The Little Colonel (1935)

Film: The Little Colonel (1935)

Stars: Shirley Temple, Lionel Barrymore, Evelyn Venable, John Lodge, Bill Robinson, Hattie McDaniel

Director: David Butler

Oscar History: No nominations

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

Shirley Temple was such a big star by 1935, that at the age of seven, she managed to pull off something no other actor could've pulled off in a Hollywood that was still deeply segregated when it came to star billing.  In the 1930's through the 1950's, the Hays Code held back Black performers onscreen, and you rarely saw Black actors in major parts in movies.  It's worth noting that Hattie McDaniel not only would be the first Black actor to win a competitive Oscar, she'd do it 24 years before another Black actor would, basically the entire stretch of the Classical Hollywood era.  In 1935, Temple became part of the first interracial dance team with Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, starting with The Little Colonel, our film today.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is about an intergenerational fight between Colonel Lloyd (Barrymore), his daughter Elizabeth (Venable), and his grand daughter Lloyd aka the Little Colonel (Temple).  When Elizabeth marries a man that the Colonel thinks is unworthy of her, Jack (Lodge), he cuts her out of his life.  Years later, Elizabeth moves back to living in the house that her mother left her in her will (down the road from her dad), and she brings with her her daughter Lloyd.  Little Lloyd doesn't understand the feud, particularly since she adores her father, and so she befriends the Colonel, who develops a soft spot for her.  Jack finds himself in a bad business deal, and is nearly broke (frequently Little Lloyd is concerned about them ending up in the "Poor House"), but when the deal turns out to be good for them, he is nearly cheated out of it by men trying to steal the deed to his land...until the Colonel, after some coaxing from Little Lloyd, storms in and aids in the arrest of the men trying to steal from his son-in-law.  All reconciled (and suddenly in Technicolor, the only time a young Temple was ever shot outside of black-and-white) they are finally a family again.

The movie is cute, with Temple about as adorable as can be here; she has great chemistry with her cast, and unlike some of her other movies, working alongside Barrymore & Hattie McDaniel, she has stronger actors to play off of and it improves the quality of the picture.  The movie's racial politics are suspect.  This is one of the few films (outside of Gone with the Wind) that I've seen where McDaniel is a definite featured, large role.  She has wonderful chemistry with Temple, and honestly is the best performance in the movie (she even steals scenes from Shirley, not an easy task), but being stuck playing a comic-relief maid during a Reconstruction Era South, this is not the most progressive role for McDaniel, and was one of the parts she'd be criticized for by the NAACP.  Still-there's no denying she's giving good work here.

As I mentioned above, this film featured the first (and most famous) dance sequence between Temple & Robinson, with the two of them dancing up a flight of stairs when little Shirley doesn't want to go to bed in her grandfather's house.  The two would end up being in four films together (the others being The Littlest Rebel, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, and Just Around the Corner), and would become lifelong friends.  The scene wouldn't be seen in the South, though.  The first interracial dance team, even between a little girl and a grown man (whom in the confines of the film, works for her family), would've been unthinkable to play in the South, which would regularly delete scenes featuring Black actors throughout the coming decade.  So this scene, like all of the later scenes with the two dancing, was cut out of Temple & Robinson's films together.

OVP: Vivacious Lady (1938)

Film: Vivacious Lady (1938)

Stars: Ginger Rogers, James Stewart, James Ellison, Beulah Bondi, Charles Coburn, Frances Mercer, Hattie McDaniel

Director: George Stevens

Oscar History: 2 nominations (Best Cinematography, Sound)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

