OVP: Pepe (1960)

Film: Pepe (1960)
Stars: Cantinflas, Dan Dailey, Shirley Jones (and a mountain of celebrity cameos we'll mention below)
Director: George Sidney
Oscar History: 7 nominations (Best Art Direction, Cinematography, Costume Design, Film Editing, Scoring, Sound, Original Song-"Faraway Part of Town")
Snap Judgment Ranking: 1/5 stars

A few months ago (which somehow feels like only a week ago and at the same time years ago...Covid is messing with my internal clock, y'all), we reviewed Around the World in 80 Days, a box office smash that won the Best Picture Oscar.  It featured the American debut of a Mexican comedian named Cantinflas, who won a Golden Globe for it and became a sensation, and inevitably was someone that would get another big movie.  However, as Hollywood struggles to cast actors-of-color, especially in the 1950's, Cantinflas would have to wait four years before getting his next break in another glossy, epic film where he did his shenanigans against the backdrop of a star-studded bonanza.  That film was Pepe, our Best Editing (amongst other things) installment today.

(Spoilers Ahead) For a movie that clocks in at three hours, the film doesn't have a lot of plot.  Essentially we have Pepe (Cantinflas), a horse trainer who thinks of his horse Don Juan as his son, and calls him that despite the confusion of everyone.  He cannot buy the horse in the opening scene, as it is instead purchased by Ted Holt (Dailey), a struggling movie director.  Pepe comes to take care of the horse, and after a successful night in Vegas, begins to bankroll Holt's next movie, under the condition that he cast Suzie Murphy (Jones), a dancer that Pepe is in love with, and soon, so is Ted.  As this is a movie from 1960, white, blonde Shirley Jones is going to end up with Ted as her winning love interest rather than Pepe, whom she thinks of as a friend, but Pepe still is able to win back Don Juan, and have him sire a number of foals, happily back in Mexico.

Pepe was a flop-a big one.  It's considered one of the largest money losers of the 1960's, and has never even been released on DVD (I caught it on TCM).  There's a reason for that-Pepe borders on awful.  Cantinflas' humor doesn't work without a proper straight man, and Dan Dailey is no David Niven (Dailey is, for my money, one of the worst actors to be nominated for an Oscar at some point in their career).  Cantinflas plays him as a racist cartoon-he's dismissed as "not really a man" by Shirley Jones at one point, and she sings about him like he's a puppet.  I don't begrudge Cantinflas too much here, even if he doesn't add to the character since his being a Mexican man who got to lead a movie was a big deal in 1960, but then-and-now this plays poorly, and is hard to get behind.

The saving grace of the movie is the star cameos, which I always love.  The film is DRIPPING with not just cameos, but in many cases the cameos are extended, and almost always involve actors playing themselves.  Edward G. Robinson is basically the fourth biggest part in the movie as himself, and we get a lot of appearances from everyone from Greer Garson to Jimmy Durante to the entire Rat Pack (one of only three movies to feature Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis, Jr., Peter Lawford, & Joey Bishop).  These aren't always successful (Bing Crosby's is ludicrous, Cesar Romero's unfunny), while others are great, though none compare to Jack Lemmon, playing himself as if he's filming Some Like It Hot, so we get to see (in color!) him in his Daphne drag from the movie (Tony Curtis appears later in the film, and not as his character).

The movie's seven Oscar nominations are all a waste, to be honest.  The costume work (Edith Head) is maybe the best element, but they're mostly fun when they're on Kim Novak or Janet Leigh than on any of the actual characters, while the sets feel like vacant movie lots, even the ones that take place outdoors.  The movie features a number of songs, but they're all staged too long & while it's great to hear legends sing, this doesn't rise above what you'd hear on a record.  This is true even of the nominated song, sang by Judy Garland (who for some reason doesn't even cameo despite singing the nominated song), which doesn't fit the mood of the movie at all (it sings like a torch ballad).  The cinematography is flat, the sound work routine, and the editing...the movie is three hours long & will go on huge stretches of boredom, while glossing over Ted's mistreatment of Pepe.  All-in-all, while I wish this movie was more readily available (even as a flop, it's still nominated for seven Oscars and stars the most important Mexican comedian in Hollywood of the Golden Age), I'm glad to have it in the rearview mirror with the OVP.

OVP: Pal Joey (1957)

Film: Pal Joey (1957)
Stars: Rita Hayworth, Frank Sinatra, Kim Novak, Barbara Nichols
Director: George Sidney
Oscar History: 4 nominations (Best Art Direction, Film Editing, Costume, Sound)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

It wouldn't be a week devoted to the category of Best Sound at the Oscars without us having at least one musical, and that comes to us this Wednesday, as we tackle the 1957 film Pal Joey.  For those who are familiar with the original Broadway show (spoiler alert-I was not), the film takes a bit of a departure from the original, particularly with the lead character, turning him from an anti-hero into a more traditional stand-up guy, which makes sense considering in 1957 there were few matinee idols who could approach Frank Sinatra.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film is basically a love triangle, and not with a lot of twists.  We have Joey, a womanizing singer who has dreams of opening up a club called "Chez Joey" that will be successful because they do it "his way," but he doesn't have the money to finance the club.  Just as he's starting to make something happen with romancing a beautiful chorus girl named Linda (Novak), an old flame of Joey's walks into the picture: Vera (Hayworth), who was once a showgirl but is now a society matron, a wealthy widow who doesn't want to admit her seedier past, but is also madly in love with Joey.  She starts financing Joey, but Joey can't get Linda off of his mind, so she gives him an ultimatum-pick Linda or Chez Joey.  After much hemming-and-hawing (and the mandatory stormy breakup scene), he goes after Linda & real love.

