Saturdays with the Stars Season 4 Finale

Two of our stars this year, Lucille Ball & Ann Sothern

We ended the year on a Saturday (a first for our series), so I wasn't able to get this recap out in 2022 like we normally do, but I didn't want to finish our fourth season of Saturdays with the Stars without our annual recap.  While we are headed into a new season this coming Saturday focusing on western stars, I would be remiss if we didn't take a moment to talk through actors in television, and what I learned from our fourth season.

This year was really interesting for me for a couple of reasons.  For starters, it was really the first season where I didn't have "stars" at the center, and of course it was our first season with men.  As a result, there were actors this year where I was watching a movie where they barely showed up, character actors in Old Hollywood being harder to track their "most significant" roles.  As a result, our annual discussion below of "favorite performances" I ended up in some cases having less options.

But I also kind of loved that, as it underlined the main thesis of this year: that television gave these performers an opportunity that movies simply couldn't.  Some of these actors had great potential, but the public (or the studio heads) couldn't see it for what it was, and TV brought that talent out in them.  Others, quite frankly, needed the banality of television compared to the "make an impact every time" culture of movies because their star personas weren't as curated.  We'll be getting back to star culture in 2023 (while they might occasionally take supporting parts depending on our film, all 12 of our stars this year are generally considered to be "leading players"), I won't forget that lesson as I continue to watch the twelve stars we watched this past year in other films in the decades to come.  Below, I have created a little list celebrating the best of this year's stars.  Thank you so much to everyone who joined us for part or all of this year's season-I'm excited to have you back for season five's "When Cowboys Ruled Hollywood"!: 

Favorite Performance from Each Star 

January: Lucille Ball-Dance. Girl. Dance.

February: Jack Benny-George Washington Slept Here

March: Eve Arden-Comrade X

April: Ann Sothern-Lady in a Cage

May: Robert Young-They Won't Believe Me

June: Spring Byington-BF's Daughter

July: Loretta Young-Midnight Mary

August: John Payne-Silver Lode

September: Ward Bond-The Wings of Eagles

October: Walter Brennan-Come and Get It

November: Donna Reed-The Last Time I Saw Paris

December: Barbara Stanwyck-Baby Face

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

Eve Arden

Lucille Ball

Jack Benny

Ann Sothern

Barbara Stanwyck

5 Favorite Performances of the Year (Alphabetical)

Lucille Ball, Dance. Girl. Dance.

Barbara Stanwyck, Baby Face

Barbara Stanwyck, The Furies

Ann Sothern, Lady in a Cage

Loretta Young, Midnight Mary

10 Favorite Films of the Year (Alphabetical)

Baby Face

Dance. Girl. Dance.

Forty Guns

The Furies

George Washington Slept Here

Lady in a Cage

Rio Bravo

The Stranger

They Were Expendable

They Won't Believe Me

Top 10 Performances of the Year (Not By Our Stars...and Yes, Alphabetical)

Judith Anderson, The Furies

James Caan, Lady in a Cage

Charles Coburn, George Washington Slept Here

Olivia de Havilland, Lady in a Cage

Susan Hayward, They Won't Believe Me

Walter Huston, The Furies

Percy Kilbride, George Washington Slept Here

Edward G. Robinson, The Stranger

John Wayne, Rio Bravo

Orson Welles, The Stranger

Please Don’t Eat the Daisies (1960)

Film: Please Don't Eat the Daisies (1960)