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

We're going to start our look at Jimmy Stewart during the period in the 1930's when he was still starting to make his way up in Hollywood.  During the 1930's, really leading into Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Stewart was not thought of as a leading man so much as an actor to put in to prop up more famous, bankable actresses on the lots of major studios (despite being an MGM star at the time, Stewart rarely actually worked for MGM during this time frame).  This included a number of hit movies, including Born to Dance (with Eleanor Powell), You Can't Take It With You (with Jean Arthur), and Destry Rides Again (with Marlene Dietrich), one of his first cowboy roles.  We're going to focus not on Destry today (despite our month-long theme), but instead on Vivacious Lady (don't worry, Jimmy will done a cowboy hat next week), perhaps the best encapsulation of Stewart's pattern at the time-get a big hit where your leading actress gets more of the credit than you do...and also bedding her.  Though he was married to his wife Gloria for 45 years starting in 1949, affable, stuttering Jimmy Stewart was a lothario in his day, dating a variety of actresses, including Ginger Rogers, with whom according to Hollywood legend (how could you ever prove such a thing, but it is apocryphal gossip), he reportedly lost his virginity.  Stewart & Rogers would both move on (with Marlene Dietrich & Howard Hughes, respectively), but we still have Vivacious Lady to judge them by.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is about Peter Morgan, Jr. (Stewart) a botany professor who is also the son of a prominent university president, Peter Morgan Sr. (Coburn), and thus comes from a "respectable" family who won't like that he's started a romance with a nightclub singer named Francey (Rogers).  This doesn't stop him from eloping with her, though, before she's had a chance to meet her parents or before he's had a chance to break off his engagement to Helen (Mercer).  As a result, they sneak her in as a new botany student he's clearly pursuing, but Peter Sr. doesn't like this, despite the fact that his wife Martha (Bondi) is a fan of the young woman.  Entanglements ensue, including a marvelous little face-off between America's Sweetheart Rogers getting into a hair-pulling fight with Helen, before both Peter Jr. & Sr. have to chase their brides on a train, and win them back (which, of course, they do).

The movie's plot is mildly ridiculous.  Martha likes her daughter-in-law right away, and while Peter Sr. doesn't approve of her, it's clear that he can be won over without much work.  The "family doesn't approve" is a common trope in romantic-comedies, but it's clear in this movie that there's not a lot standing in Peter's way when it comes to getting to marry Francey.  The main reason to watch this is for the cast, which is a delight, but you wish they were in a better movie.  Rogers is not one of my favorites from this era (and Stewart is), but she outdoes him at pretty much every turn.  Romantic comedies were a place that Stewart did well, but when paired with more natural performers in the genre (not just Rogers, but someone like Katharine Hepburn in The Philadelphia Story) he occasionally got upstaged.  One of my favorite moments was a blink-and-you'll-miss-it cameo from Hattie McDaniel one year out from her Oscar win for Gone with the Wind, here playing a maid who gets a pretty lascivious comment from Rogers that I'm honestly surprised got past the censors (essentially Rogers hints strongly that a man might be worth giving up smoking for if he's good enough in bed).

The film won two Oscar nominations, neither of which are standouts (and neither is the one night club song that Rogers sings, even though it's the rare song in this era that wasn't a cover in the movie). Cinematography is kind of fun in the close-up shots of Rogers & Stewart teaching, her looking radiant and him clearly smitten (on and off screen) with the actress, but making pretty movie stars look pretty is just as much on the makeup department (and genetics) as it is cinematography, and here there's hardly much else to crow about.  The sound nomination is also odd.  There's only one musical (the aforementioned forgettable tune from Rogers), and the rest of the movie feels like it's just standard-issue sound work.  I'm convinced at this point of profiling dozens of Sound nominations that something changed in the 1960's & later in how this department picked their nominations, as no other category of this era has so many blasé head-scratchers.

OVP: George Washington Slept Here (1942)

Film: George Washington Slept Here (1942)

Stars: Jack Benny, Ann Sheridan, Charles Coburn, Percy Kilbride, Hattie McDaniel, William Tracy, Joyce Reynolds

Director: William Keighley

Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Art Direction)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

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

1942 was an interesting year for Jack Benny as an actor, and certainly the height of his film career.  At the time, Benny was one of the most important names in radio, a major star who was coming into homes across America.  It made sense, therefore, that films would continue to invest in him as an actor because he was a known commodity.  During 1942, he made what many now consider to be his best film, To Be or Not to Be, a black comedy from Ernst Lubitsch starring Carole Lombard.  Though its initial reviews were tepid, and audiences were not comfortable with the American Benny sporting a Nazi uniform (even in jest) during the middle of World War II, it has later been saved by critics and is considered one of the greatest examples of the Lubitsch Touch (if you click on over to the review, I give the film & Benny a rave).  We only watch films that I've never seen before for this series, though, and so today we're going to be focusing on a different comedy hit that Benny made in 1942, one that didn't need time for critics to warm up to it, George Washington Slept Here.

