clear good guys (even if the good guys are sometimes pretending to be bad guys), obvious bad guys, and good triumphs even if that means sacrifice (especially if that means sacrifice).  This is not a slight on any of these pictures (Casablanca, many days of the week, is my all-time favorite movie and a classic by any measure, and I also loved Mrs. Miniver though it's been years since I've seen it), but an acknowledgement that the Academy didn't want to give Oscars to movies that showed social decay or acknowledged the struggles of everyday Americans.  This is not because the Academy didn't have options to do so-movies like Citizen Kane, The Maltese Falcon, Kings Row, Double Indemnity, and Gaslight competed against these movies, were hailed at the time, and feature far seedier aspects of everyday life; one could plausibly argue that a few of these films are far more revered than every actual Best Picture winner save for Casablanca.  The Academy quickly changed from this lens after the war, with the next three Best Picture winners tackling alcoholism, PTSD, and anti-semitism, but as the war was still going on in early 1945, Going My Way becomes the fourth and final of the "Rah, Rah, Rah!" pictures of this era.

(Spoilers Ahead) Unlike Mrs. Miniver and Casablanca, this movie has almost nothing to do with the actual war (there's a small side character who does join up with the army, but that's about it).  Instead, it's about Father O'Malley (Crosby), a young priest with "new ideas" who has been hired to replace Father Fitzgibbon (Fitzgerald), a stuck-in-his-ways clergyman who has struggled to maintain the mortgage on the church, and is being harassed by collectors.  To save Fitzgibbon his dignity, O'Malley pretends to be the elder priest's "assistant" even though he is in fact being hired to replace him.  The two encounter a series of misunderstandings (that Crosby's O'Malley always seems to have a firmer grasp upon), whether that be local residents who can't pay their rent or a young woman who is running away from home to become a singer or the petty vandalism spree that is being instigated by neighborhood boys.  O'Malley's wholesome but new way of thinking opens up Fitzgibbon's heart and mind, and the two become friends.  The film ends with O'Malley moving on to another church, and Father Fitzgibbon, enlightened, staying at his old church.

What sets this film apart from the other three movies that won Best Picture is it's really low stakes.  Miniver and Casablanca are about the war effort, and Valley doesn't shy away from the harshness of life in a mining community, but Going My Way seems to not know how to handle conflict.  Every argument between O'Malley & Fitzgibbon is surface-level (O'Malley never loses his temper), and uncomplicated.  This was a huge hit in 1944, and it's very easy to see why.  A country ravaged by war, seeing hope in not only a young priest (Crosby is in his early 40's but looks a decade younger here) bringing positive change to an economically-challenged community, but also in the church as a place to bring their doubts and fears while their sons were risking their lives...it makes sense this was popular.  Throw in Crosby singing a ballad every 15 minutes or so, and you've got yourself a pleasant two hours.  It's just not a particularly good or even succinct movie.

The film won ten Oscar nominations, including Best Picture and Director.  The editing and cinematography aren't that noteworthy.  The film is more vignettes than anything else, making the editing easier than you'd think (and less necessary), and the cinematography is not inventive at all, even in a scene with a fire.  Screenplay & story don't have many one-liners, great turns-of-phrase, and the story itself is repetitive & mostly meant to be pleasant.  The Original Song is one that you know by heart, but one of several used in the film with only mild effect (and feels kind of ridiculous-after all, how many priests can sing like Bing Crosby?).

And then there's the acting.  Crosby won an Oscar for this, and honestly-I'm at a loss who I'm going to pick for the OVP when we get to this field because man is this a thin lineup (no performance has even gotten 3-stars from me, and I'm only missing Alexander Knox in the notoriously overlong Wilson).  He's effective, sure, but this isn't so much acting as being congenial.  Fitzgerald became the first and so far only person to ever be nominated for two different acting prizes for the same role (they changed the rule after that-who do we think would have gotten this distinction in the future, as the only reason they changed it was because they didn't realize it could be a problem...maybe Anne Baxter in All About Eve?).  Fitzgerald is also nice enough, but this isn't great acting, and considering that Supporting Actor had great work from Clifton Webb & Hume Cronyn, makes it a bit more upsetting that he won.  All-in-all, as I cross another Best Picture winner off of a thinning list of ones I haven't seen, I'm struck by how I totally get why a movie like Going My Way would win Best Picture...even if it seems ludicrous that someone would prefer this to Double Indemnity or Laura in hindsight.

OVP: Cover Girl (1944)

Film: Cover Girl (1944)
Stars: Rita Hayworth, Gene Kelly, Lee Bowman, Phil Silvers, Leslie Brooks, Eve Arden, Otto Kruger
Director: Charles Vidor
Oscar History: 5 nominations/1 win (Best Scoring*, Art Direction, Cinematography, Sound, Original Song-"Long Ago and Far Away")
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 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.