As you might already be able to tell, I didn't like Pal Joey.  For starters, the movie is too long, and frequently doesn't know what to do with its two female leads, which is a bummer because Kim Novak & Rita Hayworth are far more intriguing screen presences than Frank Sinatra, who always plays some version of Frank Sinatra.  Novak, just a year away from giving one of the truly great performances of the 1950's in Vertigo, plays her Linda as a bored showgirl, someone who has seen a guy like Joey a dozen times...and yet she falls for him pretty quickly.  Vera is the more intriguing character, but she's ancillary to the plot.  Despite Hayworth getting top billing (Sinatra graciously gave it to her since she'd gotten it on every film she'd made at Columbia for a decade), she's not important to the plot, and doesn't get the sort of wry moments that Hayworth was so good at nailing.

The film won four Oscar nominations, including of course for Best Sound, which was by far its most warranted citation.  Sinatra might not be breaking the mold as an actor here, but he was in the best years of his singing career, and is breathtaking crooning "The Lady is a Tramp" or "I didn't Know What Time It Was."  Musicals get de facto nominations for Sound specifically because of films like Pal Joey, which do a great job modulating and calibrating each number & scene to be perfectly balanced & bring forth the great serenading that's happening onscreen.

As for the rest, I'm less-impressed.  The sets are weirdly claustrophobic.  This isn't a bad thing, but for a film that has the budget & the star power to ensure that we don't feel like it's a staged play, it shows its Broadway roots in a way few musicals of the era did, and I thought that was at once creative and perplexing.  The costumes are fun, if here a bit repetitive-oh look, here's another shot of Hawyorth or Novak in an evening-length gown with a body that looks like a track at Daytona...there's no look in the film that feels classic even from two fashion staples.  And the editing...Pal Joey could have trimmed twenty minutes off and no one would have missed it (the film's biggest problem is it drags & repeats)-the musical numbers aren't impressive enough visually (even if they sound good) to warrant this based on those pieces alone.

OVP: Around the World in 80 Days (1956)

Film: Around the World in 80 Days (1956)
Stars: Cantinflas, David Niven, Shirley MacLaine, Robert Newton
Director: Michael Anderson
Oscar History: 8 nominations/5 wins (Best Picture*, Director, Cinematography*, Film Editing*, Score*, Adapted Screenplay*, Costume Design, Art Direction)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

As I start to work my way through my "Quarantine To Do List," one of the tasks I'm working on is finally starting to make my DVR manageable again.  Right now, if I had to guess, there have to be at least 70 Oscar Viewing Project films on that thing (not to mention three episodes of Westworld, which I tend to stockpile as I genuinely like the show, but it can be convoluted if you don't have a few in a row to watch), and I keep putting more random films on there, so it's high-time I start conquering it (like many of you, I suspect, I'm working on a lot of projects that I've put off for a while, and this is a big one for me).  We're going to kick off this clean-up (expect a few truly random movies to be headed your way in the next couple of months) with a bit of a bang-the rare (for me) unseen Best Picture winner, Around the World in 80 Days.

(Spoilers Ahead) When I mentioned that I was seeing Around the World in 80 Days to a friend yesterday, their reaction was one of "eek!" more than anything else, as the Jules Verne adaptation is notoriously one of Oscar's least-celebrated top prize recipients.  The film itself is, in fact, very long, which is rarely a good sign for a movie that enjoys a bad reputation.  Essentially, for those who didn't read the book as a kid, the story is about Phileas Fogg (Niven), a punctual English gentlemen with something of a stubborn streak, and his manservant Passepartout (Cantinflas), whom he hires for an expedition around the world.  Fogg has made a bet with men at his club that he can circumnavigate the globe in under 80 days, and as he continues all of the United Kingdom begin tracking his expeditions.  Along the way he and Passepartout get into a series of adventures, including bullfighting, riding an elephant, and a train robbery.  They are accompanied for much of the trip by Princess Aouda (MacLaine, in an unfortunate case of brown-face from my favorite actress) and Inspector Fix (Newton), who is determined to prove that Phileas Fogg has robbed the Bank of England, but is continually thwarted in his efforts to arrest him.

Around the World in 80 Days isn't as bad as its reputation, but it's not a good movie & it's laughable in the same year as The Searchers, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Written on the Wind, The Wrong Man, The Ten Commandments, and Giant that the Academy chose this of all movies to be its standard-bearer.  It's fun to watch, even if it's not funny at all, and I think it's meant to be.  At the time Cantinflas (who would get a Golden Globe win but no Oscar nomination, a rarity for a Best Picture winner) was a huge star in Mexican cinema, and was enjoying here his breakthrough into mainstream American film, but so much of his humor is based on either physical tricks that aren't particularly funny in hindsight (mistreatment of animals is a bigger part of this movie than you'd think, and it feels kind of icky in hindsight) or trading on racial humor.  I get what he's trying to do here, but it doesn't work sixty years after the fact, and no one else in the movie, not even Niven or MacLaine (both very good actors with the right material), are able to make much of the film.