Stars: Doris Day, David Niven, Janis Paige, Richard Haydn, Spring Byington

Director: Charles Walters

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

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

Jumping from 1948 to 1960 is a big gap in Spring Byington's career, and a large part of that jump happens because during that time, Byington found the sort of leading lady stardom that had alluded her in her career in movies.  In 1952, Byington had started to work on the CBS radio program December Bride, where she plays a woman who has been widowed, but is intent on finding a new husband (hence, becoming a "December Bride").  Desilu Productions thought that this would make a good companion to I Love Lucy, and brought the radio show to television, putting it on immediately after I Love Lucy, which meant it was a Top 10 hit for the first four seasons it was on.  This allowed Byington, now in her seventies, to be the lead in one of the most-watched shows in America.  Byington even got two Emmy nominations for the series (losing both to Jane Wyatt on Father Knows Best), but when the series moved out of the comfy slot behind I Love Lucy, it tanked and was quickly cancelled.  Byington would only briefly return to one last movie after that, today's film Please Don't Eat the Daisies.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is about Kay Mackay (Day) a housewife with four sons who is living in a cramped New York apartment with her drama critic husband Larry (Niven).  The two find out that they're being evicted, and rather than stay in the city, they move to a dilapidated old house in the middle of the country, with Kay's mother Suzie (Byington) in tow.  This causes friction in their marriage, with Larry leaving the city frequently, and letting his newfound fame as a viper-tongued critic go to his head.  This is particularly a problem when an actress he lambasted, Deborah Vaughn (Paige) initially makes a scene, slapping him at a restaurant, and then realizing the publicity this could get both she & Larry, starts to coordinate moments for more publicity, trying to start an affair with him.  Suzie eventually convinces Kay that she needs to fight for her husband, and she does, with the two of them making up, now happily settled into their country domesticity.

Your mileage with this film will largely depend on your thoughts on Doris Day as a leading woman.  Few actresses enjoyed the kind of sustained success that Day did from the early 1950's to the late 1960's, and Please Don't Eat the Daisies was no exception (it was a huge hit for MGM), but I get that her movies tend to be a bit repetitive and somewhat reductive (that the onus on fixing her husband's wandering eye falls to Day's wife rather than Niven's character is not lost on me).  But I generally like Doris Day's movies, and this is cute.  Janis Paige is fun (as always) as a vamp, and I think it's always enjoyable.  There should've been more antics from the sons (particularly the adorable baby obsessed with Coca-Cola), and more singing from Day (she only does the film's bizarrely-monikered title song), but this is enjoyable.

It's also a fitting sendoff for Byington, playing yet another charming mother character.  Though she'd live until 1971, dying from cancer at the age of 84, she'd never make another movie, working in television instead on programs as varied as The Tab Hunter Show, Dennis the Menace, Mister Ed, The Flying Nun, and in a recurring role on the western Laramie.  Next month, we're going to switch gears a little bit as we focus on an actress who, unlike Byington, was not only a leading lady, but throughout the 1930's & 40's was a big star...but whom modern audiences, if they remember her at all, recall her for her immaculately-bedecked television show in the 1950's.

OVP: B.F.'s Daughter (1948)

Film: B.F.'s Daughter (1948)

Stars: Barbara Stanwyck, Van Heflin, Charles Coburn, Richard Hart, Spring Byington

Director: Robert Z. Leonard

Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Costume Design)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

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

Last week we talked about Meet John Doe, which was indicative of Spring Byington's career and where it was heading out of the 1940's.  While in the 1930's, Byington had managed to land a role in a successful franchise and score her first Oscar nomination, Byington's career never really graduated to something similar to what, say, Marie Dressler achieved in the early 1930's.  The 1940's were not a time for unconventional female leads striking out on their own (indeed successes like Dressler's would struggle in every era...though you could argue that modern audiences allow women like Judi Dench, Maggie Smith, & Helen Mirren to get the kinds of leading roles that Byington could have been allotted in the 1940's had Hollywood been more open).  Next week we're going to talk about Byington & how she eventually found true, leading lady stardom in television, but this week, we're going to kind of turn on an anti-spotlight, watching a film where Byington is almost completely sidelined, despite decent billing on the poster.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is an unusual marital drama, where the oddly-matched couple, Polly Fulton (Stanwyck), the conventional but lovelorn daughter of industrialist BF Fulton (Coburn) and his wife Gladys (Byington) and Tom Brett (Heflin), a man with progressive (read: socialist) ideals about the American capitalist system, fall in love & end up together.  But that falling in love happens in the first 15 minutes of the movie.  The rest of the film has Polly & Tom struggling with the concept of marital bliss with divergent politics, particularly when World War II comes around and Polly's old flame Bob (Hart) finds himself in harm's way while Tom is clearly pondering an affair.

