Saturdays with the Stars Season 3 Finale

Two of our stars, Shirley & Grace

With this past week's viewing of The Seduction fo Joe Tynan, we are officially done with our third season of "Saturdays with the Stars."  I really like to find a moment before I start the new season (which, unlike past seasons, I haven't told you the theme of & will be doing so in the coming days, as we will indeed do a fourth season starting on Saturday) to discuss the season, talking about what I learned, and also focusing on some of the best of the year's movies/performances.

When I decided to do this theme, I wanted to see how it would turn out picking twelve women who had really nothing in common other than Alfred Hitchcock.  You couldn't find stars as divergent in the way that cinematic history or even contemporary audiences treated them as, say, Maureen O'Hara & Barbara Harris or Shirley MacLaine & Margaret Lockwood.  Hitchcock wasn't always successful with his leading ladies, but it does show what a versatile director he was that he continually tried new things, occasionally making masterpieces but just as often strange curiosities.

It also showed, especially in our month devoted to Tippi Hedren, how Hitchcock's legacy is at once peerless in quality but blemished by the director himself.  Hitchcock was a complicated man, one who brought the downfall of a career or two (Hedren's career, as we discussed, never flourished the way it might have with a less authoritarian mentor), but who also clearly made some of the best films ever made.  What was great about this year was not just focusing on him, but getting to see unknown chapters in these twelve women's lives (I love that I stick to the rule of seeing only films I haven't seen before, because it means every week I get to see a new facet of an actor I thought I knew well, but frequently have my perceptions changed).  As I continue to watch deeper and deeper cuts from Old Hollywood (after three seasons devoted to it on the blog, it seems like watching fresh viewings demands getting into the rafters of these icons' IMDB pages), I am reminded once again how this period of Hollywood has countless movies & careers left to explore.  Thank you so much for playing along!

Favorite Performance from Each Star

January: Madeleine Carroll-The General Died at Dawn

February: Sylvia Sidney-Sabotage

March: Margaret Lockwood-Cast a Dark Shadow

April: Maureen O'Hara-Rio Grande

May: Carole Lombard-Twentieth Century

June: Anne Baxter-The Luck of the Irish

July: Ingrid Bergman-Autumn Sonata

August: Grace Kelly-Dial M for Murder

September: Shirley MacLaine-The Children's Hour

October: Julie Andrews-Thoroughly Modern Millie

November: Tippi Hedren-Marnie

December: Barbara Harris-Who is Harry Kellerman and Why is He Saying Those Terrible Things About Me?

5 Favorite Actresses of the Year (Alphabetical, and based solely on the films we watched as a collective & not on the rest of their careers)

Ingrid Bergman

Barbara Harris

Margaret Lockwood

Carole Lombard

Shirley MacLaine

5 (err-6, I couldn't corner down) Favorite Performances of the Year (Alphabetical)

Ingrid Bergman, Autumn Sonata

Ingrid Bergman, Journey to Italy

Margaret Lockwood, Cast a Dark Shadow

Margaret Lockwood, The Wicked Lady

Carole Lombard-Twentieth Century

Shirley MacLaine, The Children's Hour

10 Favorite Films of the Year (Alphabetical)

Autumn Sonata

Cast a Dark Shadow

The Children's Hour

Dead End

Dial M for Murder

Journey to Italy

The Lady Vanishes

The Trouble with Harry

Twentieth Century

The Wicked Lady

Top 10 Performances of the Year (Not By Our Leading Ladies)

Diane Baker, Marnie

John Barrymore, Twentieth Century

Dirk Bogarde, Cast a Dark Shadow

Humphrey Bogart, Dead End

Sean Connery, Marnie

Audrey Hepburn, The Children's Hour

George Sanders, Journey to Italy

Claire Trevor, Dead End

Liv Ullmann, Autumn Sonata

John Williams, Dial M for Murder

Cast a Dark Shadow (1955)

Film: Cast a Dark Shadow (1955)

Stars: Dirk Bogarde, Margaret Lockwood, Kay Walsh, Kathleen Harrison, Mona Washbourne