The enjoyment in hindsight are the cameos and the sets.  Producer Mike Todd filmed a lot of the movie on-location, so you literally see scenes across the world that are actually quite wonderful.  Despite the story being a snore, the set designs are fun (especially in Spain & Japan), and the cinematography is expansive & lovely; I rarely have this complaint, but the only thing you can really fault the cinematography for is a lack of closeups.  It explores expansive vistas & makes sure that Todd got his money's worth.  The other Oscar nominations are less inviting.  Costumes are fine, but repetitive & not breaking new ground, while the editing is lacking (three hours without enough laughs is a struggle).  And the score is reliant on too many stereotypes and cliches when it comes to the music of the country they're in to really be interesting.

But the movie is nearly saved by the sheer volume of cameos.  This was one of the first films to employ a plethora of "guest appearances" from major stars of the era, and it keeps the otherwise humdrum plot ticking as you play "I Spy."  Some of these figures aren't as famous today, so it's a bit of a guessing game, but if you know even the remotest bit about classic Hollywood, you'll recognize a few figures.  Chief among my favorites were Marlene Dietrich as a saloon girl, Frank Sinatra as a piano player, Buster Keaton playing a train conductor, and John Carradine as an easily-vexed colonel, but there's enough here to keep you intrigued even while the movie slogs.  The film was a massive hit, proved Mike Todd a boy wonder (who was cut down in his prime), but it's really only the cameos and the location shooting that should be celebrated here.  After a long wait, I can confirm this is no "best" picture.

Till the Clouds Roll By (1946)

Film: Till the Clouds Roll By (1946)
Stars: June Allyson, Lucille Bremer, Judy Garland, Kathryn Grayson, Van Heflin, Lena Horne, Dorothy Patrick, Van Johnson, Tony Martin, Dinah Shore, Frank Sinatra, Robert Walker, Cyd Charisse, Angela Lansbury
Director: Richard Whorf (Vincente Minnelli, Busby Berkeley, Henry Koster, & George Sidney all also directed scenes in what sounds like a rough shoot, but none were credited)
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 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 Lena Horne-click here to learn more about Ms. Horne (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

For the past two weeks we have focused on the two major highlights of Lena Horne's film career during Classical Hollywood.  Stormy Weather and Cabin in the Sky were big deals, major motion pictures that starred African-American casts and were distributed by major studios.  However, these were anomalies.  For much of Horne's career in the 1940's and 50's, her film career was that of mere cameos.  Frequently she'd appear in films like Thousands Cheer, Swing Fever, and Ziegfield Follies as nothing more than someone that could belt out a classic tune, and then move on with the plot, oftentimes playing herself or simply a "famous singer."  This was because, since Horne was not playing stereotypical roles like maids or servants, she couldn't be seen in movies of the era in the South, and the studio couldn't afford to put her in major productions for risk that the lack of a southern box office would mean they couldn't recoup some of their investment.  This becomes particularly bitter with a movie like Till the Clouds Roll By, a 1946 MGM extravaganza, but we'll get to why in a second.

(Spoilers Ahead) Till the Clouds Roll By is the first of a quartet of biopics produced by the studio during this era where it's loosely based on the life of a famed composer (in this case Jerome Kern, as played by Robert Walker), but mostly it's an excuse for the studio to put its biggest musical stars into the picture singing the greatest hits of those composers (worth noting that the second of these films, Words and Music, also starred Lena).  As a result, the plot here is a bit thin, even by the standards of a 1940's musical.  We have Kern, falling in love with his wife Eva (Patrick), being mentored by another composer James Hessler (Heflin), and eventually trying to find some sort of path for Hessler's daughter Sally (Bremer) when she turns out spoiled & eventually, a runaway.  All of this is told in flashback by Kern to his cab driver on the night of Show Boat's premiere, which would help him to reach a new echelon of success.

The film on its merits is, well, a mixed bag (charitably).  I actually knew very little about Kern's life, and it's worth noting that while there are countless standards here, you might not be as familiar with him as you'd think either.  With the exception of Show Boat, while his songs are still well-known from other shows, none of his musicals are really done anymore, and so he's not recalled in the same way that someone like Rodgers & Hammerstein or Lerner & Loewe might be today since their films/musicals are more frequently revived.  However, the acting in this portion is dreadful (even performers as gifted as Walker or Heflin can't sell this dreck), and you spend the entire movie wishing they'd get back to the singing.

That's because the musical numbers in Till the Clouds Roll By are sublime.  Angela Lansbury sings for the first time onscreen in the cheeky "How'd You Like to Spoon Me" and Judy Garland (very pregnant with Liza Minnelli during the shoot) is at her "awe shucks" best with "Look for the Silver Lining."  Some of the numbers are cut short (at 135 minutes, this is a particularly long film) to make way for the unnecessary plot, such as Dinah Shore's "The Last Time I Saw Paris" and, most regrettably, a ballet between Cyd Charisse & Gower Champion to "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes," but you'll leave being enchanted by these numbers.

And no songs are more enchanting than Lena Horne's two numbers, for my money the best in the production (and look at that cast list-this is hardly an ensemble filled with backbenchers).  Her "Why Was I Born?" is regal & glorious.  Horne once opined in an interview (with Judy Garland, oddly enough) that she always struggled to "sing pretty," but I don't know that anyone has ever looked so glamorous while singing in Classical Hollywood-if they have, I can't recall it.  Watching this scene, you'll either cry because you're moved, or because you are so angry that MGM couldn't have given Horne some proper classic musicals during this era.