BF's Daughter sounds better than it is.  The story is based on a rather controversial novel, but the Hays Code ensured that much of the sex, adultery, & political sharpness is erased from this, giving us a nationalistic, capitalist vision where Stanwyck remains subservient to her husband...when she isn't needed to point out all that is wrong with Heflin's progressive ideals.  There's certainly too much plot to the movie, and honestly you could have easily cut out the entire "BF" portion of the plot, and Byington with it.  Coburn gets a bigger role, but is unnecessary to the end resolution, mostly because he dies halfway through the film, but in the process setting off almost no story.  It's a badly-constructed movie, and Byington is underused.

The film got one Oscar nomination, and it's odd.  The film's costumes by legendary designer Irene aren't really that interesting...with one exception.  While Stanwyck is sharply dressed in pantsuits and skirts throughout, there's nothing fascinating about the movie's aesthetic, except about halfway through when the actress puts on this jaw-dropping white-and-gold evening gown that likely got the Oscar nomination straight up.  There aren't a lot of great images of it that aren't covered in "Getty Image" copyrights, but you'd be wise to google it as it's gorgeous.  I'm not a huge fan of giving nominations just for one costume, particularly one that isn't really character-building, but I forgive Oscar for indulging here as it's a beautiful frock.

OVP: Meet John Doe (1941)

Film: Meet John Doe (1941)

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

Director: Frank Capra

Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Motion Picture Story)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

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

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

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

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

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

The Jones Family in Hollywood (1939)

Film: The Jones Family in Hollywood (1939)

Stars: Jed Prouty, Spring Byington, Kenneth Howell, George Ernest, June Carlson, Florence Roberts

Diretor: Malcolm St. Clair

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

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

As we mentioned in our kickoff article about Spring Byington, the actress was never really a leading star in the way that many of her era were.  Even compared to a character actress like Marie Dressler, she wasn't a leading woman in a traditional sense, and mostly spent her career playing mothers-and-wives until her big break in December Bride in the 1950's.  That doesn't mean, though, that she wasn't at one point a household name, and that came about rather early in her film career.  While Byington was in big movies throughout the 1930's that are remembered today like the 1933 Little Women (with a young Katharine Hepburn) and the 1938 Best Picture You Can't Take It With You (for which she won her only Oscar nomination), Byington's chief fame during this era was actually in a series of pictures that are almost nonexistent today: The Jones Family movies.  We're going to talk about why these were such a big deal in a second, but I'm going to unorthodoxly kick off our film first, today's being the 13th of the seventeen films that were made in the series.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie starts out in a small town where Mr. Jones (Prouty), an important member of the American Legion and seemingly the town's mayor, has been invited to go to Hollywood.  Initially he has only intentions of taking his wife Mrs. Jones (Byington), but soon his entire family, including children Jack (Howell), Roger (Ernest), and Lucy (Carlson), as well as his mother Granny Jones (Roberts) are along with him.  Once there, Lucy and Jack both fall for movie stars, but neither realize these relationships aren't on the up-and-up.  Jack's girlfriend is trying to use him to better understand how small town girls think for a role she's playing, while Lucy's beau, is well, he's trying to get laid but obviously a movie from 1939 isn't going to be that overt.  The film ends with them all realizing, after a lot of confusion, that they're better off back in their small town life than trying out the big wheels of Hollywood.

The movie has a couple of fun gags (Roberts as the grandmother gets all of the good one-liners...Byington, our June star who normally would get this type of part, is mostly just window dressing), perhaps because it was written by Buster Keaton, at this point in the twilight of his film career.  But for the most part it's pretty banal (though I want to point out for the record that if Roger wasn't meant to read as gay, the filmmakers failed in that enterprise with my modern lens).  In a lot of ways this recalls something like the Blondie pictures over at Columbia or MGM's successful Andy Hardy movies.  In a couple of decades, this would've been an Ozzie & Harriet style sitcom, but without the advent of television, this was just a second feature for some of Fox's more successful films in a double billing.