When discussing the films of Rita Hayworth in the early 1940's, every single one of them seems to be followed by "Film X made Hayworth a star!" and in some ways they are all right, and in other ways they're wrong.  Hayworth by 1944 was pretty much a household name, and was someone who could clearly open movies (and get top billing, as she did with this picture).  Her work with Fred Astaire had guaranteed her opportunity, but she wasn't really in the stratosphere in the way she would be soon, and that stratosphere came with Cover Girl.  Teamed with Gene Kelly (in may ways this is also the "film that made Kelly a star!") this musical was a massive hit for Columbia, enough so that, from here on out, no one was calling Hayworth's work "the film that made her a star," but simply "she was a huge star, period."  What was it about Cover Girl that so sparked the imagination?  Let's find out, shall we?

(Spoilers Ahead) The film is about Rusty (Hayworth) a chorus girl in her boyfriend Danny's (Kelly) nightclub who by a freak chance-of-fate gets hired to be the cover girl for Vanity magazine (it feels very akin in the film to Vanity Fair).  She gets the job in part because the magazine's publisher John Coudair (Kruger) thinks she bares a striking resemblance to her grandmother, whom he loved in her youth (and indeed, Hayworth does play this role in flashbacks).  The film alternates between both women's fates, and both end up meeting the same end.  Both are given a chance at fame-and-fortune, potentially marrying a wealthy man who adores them, but instead stick with the simple life with the men who first pursued them there.

The plot here isn't breaking new ground, but the music is divine.  The film is early in Kelly's career, and is marked as the first of his films to have some of his choreography & direction (which to that point with MGM he hadn't been able to impose onto his films).  As a result, we get some of the astonishing precision of Kelly's best musicals coming out in full-force here, from the joy of "Make Way for Tomorrow" to the hilariously cheeky "Poor John" to the soaring "Long Ago (and Far Away)."  It's hard not to see a lot of Singin' in the Rain in some of the choreography, particularly comparing "Good Mornin'" to "Make Way for Tomorrow" and "Cover Girl" to "Beautiful Girl" from the movie, and I'm surprised that Google didn't show more similarities between the two when I did a search.  Perhaps Cover Girl isn't as discussed today to make that connection?

Either way, this is a gem.  Eve Arden practically steals the whole movie as a wisecracking assistant to Kruger's boss, and Hayworth has never looked so glamorous.  The film's plot doesn't always make sense, but the production design is so splendid you won't care.  The film won five Oscar nominations, and deserved them all.  The score is light and winning, the sound work excellent (particularly considering how well they do to make Hayworth's lip-syncing feel natural), and the lighting is delicious, the shadow work in "Long Ago" being a particular highlight.  Hayworth would weirdly find herself steering further away from musicals shortly after this, moving into drama and noir (our final two pictures from her this month will focus on this period of her career), but for those who only think of Hayworth from Gilda and The Lady from Shanghai, it's kind of bliss to watch her be so genuinely happy in a picture like Cover Girl.

OVP: Up in Arms (1944)

Film: Up in Arms (1944)
Stars: Danny Kaye, Dinah Shore, Dana Andrews, Constance Dowling, Louis Calhern
Director: Elliott Nugent
Oscar History: 2 nominations (Best Scoring, Original Song-"Now I Know")
Snap Judgment Ranking: 1/5 stars

I'm trying to watch a few of the Criterion films that are leaving this month before they adios, and amid the middle of a coronavirus quarantine, one of the films that I ended up chancing upon was 1944's Up in Arms, which is a movie about, well, a hypochondriac.  The 1944 war musical, one of many films that were built around Danny Kaye's unique sensibilities, was a flick I had never heard of until I saw it was one of those random Oscar nominees I hadn't gotten around to (the music awards used to allow well over five nominations in the early 1940's, so they end up with a lot of movies that got "Oscar-nominated" solely around this loophole).

(Spoilers Ahead) The film is about two buddies, Danny (Kaye) and Joe (Andrews), who are in love with the same girl Mary (Dowling), who really only has eyes for Joe (just based on looks, she has a point).  Mary's friend Virginia (Shore), though, is madly in love with Danny, even though Danny is, well, an acquired case.  He's a raving hypochondriac, frequently harassing doctors to examine him at the hospital where he's an elevator operator and constantly letting his neuroses project onto the people around him.  All four of them are drafted into the army (since it is World War II, after all), and comedy ensues when Danny & Joe stow Mary on their ship when she isn't drafted to come with them.  As the film unfolds, Danny accidentally makes himself into a hero when he convinces a group of Japanese troops to surrender (by dressing up as their commander...yes, this is one of many "yellow face" movies of the 1940's), and ends up falling for Virginia, so both couples can live happily ever after.