Because, as the other song showed, Horne never really got a chance after Stormy Weather & Cabin in the Sky.  Here she sings "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man" from Show Boat, one of the biggest numbers for Julie Laverne.  Horne desperately wanted the part when MGM decided to make the actual film, and in fact her costar here Kathryn Grayson (who plays Magnolia Hawks in Clouds' production of Show Boat) ended up playing the part she plays in this 1946 film when the big-screen Show Boat was made in 1951.  However, thanks to the Hays Code banning interracial romance onscreen, Horne's part was given to her friend Ava Gardner, a white woman despite the part being written for a biracial woman.  As a result, a role that Horne was born to play (and does so beautifully here) went to a woman who didn't even end up singing onscreen.  Combined with her regret over not getting the title role in Pinky (which won Jeanne Crain, another white woman playing a biracial performer, an Oscar nomination), Horne essentially left Hollywood for Vegas and the nightclub circuit.  Next week we will conclude our look at Horne with one last film role, far removed from the oppression Classic Hollywood put on her acting career.

OVP: The Joker is Wild (1957)

Film: The Joker is Wild (1957)
Stars: Frank Sinatra, Mitzi Gaynor, Jeanne Crain, Eddie Albert
Director: Charles Vidor
Oscar History: 1 nomination/1 win (Best Original Song-"All the Way"*)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

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

Throughout this series, I've been struck by the studio system's occasionally gimmicky use of top-line billing.  Frequently actresses (rarely the male leads) get top billing on a picture but don't actually have what we'd consider to be "leading" parts.  I thought I'd met my match for this back in January when we reviewed Kings Row, where our star Ann Sheridan got top billing but wasn't in the film until 64 minutes into the picture, but The Joker is Wild is an even bigger stretch, with Mitzi Gaynor not getting her first spoken line until 71 minutes into the movie (to the point where I googled several times wondering if she was actually in the film during the picture's first half).  Joker is instead very much Frank Sinatra's movie, a film where he gets one of his most iconic songs and one of the better parts in his career as singer-turned-comedian Joe E. Lewis.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie centers around Joe E. Lewis (a real-life figure), who is a golden-voiced singer trying to get his big break.  He does, but the mob-run joint where he currently sings won't let him out of his engagement there.  When he defies the mob, they maim him, cutting his throat and injuring him so that his singing career is essentially finished.  Years later, his accompanist Austin (Albert) gets him a break during a show (which includes a cameo from legendary performer Sophie Tucker as herself), and instead of singing like he used to, he does a comedy act about his struggles.  He soon after meets both success and a girl, Letty (Crain), a high society dame who falls for him despite his self-hate and alcoholism.  Letty eventually leaves him, though, when he keeps picking the bottle over her.  He marries one of his chorus girls, Martha (Gaynor, also playing a real-life figure in Martha Stewart, a supporting player in the classic In a Lonely Place whom we discussed in June), but she too can't convince him to give up alcoholism even though it's killing him and hurting everyone around him.  The film ends with basically everyone in his life leaving him, including Martha & Austin, but a conversation with himself in a window front shows to the audience that he'll be fine, and indeed, in real life Lewis would become a successful TV personality after his divorce from Stewart, as well as a bestselling author, and a real-life friend to Frank Sinatra.

The film is good, and manages to largely stay out of the "faded glory" cliche of musical biopics by not having a traditional rise-and-fall-and-rise narrative.  Instead, we start out with one of the darkest openings I can remember from a 1950's film, with Frank Sinatra at the peak of his vocal prowess singing "All the Way" before watching his dreams be crushed, us never getting to hear such a performance again in the film.  1957 was a very good year for Best Original Song (not just this film but the title tracks to Wild is the Wind and An Affair to Remember were among the also-rans, both classics in their own right), but it's not hard to see why this movie ended up with the trophy with how tenderly Sinatra sings this at first, and how broken it feels when he can't get to the notes later in the picture.  Sinatra, who can't sound "bad" even when he's supposed to, still manages to be fine in later vocal performances, but his work in the original number is so breathtaking you don't begrudge him a bit of ego later in the picture.  1957 had a lot of very solid Best Actor contenders as well, but considering his popularity at the time it seems odd he didn't also score a citation for this film.

I didn't get out a stopwatch for it, but it does seem like Gaynor was onscreen for a shorter run than Jeanne Crain, despite the higher billing.  Gaynor, though, gives the better performance.  Her Martha is sweet, the kind of girl who falls in love in her heart before she's willing to admit it might be a mistake in her head, and she gets a couple of great scenes at the end of the film.  Gaynor at this point (remember we are picking up five years after we last discussed Mitzi in our series) had had moderate success in a number of films though never breaking out in a seismic way, and perhaps the most notable moment in her career up until this point might have been her marriage to talent agent Jack Bean, which would last 52 years until Bean's death.  It's thrilling to see her play against type, and she's damn good wondering (drunkenly) aloud "why when I do it does everyone feel sorry for me, but when Joe does it everyone laughs."  Gaynor would talk in future interviews about how she had to be lifted out of parts of the climactic casino scene because she had an audition with Oscar Hammerstein at the time (Sinatra helped her out as the bigger star by forcing Charles Vidor's hand in filming around her...Gaynor & Sinatra would go on to be lifelong friends), and that she didn't really have the talent to be a "movie star."  I'd argue after watching the ending of The Joker is Wild that you couldn't tell it was trimmed, and that Gaynor surely could have been a fascinating dramatic actress given more substantial roles.  The next two weeks we'll return to Gaynor in singing-and-dancing form, but I'm excited that we took this dramatic detour with the actress, even if it was in a "lead" part.