(Spoilers Ahead) Connie (Sheridan) & Bill Fuller (Benny) are a normal American couple living in New York City, but Connie wants something more.  After they are evicted from their apartment (due to Connie's misbehaving dog), she buys a dilapidated old house that supposedly belonged to George Washington without Bill's knowledge.  With the help of local man Mr. Kimber (Kilbride) who seems to gouge the couple at every chance, they start to build up the place, but learn initially that it was Benedict Arnold, not George Washington, who had slept at the house (ruining its place as a spot of Americana).  Bill hates the house initially, but grows to like it as the film goes on, but there's a catch-they have overspent and will have to give the property to their cantankerous neighbor if they don't find the mortgage payment. While they initially try to get it from Connie's rich Uncle Stanley (Coburn), when it turns out he's broke they attempt increasingly far-fetched paths to the cash before finally realizing that, due to a letter their dog finds in an old boot in the yard, that the house did have connections to George Washington, and they can sell the letter to pay for their house.

The movie supposedly has some similarities to Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House, a movie I have always meant to see (I love Cary Grant, and this is maybe the biggest movie in his filmography that I've never caught before), but since I hadn't this was new to me, and I was delighted.  What initially felt like it was going to be a boring marital strife movie (Sheridan, whom I'm generally a fan of in comedies, doesn't hit her stride until the second half of the picture & never quite gels with Benny as a believable couple) is lifted in the second half by bravura performances from Kilbride & Coburn, both coming in to steal large swaths of the picture.  Benny is good too, even if, once again, he proves that it was more his casting director making him work in these films than his expansive acting talent (I have yet to see a film role where Benny wasn't just playing some version of his public persona, and this is the case here, even if it fits well).

The film won one Academy Award nomination, for Best Art Direction.  This is a knowing nod to the film itself, as the movie's entire point is to focus on this house and the way it's cleaned up.  It is, admittedly, a fun house for the camera to explore, but if we're being technical, it does also feel like there's not enough scenes before it becomes this glamorous little property in the middle-of-nowhere.  We essentially jump from shack to palace in far too quick of a fashion for a movie that's entirely focused on the house as a main character.  Still, it's a nice house-I get the urge from Oscar to go there with this movie.

OVP: Carefree (1938)

Film: Carefree (1938)

Stars: Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Ralph Bellamy, Luella Gear, Jack Carson, Hattie McDaniel

Director: Mark Sandrich

Oscar History: 3 nominations (Best Art Direction, Scoring, Original Song-"Change Partners")

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

The partnership of Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers is the stuff of cinematic legend, one of the most iconic pairings in Classical Hollywood.  That the two were at best "fine" with the pairing by 1938 was something that was starting to be reflexive in its box office returns.  Carefree, our movie for today, is the eighth in the ten films that the two made together, and was the first movie starring the two not to turn a profit according to box office receipts at the time.  It was also one of the first films in the series to really mess with the formula of the two, being shorter than you normally saw from an Astaire-Rogers picture, and with far less-dancing.  The result is a quirky (the plot is weird if not unpleasant) little musical with much less of what we'd learned to love from the Astaire-Rogers pairings in terms of toe-tapping.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is centered on Tony Flagg (Astaire), a psychiatrist who has been asked by his friend Stephen (Bellamy) to help make his girlfriend Amanda (Rogers) come to a decision on whether they should be married or not.  Amanda is a successful singer, and isn't sure she's ready to give that life up, or if Stephen is the right guy for her.  Tony puts Amanda under hypnosis, and in the process Amanda comes to (in a trance) and starts destroying property & behaving as a menace.  She also, in the process, begins to start having dreams about her doctor, and becomes convinced she's in love with him, not Stephen.  Eventually Tony realizes after putting Amanda under a trance again (where he instructs her to not like him) that he is in love with her, but at that point it's too late...until of course it isn't when in the end Tony interrupts Stephen & Amanda's marriage, and during one more subconscious session, convinces her he loves her.