Director: Lewis Gilbert

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

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

Last week we talked about The Wicked Lady, which was the biggest success of Margaret Lockwood's career.  The actress, though, would continue to make films regularly for the next decade, albeit with less success.  By the early 1950's, while she was still famous & had had numerous stage successes in recent years, she was essentially considered box office poison when Cast a Dark Shadow came out, to the point where she had to give up top billing to her costar Dirk Bogarde.  This movie was intended to be a comeback vehicle of sorts, but that's not how it would pan out.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film, a pretty dark noir, is about Teddy Bare (Bogarde), a man with a much older, dowdier wife Monica (Washbourne), whom he kills & frames as an accident for her fortune.  Teddy doesn't know that Monica was about to change her will to give him everything, but she hadn't yet, so all of the money has gone to her sister instead.  This leaves Teddy with just the house, but he uses it to lure in a well-off widow named Freda (Lockwood), who is brassy, uncouth, and aware that Teddy is a fortune-hunter, but has no intention of her money going to him, and Teddy can't murder her for it because it would be too suspicious.  When a wealthy woman named Charlotte (Walsh) comes knocking, initially Teddy starts to woo her, making Freda jealous, but it turns out that Charlotte is in fact Monica's sister in disguise, come to figure out how her sister died.  The climax has Teddy nearly getting away with murdering Charlotte, thus inheriting Monica's fortune back, but he doesn't as she is on to his trick, and when he escapes, he uses the car with the cut brake lines (the ones he cut) to escape, sealing his doom.

The noir, clocking in at under 90 minutes, is fast-paced & quite enjoyable.  Some at the time complained about it not having enough actual intrigue, and there are moments where the exposition does more heavy-lifting than it should (some of the last acts seem a bit too out-of-nowhere for me), but I thought it was great.  The performances were good, including Dirk Bogarde (delightful as a too-handsome, possibly gay, definitely unbalanced would-be serial killer), and the script is fun, filled with great speeches & wry chemistry between the two leads.

And as for Margaret Lockwood?  She's once again a home run, totally owning this character.  Gone here are the glamorous, bodice-pushing outfits of her youth.  Nearly forty at this point, she looks older in the movie, eschewing her natural beauty with overdone makeup & a brash accent.  Had she been a bigger star in the United States, this is exactly the sort of role that might have made the Academy take notice.  The film was a success, and Lockwood was even nominated for a BAFTA for the work (a deserved one-she owns the screen), but it wasn't enough to save her career.  While she'd do some television after this movie, her next film wouldn't come out for twenty more years, and she'd enjoy no more chances at a proper comeback.  Margaret Lockwood died in 1990, at the age of 73, of cirrhosis.  Next month, we'll move away from Lockwood, but not too far from her home country, with another actress from the British Isles, but one who would find true fame in Hollywood, as we encounter our first proper cinematic legend of this year's Saturday with the Stars.

The Wicked Lady (1945)

Film: The Wicked Lady (1945)

Stars: Margaret Lockwood, James Mason, Patricia Roc, Griffith Jones, Michael Rennie

Director: Leslie Arliss

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

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

Last week, Margaret Lockwood's career had entered a new chapter.  The success of her role in The Man in Gray made Lockwood a major name in British cinema (though she never translated in the same way in the United States), and she enjoyed a string of successes, though it was clear that Lockwood's talents (and where audiences wanted to see her) were in melodramas, similar to The Man in Gray.  This is what led to today's film, another that reunited her with her leading man from that film (James Mason) and director Leslie Arliss.  The Wicked Lady would be the highlight of Lockwood's career-her biggest financial success, a critical hit, & arguably the most important (non-Hitchcock) film that she's associated with.  It's also SO much fun.

(Spoilers Ahead) Okay, this movie has just a gigantic amount of plot, and I'm not going to be able to do it justice, but I will try my best.  The film centers initially around Caroline (Roc), a riotous woman who has invited her beautiful cousin Barbara (Lockwood) to her wedding, but when Barbara arrives she falls madly in love with Barbara's fiancé, Sir Ralph (Jones), who also happens to be loaded.  It turns out that Barbara isn't in love with Ralph, and she learns that on her wedding night when she meets the dashing Kit (Rennie), but it's too late.  As the film goes on, though, we kind of understand that what Barbara really loves is sadism, taking things that don't belong to her & punishing everyone who isn't Barbara.  She takes up a life of crime, stealing from horse carriages, eventually joining notorious bandit Jerry Jackson (Mason), but even that's not enough, and she begins to murder people who attempt to expose her life of crime.  The film ends with Jerry being killed by Barbara, and Barbara intent on offing her husband so she can be with Kit...but a masked Barbara instead is murdered by Kit, who doesn't know he's killing his love.  The final death scene has Barbara confessing everything to Kit, hopeful that she can gain some sort of absolution, but he leaves her none, and lets her die alone.

The movie is fascinating, almost as if it's a Roger Corman picture with its overacting & tasty melodrama.  Similar to The Man in Gray, it is indulgent and nowhere near subtlety, bawdy & sexual, but it totally works.  The film is sinister fun, like a Classic Hollywood version of Gone Girl, with everyone involved leaning heavily into the sharp, soap opera plot lines & ridiculous camp.  Occasionally it's slightly too long (trim maybe ten minutes off of the movie & it'd be the kind you'd constantly re-watch), but it's so scrumptious you won't really care.