Take Me Out to the Ball Game (1949)

Film: Take Me Out to the Ball Game (1949)
Stars: Frank Sinatra, Esther Williams, Gene Kelly, Betty Garrett, Jules Munshin, Edward Arnold
Director: Busby Berkeley
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.

We continue on a few years into Williams' career.  Throughout the late 1940's, Williams was perhaps the most important star on the MGM lot, at least in terms of keeping the lights on.  She had a Top 20 movie every year between Bathing Beauty and her double-feature victories of 1949 (the second of which we'll discuss next week).  MGM, famous for its high quality and cavalcade of stars, desperately needed an actress that could consistently churn out hits, as many of its stars were aging, and so Williams was put into near constant production during the era.  This film is one of the few she made with Arthur Freed, legendary musical producer who would make some of the best movies the studio ever made, and teamed her with Gene Kelly & Fred Astaire, obviously big stars in their own right, but having all of that stardom might have helped at the box office, but behind-the-scenes Williams was in hell.

(Spoilers Ahead) Before we talk about Williams life (and work in the picture), let's get to the story, written by Kelly himself (and frequent collaborator Stanley Donen).  The movie is about Dennis Ryan (Sinatra) and Eddie O'Brien (Kelly) who in 1908 are both baseball players who in the off-season have a successful stint as vaudeville performers.  They goofily enjoy their time on the fictional team the Wolves, but the team's new owner KC Higgins (Williams) turns out to be a female, and one with a knowledge of baseball & who is no-nonsense when it comes to her new players.  Both Dennis & Eddie try to woo her, but she ultimately falls for Eddie, who is kind of a louse but she has chemistry with him (Dennis is consoled by Betty Garrett's thirsty Shirley Delwyn, a fan-in-the-stands whom he falls for), but not before Eddie nearly screws up their shot at the pennant by taking a contract with Joe Lorgan (Arnold), a rich hood who has bet on the game & is trying to sabotage its players.  The film ends with a meta-musical number where the four actors are costumed as their characters, but singing as the actual actors (if you don't care too much about spoilers, it's kind of unusual & worth checking out here).

The film itself is fine.  The meta ending number was so odd that it was probably my favorite part (name-checking the actual actors in the film by name, as well as other leading performers of their day), but the musical numbers in the film are largely forgettable.  Kelly dances, Sinatra croons, Garrett & Munshin steal scenes, and Williams (briefly) swims, so everyone is doing what you'd expect, but the flimsy plot and lack of a major, memorable ballad or number causes it to be ill-compared to something of the era like Meet Me in St. Louis or On the Town, which features all but Williams from those name-checked actors.  That said, it's still lovely & fun-this is an Arthur Freed musical during MGM's heyday starring some of the razzle dazzliest stars in Hollywood-you'd have to be pretty cynical to dislike the picture.

It's interesting to approach the film from the perspective of Esther Williams, though, so I'm excited to have watched this in the context of her month as the star rather than if we did Sinatra or Kelly in a future season.  Williams's character is fun, and she gets some sassy lines & moments; it's hard to be the female lead in a movie where Betty Garrett is also on-deck (Garrett is one of the quintessential Golden Age scene-stealers, ranking up there with Thelma Ritter & Ann Miller), and she isn't quite as flashy as Garrett, but Williams is memorable & aces her scenes taking down Kelly's chauvinistic Eddie.

However, I was curious as to why MGM cast Williams in such a role, particularly when they were making so much money with her work in aquatic musicals.  Turns out, she wasn't even remotely their top choice; June Allyson, Ginger Rogers, Judy Garland & Kathryn Grayson (the latter two are name-checked in the "Strictly USA" final number) were all favored for the role before circumstance caused all four to skip out, and Kelly in particular did not want to cast Williams in the part.  Berkeley was technically the director of the picture, but apparently was absent for much of the shoot due to his issues with alcoholism, so Kelly & Donen had a very heavy hand in the making the film, and (according to her memoirs) treated Williams like garbage on the set.  Berkeley even had an idea for a Williams' musical number in the water, potentially helping the film's box office, but Kelly refused and it was cut (as was a duet between Kelly-and-Williams, a rare circumstance for a classic age musical where the main romantic leads don't have a love ballad).  Williams would continue to slam Kelly in interviews sixty years after the film she hated making the movie so much (she apparently liked Sinatra), but it was another money-maker for the star, though thankfully for Williams' sense-of-self, they never again teamed her with Kelly.