As I said above, unlike a lot of Astaire/Rogers films, this one has less focus on the dancing than you'd expect.  At this point in their partnership, the public's interest in the couple was waning, and their careers were headed in different directions.  Rogers was on an upswing, as the success of Stage Door proved she didn't really need Astaire, and within a few years, she'd be an Oscar winner & the highest-paid actress in Hollywood.  Astaire, meanwhile, was in the middle of one of his down swings (we think of him as one of the great performers of the Golden Age, which he was, but that was checkered with several comebacks as he went in-and-out of fashion).  The plot is a bit, silly, but it's kind of fun.  It allows Rogers, in particular, some great comedic moments as she has to wander throughout her hypnotized state, oftentimes for laughs.  But I will admit as someone who just adores Fred Astaire, I could've used one or two more musical numbers.

The film won three Oscar nominations.  The art direction is sublime (isn't it always in Astaire-Rogers musicals?), with gigantic ballrooms, large spacious offices, and a glorious wedding hall among the highlights.  It all feels very modern, but in an elegant way...you can definitely see the money that was clearly spent on this film (the first of the pairings partnerships to lose money).  The scoring is good, though as I mentioned there's only really one number that's of note, and the rest is just sort of there (it's lovely, because of the stars, but there's nothing notable here).  The one number that stands out, though not ultimately in the pairings long pantheon of dancing, is "Change Partners," which is the Oscar-nominated turn.  It's sung at the very end of the picture as Fred is trying to woo Ginger away from Ralph Bellamy, and it's quite lovely-sort of this lovelorn song about a man trying to win back a girl who is with someone else.  It became a standard afterward, and it works quite well within the picture.

Nothing Sacred (1937)

Film: Nothing Sacred (1937)

Stars: Carole Lombard, Fredric March, Charles Winninger, Walter Connolly

Director: William A. Wellman

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

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

One of the rules of "Saturdays with the Stars" is that I never rewatch a movie for the series (I'm experiencing the star new along with you).  This oftentimes means that some of the bigger films in an actor's career (especially as we continue with this series) get left behind, and that's the case jumping from Twentieth Century to today's movie Nothing Sacred for Carole Lombard.  In 1936, Carole Lombard starred in My Man Godfrey, a movie that would earn her her only Oscar nomination & is generally considered to be her best film (it is one of my favorite screen comedies, and if you haven't seen it I order you to rectify that immediately).  Coming off of that, Lombard was a golden girl in Hollywood-a critical darling, and a name that basically was printing money.  Nothing Sacred was something of a disruption of that pattern.  Critically-acclaimed (both then and now) it was somehow a flop at the box office, and its enduring reputation has been largely due to its status as a genuinely good movie (albeit no Godfrey) and its place as the only Technicolor picture of Lombard's career.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie focuses on Wally Cook (March), a reporter who is coming off of a story where he was hoodwinked into covering a con job as legitimate (which involves Hattie McDaniel in a one-line part, two years before she'd win the Oscar).  He sees a feel-good story as a potential redemption by covering Hazel Flagg (Lombard), who is dying of radium poisoning, and decides to give her a send-off that involves a ticket-tape parade & toasts all over New York City.  The only problem is that Hazel isn't dying, but let's him believe it so she can get out of her small-town life in Vermont.  When she falls in love with him, she realizes she needs to either disappear or die in order to not humiliate Wally, but in the end she marries him, assuming a different name, and letting the "celebrity" Hazel Flagg slip into the night.

Nothing Sacred is the exact sort of movie from the 1930's that I always enjoy, frequently love, but isn't really something that exists today.  Screwball comedies are truly something audiences have grown out of, but it's also genuinely a movie without a lot of laughs.  Nothing Sacred is clever, but it's more of a "hmm, that's witty" sort of observation rather than something that will have you bowling over with laughter.  It doesn't help that the Technicolor is unnecessary (it's fun to see Lombard in her only color film, as she looks glorious, but it does nothing to add to the movie), and the plot is ridiculous (why is the entire city of New York randomly in love with this blonde girl who is dying?).