Lockwood is marvelous.  This is the sort of heightened acting exercise that others might not enjoy, but I was enthralled by it, as she so fully commits to this woman who cannot understand why she does truly terrible things, an adrenaline junkie who cannot help but destroy everyone for her own pleasure.  It says something about Lockwood that she overshadows all her costars in the movie, even constant scene-stealer James Mason.  Bordering between Faye Dunaway in Network and Faye Dunaway in Mommie Dearest, she completely commits to this performance in a way that just wasn't done in Hollywood's Golden Age, and while she's not a truly great actress in the sense of a Bette Davis or Barbara Stanwyck, I'm kind of flummoxed how her work & acting hasn't been rediscovered by cinephiles.  Thankfully, we have one more film next week to enjoy our star.

The Man in Grey (1943)

Film: The Man in Grey (1943)

Stars: Margaret Lockwood, Phyllis Calvert, James Mason, Stewart Granger

Director: Leslie Arliss

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 Margaret Lockwood-click here to learn more about Ms. Lockwood (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

The Lady Vanishes was a hit, and certainly made Alfred Hitchcock's career, but Margaret Lockwood wasn't as lucky.  She traveled to the United States to make films, but they weren't particularly successful, and American directors didn't know what to do with her talents in the way that Hitchcock did.  She starred in lower-billed roles against Shirley Temple & Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., but she didn't connect with American audiences & so she went back to British cinema to continued fizzling failure, and it's possible her career might have ended there, with one big hit under-her-belt & the rest just not connecting.  That is, of course, unless The Man in Grey hadn't come along.  Made in 1943, the movie was a surprise smash, and even critics enjoyed it (though nowhere near as much as audiences).  The first of what are now known as the "Gainsborough melodramas," The Man in Grey graduated Lockwood to the biggest names in British cinema, and while she never really succeeded in American pictures, she would stay a major draw at the British box office for the remainder of the decade.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie takes place in flashback, and is about the friendship between two women: Hesther (Lockwood), a proud woman who was once wealthy but has now lost her family fortune, and Clarissa (Calvert), a sweet heiress who wants to befriend Hesther.  The two have a falling out when Hesther runs off in an ill-advised marriage, and during their absence Clarissa marries Lord Rohan (Mason), who doesn't love her but wants to find an acceptable mate to carry on his line.  Clarissa is in love with Rokeby (Granger), but Rohan won't let her leave, despite the fact that after Hesther returns, it turns out he's in love with her.  While no one is happy in this scenario, it is Hesther who finally has enough, and when Clarissa comes down with a fever, she puts the fire out & opens the windows, essentially forcing her to succumb to pneumonia.  Before Hesther can marry Rohan, though, he realizes what she's done, and while he won't turn her in to the police, he decides he should inflict his own punishment-and beats her to death.

I have a confession to make-normally I watch these films chronologically, but I happened to watch next week's film first, so I actually know next week's movie is similar to this week's but better.  Part of that is that this film doesn't put Margaret Lockwood, whom I've discovered is an acting treasure, front-and-center.  Her Hesther is a side character, underwritten & underrepresented on the screen for Clarissa & her random inanities getting center stage.  This makes the film's latter half, which is still enjoyable, less riveting.

But I can't deny that Lockwood, even with a smaller part, doesn't own the screen.  As a woman bitter about her position in life (she wanted money, she felt she deserved it, and if love happened to come with it, that was incidental), she plays her role perfectly, reducing everyone around her to mere hurdles as she struggles to get her own way.  I loved the penultimate scene of the movie, even if it's far crueler than even Hesther deserved (where she's essentially beaten to death by her lover for killing his wife), as it's so out-of-character for a film of this era (there's no way that this movie could have been made in the United States at the time).  As I said, next week you'll discover that this leniency from the British film board could create one of the most scandalous pictures I've seen from the 1940's, one that puts Lockwood & her newfound penchant for villainy center stage.

The Lady Vanishes (1938)

Film: The Lady Vanishes (1938)

Stars: Margaret Lockwood, Michael Redgrave, Paul Lukas, May Whitty

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Oscar History: No nominations

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

As I mentioned in our initial writeup, Margaret Lockwood's career as a proper headlining star began in 1938 with Alfred Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes, which we're investigating today.  That doesn't mean she hadn't worked in pictures before this film, though.  Lockwood was classically trained as a stage actress in London, and had been doing random work with little success for several years before her breakout, including a film with Michael Powell, and frequently getting cast opposite Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.  Her career wasn't taking off the way she would've hoped, though, until 1938, when she got cast in Carol Reed's Bank Holiday, which was a hit (making her a name), and cemented her stature with The Lady Vanishes, which was one of Hitchcock's most popular films of the 1930's.  Hitchcock, who disliked Redgrave but adored Lockwood (he called her a "star of hitherto unanticipated possibilities") made a pretty big name for himself with this movie, and it stands on the precipice of Hitchcock's career as the final of his "British pictures" before signing with David O. Selznick, making Rebecca, and well, becoming HITCHCOCK.