OVP: Some Came Running (1958)

Film: Some Came Running (1958)
Stars: Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Shirley MacLaine, Martha Hyer, Arthur Kennedy, Nancy Gates
Director: Vincente Minnelli
Oscar History: 5 nominations (Best Actress-Shirley MacLaine, Supporting Actor-Arthur Kennedy, Supporting Actress-Martha Hyer, Costume, Original Song-"To Love and Be Loved")
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Frank Sinatra has never been my cinematic cup-of-tea, I'm going to admit that right now.  His music-flawless, divine, something we should all listen to at least a few times in our lives as we drive home from a long journey, wondering what's next in store for our souls.  But his acting-ehhh.  I remember going into From Here to Eternity thinking of how I would stack him up against Brandon de Wilde and Eddie Albert, and then afterwards thinking the contest would be between the latter two (I still haven't seen Stalag 17, so don't worry Robert Strauss, you'll get your day in the sun).  As a result, the idea of seeing yet another James Jones adaptation starring the Chairman of the Board wasn't what I considered a great time investment, but five Oscar nominations can't be ignored and so I dove in, as a result getting one of the better performances I've seen from Sinatra to date (though I will admit I still find him dull onscreen, even if I see where the talent might have been for this craft), only to watch him be completely upstaged by a magnificent Shirley MacLaine.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film is about a former writer Dave (Sinatra), acclaimed but under-appreciated, returning to his home after a long adulthood of booze, war, and disappointment.  In town he visits his estranged brother Frank (Kennedy) who is constantly trying to make him a better man to help his own reputation, and a gambler named Bama Dillert (Martin), who is suffering from diabetes (though we don't find that out until later) and lives life sort of on the sly, never really committing to anyone except himself and occasionally a girl.  Frank is followed into town by Ginny (MacLaine) a lovable but nitwitted young woman that is on the rougher side of life and seems to be perceived as a "floozy."  Ginny loves Dave, but Dave is heartless and dismissive of her.  Frank introduces Dave to a more refined single friend of his named Gwen (Hyer) who seems to have feelings for him, but on a different level than Ginny and wants to get him writing again.  The story is set in place as a result of this.

The movie has a few highs and a lot of lows, in my opinion.  The original novel by James Jones was lampooned, particularly for its consistent spelling errors (done on purpose to show the provincial nature of Dave's hometown), and while this clearly isn't an issue in the story, we're left with a pretty dry series of acts.  The movie moves too quickly, despite its long-length, and may have bitten off more than it could handle in terms of plot, as we have too many moments that we're just assuming things.  This gets particularly cumbersome and occasionally laughable during the moments between Dave and Gwen, as Dave tells her he's in love with her so soon it feels like we're pulled out of the movie.  I know that 1950's movies did things like this (I watch a lot of them), but it's jarring for this film because we've really had no soft moments beforehand that insinuated that Dave should love Gwen.  It also makes Dave seem insanely shallow, because the only reasons to like Gwen at this point are that she's beautiful and that she loves Dave's writing.  His attraction to her is entirely shallow and narcissistic, resulting in Dave being less a misunderstood writer and more of just a jerk.  As I pointed out above, this is still some of the better acting I have seen from Sinatra, but his character itself is almost unbearable in the way that he treats women, his family, and his life.

The rest of the acting still falls behind him.  Martin is fine, and may even have gotten plaudits but that's only because he doesn't sink when he tackles drama after so many years as Jerry Lewis' other half.  The supporting roles were both nominated for Oscars, but I didn't really feel either of them.  Arthur Kennedy, he of the perpetual Oscar nominations (he was the Amy Adams of his day, gaining four supporting nods and one lead citation without a win), definitely has a plum role (a social-climbing, adultering "man of morality"), but he doesn't really elevate the role.  This is the second of his nominations that I've seen and so far I haven't been wildly impressed; it seems more like he had a really good agent who landed him "nominatable" roles more than anything else.  Hyer isn't much better-she gets one really great scene with MacLaine late in the movie where they have a bit of an odd showdown over Dave, but she has zilch chemistry with Sinatra and as he's in all but one of her scenes, she gets a plum role (aging spinster, more enchanted by books than men (clutch the pearls!)), but does almost nothing with it.  She's an ice queen that thaws but no one seems to notice.

As a result the film is almost unsalvageable (its other two nominations, for Original Song and Costume, are both a snore-the former you honestly don't even realize is happening in the movie as it's relegated to background music and the latter is quite fine, but only because they're constantly putting MacLaine in flouncy flapper-style dresses and is more of a filler nomination for costuming icon Walter Plunkett), save for one saving grace: Shirley MacLaine.  MacLaine, a personal favorite of mine, is an actress that constantly is under-appreciated despite near universal critical acclaim-for some reason she gets forgotten when you list some of the great actors of her generation until someone reminds you and says, "oh, right, of course Shirley MacLaine."  Her Ginny is incredible.  Absent from good chunks of the movie (in today's category-fraud style days, she surely would have been marketed in supporting), she breathes new life into every scene and totally steals the movie.  I love the way that she is so honest and authentic onscreen-frequently sharing too many of her dreams with Dave in the perfect ying to Gwen's yang of sharing nothing.  Ginny is aware she's Dave's second choice, but loves him so much that it doesn't matter.  MacLaine shows a fully-fledged woman, one who clearly existed before the movie (these sorts of roles rarely are grounded in reality), but who has been lost for most of her time on the planet after a string of bad boyfriends.  MacLaine credited Sinatra with her Oscar nod, principally because he pushed for her, and not he, to die at the end of the film, but I think that's hogwash.  We were ready to nominate MacLaine long before she took that bullet.  That being said, the final scene is easily the coolest of the movie, with an extended long-shot and a great use of Cinemascope (Martin Scorsese later claimed to be very influenced by this sequence).  It's a weird juxtaposition to the traditional filmmaking used by Minnelli in the rest of the film, and feels like if the opening of Touch of Evil had been followed by a random 50's issues drama.