The movie has the occasional moment.  By far my favorite was a strange fourth wall break about two-thirds of the way through the movie.  The women on the set, not just Shore & Dowling but a whole host of "Goldwyn Girls" are dressed in skimpy daywear, showing off their figures and legs, are parading on the deck of the ship making it look more like a luxury liner than a vessel of war.  One of the two men observing says "I don't remember this from the last war," and the other guy said "I don't remember it from this war either," while both men look at the audience shaking their heads, indicating that a boatful of beautiful women is not what American soldiers should have-in-mind when they get drafted.

But this is one of the few moments that isn't bogged down in Danny Kaye's madness.  Kaye was a major star for much of the 1940's and 50's (we'll get to another one of his films I caught recently later this week), but he's also an acquired taste.  Much like Robin Williams could make any interview work, but sometimes felt exhausting in a movie (especially when the material wasn't up to the rapid fire snuff of the leading man), Kaye's films occasionally are too indulgent to the actor, even if it's clear he's a gifted comedian.  His number about Hollywood musicals notwithstanding, I found the whole exercise to be exhausting, the same indulgent sound gags and ridiculousness repeated for some 2 hours.  With no one else, not even the usually game Shore, able to get much screen-time, I left honestly more tired than anything else.

The film's two Oscar nominations aren't worthy either.  The torch song "Now I Know" was sung not by Kaye but by Shore, and while few people of this era could belt a sad tune quite like Shore, it feels quickly disposable.  The same can be said for the overall score of the film.  The one exception is "Theater Lobby Number," which is funny, showy, and actually gives Kaye a reason to be what he is.  But the rest of the movie is fluff, and overlong.

Bathing Beauty (1944)

Film: Bathing Beauty (1944)
Stars: Red Skelton, Esther Williams, Basil Rathbone, Bill Goodwin
Director: George Sidney
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 Esther Williams-click here to learn more about Ms. Williams (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

I may have literally worked a 12-hour day non-stop yesterday, but that isn't going to stop me from continuing my nearly nine-month long streak of hitting a "Saturday with the Stars" every Saturday, even though this is a bit later in the day than we're used to seeing.  This week, we have our first dive (I swear, I'll limit myself on the aquatic puns, but I've gotta have some) into the career of Esther Williams.  In 1944, after an impressive stint as a professional swimmer (which surely would have resulted in Olympic medals had it not been for World War II) she'd had a couple of small parts opposite Mickey Rooney & Van Johnson, but hadn't really been given the star treatment she'd hoped for when she made it to Hollywood.  Bathing Beauty changed all of that.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film's plot, like most MGM musicals save for Singin' in the Rain, is of little consequence to why you're actually watching, but let's at least acknowledge the writers.  The movie is about Steve Elliot (Skelton), who is in love with a ravishing teacher Caroline Brooks (Williams), and is about to marry her.  However, he's threatening to quit writing songs and musical numbers if he does so, so in order to end the marriage his boss George (Rathbone) has a woman pretend to be Steve's first wife, making him a bigamist.  Caroline runs back to her school, being romanced in some parts by a stuffy professor Willis Evans (Goodwin).  In order to win her back Steve enrolls in the all girl's school, giving him opportunities to be lusted after by some of the co-eds, as well as be put in ridiculous situations (including two opportunities for Skelton to dress in drag).  The film ends with Caroline eventually getting a part in the new musical that Steve is writing for George, and they end up happily ever after.

The film itself is quite silly-the plot seems to be ancillary, and just an excuse to have Skelton do his comedy & Williams do her swimming.  I will admit to knowing very little about Skelton's filmography (this might be the first of his movies I've ever seen, though I'm familiar with him from his long-running eponymous television program), and I left not being super impressed, despite my fondness for men with red hair.  His comedy bits aren't as wry or witty as some of the other men of the Classical Hollywood era (I prefer Jack Benny or Groucho Marx), and the parts with the girls feels a bit phoned in, as they all sort of meld together rather than Steve distinguishing the women who are helping him win back his girl.  All-in-all, he left something to be desired, though we'll get a second chance with Skelton later this month as I have another one of his frequent outings with Williams in store for a future "Saturdays with..." article.

Williams, though, is really fun.  Her acting takes a back seat to Skelton (she's not a natural ham like he is in front of the camera, and doesn't steal focus), but she makes up for it during the gigantic water numbers, particularly the iconic final water ballet that's been parodied by everyone from The Simpsons to the Muppets.  It's rare to see an MGM musical this impressive without the guiding hand of Arthur Freed (he'd soon be the producer on a number of Williams pictures, one of which we'll also get to later this month), but I found her charming & acrobatic, and the water numbers are magical.  It's hard to assess her as a talent because Skelton so often hogs the spotlight, but I'm hopeful for her in a way I wasn't last month, particularly since she became SUCH a big star after this (as a result, it's doubtful that she'll be a supporting part masquerading like a league like so many of our outings with Ruth Roman & Rhonda Fleming).  At the time, she was granted top billing after the first cut of the film was made, she made such an impression on MGM executives, and they were right-Bathing Beauty became the biggest hit for the studio since Gone with the Wind.