(Spoilers Ahead) But I'm getting ahead of myself-we first need to discuss The Lady Vanishes, which is a treasure.  The film is set initially in an invented country where a number of guests at a ski lodge are stuck for the night due to an avalanche.  Among them are Iris (Lockwood), a beautiful woman doomed to a boring impending engagement, Gilbert (Redgrave) a scamp of a musician whom Iris takes a quick dislike toward, and Miss Froy (Whitty), a kind old woman who enjoys the music of a troubadour outside her window.  The next day all three are on a train bound for England with a variety of figures, including Caldicott & Charters (more on them in a second), two men attempting to get to a cricket match.  On the train, though, Miss Froy suddenly goes missing despite not having a stop, and what's weirder...no one on the train seems to believe Iris when she tells them she's gone, even people who saw her on the train.  I won't get into every nook-and-cranny of the story, but suffice it to say, sometimes conspiracy theories can be true, and it does appear that there's an entire train out to gaslight Iris (and eventually Gilbert, who becomes her love interest) in hopes of keeping Miss Froy's location at bay.

The movie is hailed as Hitchcock's best film of this period, and it's easy to see why-it plays fresh & quick, a great mystery with a number of colorful characters.  Caldicott & Charters would in fact become something of a thing in the following years, with the actors bringing them to other film, television, & radio shows (they are hilarious as a sort of Rosencrantz & Guildenstern for the Hitchcock set).  The plot is juicy, fast-paced, and filled with a lot of hilarious site gags (particularly fun is Catherine Lacey as a brassy "nun"), and it is honestly captivating from start to finish.

And our leads are great!  May Whitty gets sidelined for large chunks of the film but is as pleasant as ever as Mrs. Froy, and Michael Redgrave (in his first major role) is a scalawag who pairs beautifully with our lead Margaret Lockwood.  I will admit that with Lockwood, I had seen virtually none of her movies so I didn't know what to expect, but if this is any indication of her talents, we are in for a treat this month.  Lockwood is witty, spry, & takes a "damsel in distress" role & turns it on its head, totally being willing to take on the action (she hits a man over the head with a bottle at one point), and playing her Iris as a modern woman.  Honestly-I wasn't expecting the week after Dead End was my first home run of 2021 to fall so soon, but I can't deny it when it happens...for the first time ever, we're doing consecutive five-star movies.

Saturdays with the Stars: Margaret Lockwood

Each month of 2021 we will be taking a look at the leading ladies of some of Alfred Hitchcock's many celebrated classics; we'll be doing this series chronologically to when they first entered Hitchcock's filmography.  Last month we looked at the sad-eyed stardom of Sylvia Sidney.  This month, we'll look at possibly the most obscure actress we're going to profile this year, though at certain points of the 1930's and 40's, had you not known her name in casual conversation, you would have gotten some strange looks from those you were talking to for not knowing a headlining actress.  This month, our star is Margaret Lockwood.

Lockwood, though a British citizen, was born in India (when it was still under British rule).  She grew up in a comfortable background (her father was a railroad administrator), and started acting at a young age, eventually joining the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts & then eventually making a lot of B-Grade pictures (with the exception of Carol Reed's directorial debut Midshipman Easy), with increasingly bigger roles.

This all changed in 1938 when Lockwood appeared in Alfred Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes in the lead role.  It was a huge coup for Lockwood, then a relative unknown, and was considered by many to be one of the finest films of the year.  Lockwood was pretty stingy when it came to public interviews, so I can't find any direct quotes from her on the making of The Lady Vanishes, but reports about the film indicate that Hitchcock was a fan, and it was actually her young leading man Michael Redgrave whom Hitch despised on the set.

Lockwood is unique in the actresses we've profiled in Saturdays with the Stars in that she worked primarily in English-language films, but most of her best-known work was in British films, and while they were a big deal in the UK, didn't make a similar splash here.  Films like The Man in Grey and The Wicked Lady were both huge hits in Great Britain, but didn't make much impression in the states, and so I'm genuinely curious what she's like as an actress, as she had an impressive career with a number of major stars (everyone from James Mason to Shirley Temple) sharing top billing alongside her.   Her reluctance to embrace fame in Hollywood (she was offered the lead in Forever Amber, which eventually went to Linda Darnell), chanced her into a series of flops that ended her career as a leading woman by the early 1950's.  This month, though, we're going to acquaint ourselves with not only The Lady Vanishes but also Margaret Lockwood herself, and the unusual career in pictures she crafted.