So in that regard, the film is a smashing triumph, though in most other ways it's kind of a snooze.  MacLaine had a weird list of fellow nominees in 1958, with Deborah Kerr, Rosalind Russell, and Susan Hayward getting late-in-their-career nominations (the latter two their final nods) while Elizabeth Taylor, at the peak of her fame, played one of her most iconic roles that still takes second place to Paul Newman.  Someday we'll get to this lineup (when?-it could be a while), but I'm curious what you guys are thinking, as of the three I've seen I have liked all of them (I'm still missing Kerr and the victorious Hayward).  If you've seen any, share your thoughts in the comments.  And by all means, weigh in on Some Came Running and its cavalcade of stars/nominations.

Everybody's Linking for the Weekend

We have a particularly robust list of things to cover this week in the world of links, so without further ado, let's dive into what I was reading and pondering this week.

In Entertainment...

Ronan Farrow

Vanity Fair: Actress Mia Farrow, during an intimate interview with Vanity Fair, recently stated that her son Ronan could in fact be Frank Sinatra's child.  This has set off the gossip world (well, the high class gossip world that doesn't worry about the Kardashians or the Giudices), and both Sinatra's widow and Woody Allen (the man considered to be Ronan's father, as he was married to Farrow at the time) have scoffed at the idea.  Personally, I think if anyone alive is going to know the paternity, it's going to be Mia (considering she's the only "guaranteed" biological parent).  It does make a lot of sense-Ronan Farrow, who is drop dead gorgeous and the funniest person on Twitter, does bare a striking resemblance to the late crooner (more striking than Woody).

Also in Vanity Fair: Since we're on the subject of my social media boyfriend, Ronan Farrow is rumored to be getting his own MSNBC show, which I would watch religiously.  Farrow is a Rhodes Scholar (like MSNBC's Rachel Maddow) and used to work for Hillary Clinton in the State Department.  This news got me a lot more excited than Alec Baldwin's recent show on the channel.

CBS News: For those of us obsessed with the concept of finding lost films, this story is incredibly heartening.  One of the earliest films of Mary Pickford's career was discovered more than a century after it was made.  As Leonard Maltin says in the film, this is the first film that the Oscar-winning Pickford made where she received screen billing under that name (her real name was Gladys Marie Smith).  While this wasn't on my lost films list from a while back, it's still a great discovery, and makes me hopeful that we'll someday find others, including the ten on that list.

CNN: This is a long article, but a really cool one.  The thing that first drew me into it, of course, was Oscar-winning composer Hans Zimmer's name in the title, but it's fascinating to see some of the advances that we're making in musical production and in creating musical instruments.  I desperately want to learn to play the Swarmatron (which was the instrument behind some of the most mesmerizing pieces in our OVP winner of 2010, The Social Network)

New York Times: In the saddest artistic news of the week, we have learned that the New York City Opera has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.  For those of us that love New York and opera in general, this is extremely disheartening.  This file was likely due to both the decline in popularity of opera and being overshadowed by the more famous New York Metropolitan Opera.

Film Experience: For those of you who have been obsessing about the Oscars online long enough to remember when Awards Daily was Oscarwatch and when Entertainment Weekly had its message boards on a separate site, you likely considered the return of Supporting Actress Smackdowns to be the best news you've heard all year.  Nathaniel, Brian, and the crew tackled the eclectic bunch of women that made up 1980's Supporting Actress race this past week, and even if you haven't seen any of the films, you'll still enjoy reading about the lineup.  Fun factoid: I was a part of the Smackdown six years ago when they tackled 1990.  You can read what I had to say here and here.

In Politics...

Lt. Governor John Walsh (D-MT)

National Journal: You may have noticed this week a large lack of discussion about the government shutdown, and there's a couple of reasons for me not discussing it.  Principally, the story seems to be progressing so quickly (and I write all of my articles the night before) that I didn't want to put together a long piece and then have it become totally irrelevant when I could have watched the next Richard Linklater Before film instead.  But this great observation by Patrick Reis so beautifully said my thoughts about the politics behind the shutdown that I felt I didn't need to write anything.

My biggest pet peeve about politics (no qualifiers-this is absolutely, positively, no-holds-barred the biggest) is when people ignorantly say "it's both side's fault" or "there's no difference between the two parties," and I'm so glad that Reis brought this up, because the government shutdown is a perfect example of why this simply isn't true-either you believe that the Republicans have shutdown the government to stop the ACA or you believe that the Democrats are causing this by not allowing any concessions on the ACA.  It's one or the other.

Politico: One of the more popular articles on TMROJ over the past week has been last Friday's rant about Sen. Ted Cruz.  So I of course wanted to share this article about Cruz and his icy relationship with his fellow senators.  Like I said before, Cruz is not someone that is in this for a long congressional career-he has his eyes on the bigger prize of the White House, and though having the help of the powers-that-be surely assists in that road, having the most appealing populist message for your base matters the most.

Montana Standard: The Democrats landed their final big recruit of the 2014 Senate cycle with Lt. Gov. John Walsh of Montana deciding to run for the United States Senate.  Walsh starts out as the underdog against Rep. Steve Daines (who hasn't announced yet, but is surely going to run for the GOP), but the Democrats have had a lot of luck lately in Big Sky Country so Walsh cannot be counted out; the Republicans haven't won a Senate or governors race here since 2000.