That said, Lombard continues to sparkle.  She is a truly gifted comedian, and someone who knows how to have chemistry with virtually everyone, even a miscast Fredric March (I adore March in most things, but there's something off here-he seems to be underselling the part, and doesn't really relate to the role as a journalist...there's not enough meat on this role).  Her speech about the logic of her committing suicide is a riot (it's funny in the context even if that sentence is obviously no laughing matter in reality) & her crying jags are spot-on...at this point I'm starting to believe there's nothing she can't do, though next week we're going to see her stretch her skills in a movie that put Lombard beyond what audiences expected from her.

OVP: Janie (1944)

Film: Janie (1944)
Stars: Joyce Reynolds, Robert Hutton, Edward Arnold, Ann Harding, Alan Hale, Richard Erdman, Hattie McDaniel
Director: Michael Curtiz
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Editing)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Oscar-nominated films come in many shapes and sizes, admittedly, but most of them you can pick out.  Your biopics, your issue dramas, your epics, your giant musicals-these are the films that constitute what is known in awards parlance as an "Oscar movie."  What you don't expect to see on the list of films that are nominated for an Oscar is a film about a teenybopper, essentially getting into trouble as she decides between her high school boyfriend and the handsome soldier come to town.  Janie is bizarre in the annals of Oscar viewing principally because today it would be more likely to be seen on ABC Family than at the Kodak, a fluffy-light comedy with largely unknown stars that somehow got nominated for Best Editing.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film itself is just a trifle of a movie.  It stars Joyce Reynolds as Janie, a girl in her late teens that everyone seems to adore principally because she's fun and gay and pretty.  She's the sort of character that you saw in shows like Gidget and wondered who had that idea for a human being, at least a compelling one, and yet it works.  She's constantly drawn between her high school boyfriend Scooter (Erdman, and for those who want to have a truly wonderful laugh, see this movie as this is Leonard from Community when he was nineteen) and her mother's friend's son Dick (Hutton, and with all due respect to Leonard, the choice is pretty obvious here), frequently getting into the sort of hair-brained schemes that we would expect on television now rather than in a movie.  She throws parties with way too many guests, accidentally ends up on the cover of Life magazine-those sorts of things.

The movie gains a lot from Reynolds lead performance.  I will be quite frank and admit that I didn't really know anything about Reynolds, a minor contract player for Warner Brothers who got her biggest role in this film.  She's extremely fun, and it's pretty easy to see why everyone keeps falling over themselves to be with her.  It's not a great example of classic acting, but it does show that twinkle that, were she around today, we would have attributed to a Zac Efron or Emma Stone and may have explored more with her career.  Sadly for Reynolds, either Hollywood didn't really know how to handle a teen star quite yet (she was a decade early for that sort of thing) or her taste for movies soured, as she quickly faded from the main stage and retired from the cinema (though she is still alive today, for you trivia hounds).  The rest of the cast, including Oscar-winner Hattie McDaniel are left to play sort of cardboard cutouts of characters (though I will admit it's thrilling to see McDaniel in a role outside of Gone with the Wind, as I don't believe I ever have before, and I've seen Gone with the Wind dozens of times).

The film received one Oscar nomination, for Editing, which is as I mentioned above is pretty inexplicable.  This isn't a poorly edited film, by any means but considering the content you half-expect something really insane in terms of the editing, which just isn't apparent.  There's some cool continuity shots within Janie's house, which is large and allows for multiple different scenes in different rooms without cutting, which is indeed clever (and adds to the film's humor) even if it's rather standard compared to what we do today (though that was perhaps more rare in 1944), so I give it credit for that.  Outside of that, though, there's nothing that the editing seems to add to the film to warrant this nomination.  This may be one of the hindrances of the OVP (I can't go back to 1944 and parcel through why this particular nomination happened, particularly in a category where only five nominees were allowed and not something like Score where you'd get into the high teens in terms of nominees).  But it's still a fun factoid if you want to justify predicting Mean Girls or Easy A in a major category-it's technically happened before.

What are your thoughts on Janie if you have seen it, and if not, what do you think about a teen film scoring a nomination it wouldn't dream to have a chance at today?  What do you think of the careers of Joyce Reynolds and Hattie McDaniel?  Share your thoughts in the comments!