Texas Tribune: The Dems also officially landed one of the most exciting candidates of the cycle, even if she's a major underdog for the win.  State Sen. Wendy Davis, who became a hero for progressives across the country with her filibuster regarding women's reproductive rights, has officially announced that she is running to be the next Governor of Texas.

And Just One More...

Huffington Post: The Huffington Post put together a fun little bit about the increasing number of people who fancy themselves explorers, as well as tips on how to succeed as an explorer.  Since I'm a huge supporter of adventurers, I figured I'd throw it into the round-up in hopes that one of you finds an "extinct" animal species or discovers a cure for cancer in a rainforest somewhere.

OVP: Robin and the 7 Hoods (1964)

Film: Robin and the 7 Hoods (1964)
Stars: Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis, Jr., Bing Crosby, Peter Falk, Barbara Rush, Victor Buono
Director: Gordon Douglas
Oscar History: 2 nominations (Best Original Scoring, Best Original Song-"My Kind of Town")
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

It's been eons since we started going through the Turner Classic Movies collection on my TiVo, and given that it's 31 Days of Oscar right now, and my list of OVP movies could not be higher, I figured I'd start making a dent on the collection, and that starts with this 1964 Rat Pack adventure.

(Spoilers are gonna happen) The film is not quite sure what it's based on-there's obviously a Robin Hood element (with Sinatra and Martin's characters even sporting Nottingham-inspired names), but there's also a bit of Guys and Dolls in the cards as well.  The movie is about two dueling mob bosses Robbo (Sinatra) and Guy Gisborne (Falk), both of whom are put into a power struggle upon the death of their leader Big Jim (Edward G. Robinson, in an inspired and hilarious cameo) at the hands of the Sheriff and Guy.  As we move, it becomes apparent that Robbo is going to be the silver spoon character, and Falk is going to persistently trip over his own shoes (the problem with these movies, aside from the fact that with the realism of The Godfather eight years later, they all look a bit silly, is that their villains aren't remotely realistic, though a late-added character does add some spice, but we'll get to her in a moment).  For example, despite the fact that Guy Gisborne has seemingly hundreds of men and the will of the police, and Robbo has only his twelve Merry Men, Guy never seems to be able to go one-up on Robbo, when in reality he could crush him.

The movie adds a Robin Hood element when Barbara Rush, who plays Big Jim's "daughter" Marian (still confused on if that was actually the case or not, though I will admit to having some believability issues with Edward G. Robinson producing the Peyton Place star), tries to bribe Robbo into killing the Sheriff, and when Guy does it for him, she gives Robbo the money anyway, assuming he was the one who did the murder.  Robbo wants nothing to do with the money, and instead gives it to a charity, and thus is proclaimed a modern-day Robin Hood (a guy who covers up his indiscretions to the public through comparatively minor charity, a ploy used by everyone from J.D. Rockefeller to Mitt Romney). The film after this gets ridiculously silly, not just because Bing Crosby's naive, then suddenly not, character was a confusing mess, but also because of what happens with Barbara Rush.

Rush's character is definitely the most compelling, and it's hard to tell whether she's an ambitious Lady Macbeth in search of her weak backboned king or if she's just a bored housewife drawn to an array of weak-willed men.  By my count she goes to bed with both Martin and Falk, and probably Sinatra (though in a sad moment for him, not Victor Buono), and by the end of the movie her ambitions to stay in the public actually remain intact, as she's crusading against the mob, and Sinatra, Martin, and Davis are all three on the street, begging for change.  Rush's character is quite shrill, and not any sort of feminist, but she's the least cliched of the bunch, and after a career in decline, she at least scored a part in a hit movie as her career proceeded to deflate in the mid-1960's.  Of course, she got to be be married to and reproduce with a twentysomething Jeffrey Hunter, so that's enough reward for ten lifetimes.

The movie received a pair of Oscar nominations, and as you'd suspect with this cast, they're both musically-charged.  The film received one nomination for Best Scoring, a nomination that I suppose makes sense, but is a bit weak if you truly think about it: there's little doubt of the leads' vocal abilities (with the exception of Falk and his ill-advised trek into singing the first number), but the staging of the numbers seemed quite poor.  The voices of the three crooners seem to be competing with each other, which leads to some over-singing, and they aren't really willing to put much panache into the songs except for just standing there.  Compare it to some of the terrific musicals that were coming out in 1964 (My Fair Lady and Mary Poppins, for starters), and this isn't in the same league.

The main song, of course, fits well, and is a classic, and even with the awkward structuring of the musicals, you can't deny Ol' Blue Eyes belting out "My Kind of Town," for the first time (it's strange to think of this song ever not existing, and also how often Sinatra's hits revolved around cities-it's a wonder he didn't get "I Left My Heart in San Francisco" instead of Tony Bennett).  Overall, though, I will have to say that the fun of this movie (which was admittedly affected by some major real life drama, with both the JFK assassination and the kidnapping of Frank Sinatra, Jr. occurring during production) is largely sucked out during the musical numbers, and I was left wanting.

What about you?  Do you have a favorite of the Rat Pack members, or their movies?  Who was the best musical of 1964 (a year brimming with them)?  And what are your thoughts on largely forgotten star Barbara Rush, and her seemingly A-List career that never took off?