You might ask why I watched this film, nearing the end of Byington's time with the series (she'd appear in all 17 of the films, and in fact Prouty was the only actor of the main family who didn't appear in all of the movies).  The reason is that the Jones Family movies are basically forgotten, in a way that the Andy Hardy and Thin Man movies of the era have not been.  It has never been released on home video, and I watched this one on YouTube.  If there's a copy of Every Saturday Night, the first film in the series, I can't find it online, and these have such little cultural cache that The Jones Family Go to Hollywood is about to get its first review ever on Letterboxd as soon as I click publish on this.

Saturdays with the Stars: Spring Byington

Each month of 2022 we will be taking a look at one-time film actors who became foundational figures in the early days of television, stretching from the early 1950's into the mid-1960's.  Last month we talked about Robert Young, an actor who spent much of the early days of Classical Hollywood playing second fiddle to some of the biggest actresses of the era before he became the star of two classic early TV series.  This month, we're going to talk about a woman who was never a leading player in Hollywood, but for decades was one of the most celebrated character actresses of her time, before a radio show led to one of the biggest successes of her career in the mid-1950's.  This month's star is Spring Byington.

Spring Byington was born in Colorado Springs in 1886, making her one of the oldest chronological figures we've profiled in our four years of Saturdays with the Stars, the daughter of a school superintendent and a doctor.  After her father's death, she lived with relatives in Denver before eventually making her way to New York City, trying her hand at acting.  At first finding work in repertory theater, Byington eventually got to Broadway, where she became a regular, appearing in dozens of plays throughout the 1920's & early 1930's.  During this time, she began to work in movies, and gained more prominence in the industry playing Marmee in Little Women (the Katharine Hepburn one).  This led to a remarkably long list of playing matrons, mothers, & aunts throughout the coming decades, including getting an Oscar nomination for You Can't Take It With You.  Similar to Ann Sothern two months ago, Byington got much of her biggest success through a film serial, The Jones Family movies which numbered seventeen in all from 1936-40 (Byington appeared in every one of the pictures).

A turn in radio, though, changed Byington's life.  Initially a radio show on CBS, Desilu Productions decided to turn the program into a television series, and even put it on after I Love Lucy.  Its proximity to Lucy made it a smash ratings hit, staying in the Top 10 for its first four seasons, and won Byington two Emmy nominations.  Byington would spend much of the remainder of her career in television, primarily in high-profile guest spots, but this month we're going to turn the pages back a bit, and look at Byington's long film career, trying to understand why it took so long for her to get the true center stage on December Bride.

OVP: You Can't Take It With You (1938)

Film: You Can't Take It With You (1938)

Stars: Jean Arthur, Lionel Barrymore, James Stewart, Edward Arnold, Mischa Auer, Ann Miller, Spring Byington, HB Warner, Harry Davenport

Director: Frank Capra

Oscar History: 7 nominations/2 wins (Best Picture*, Director, Supporting Actress-Spring Byington, Adapted Screenplay, Cinematography, Film Editing, Sound Recording)

(Not So) Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

I remember once someone said to me that watching a primary field of presidential candidates is a bit perplexing, because they all start out looking normal, like average human beings, and yet one of them is going to become immortal, putting their stamp forever on history (for the good or the bad).  The same can be said, to a degree, about a film that wins Best Picture.  You take 5, 8, 10, 12 (the number varies) movies, and then at the end of the night, one of them gets to be immortalized (and debated) forever as the "Best Picture of the Year."  This, of course, comes with some strange side effects in the same way that presidential races do.  After all, there are some Best Pictures that even with pedigree & fame, don't really amount to much historically, and you'd be forgive for thinking of You Can't Take It With You in that way.  The film, the victor in 1938, is a movie that doesn't necessarily standout in the careers of either its actors or its director, and yet despite its passed over reputation, it's a genuinely lovely (and perhaps more modern than you'd expect) movie that deserves its time in the sun.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is about Anthony Kirby (Arnold), a business mogul in the late 1920's, who only has a mind for the matter-of-fact.  He is grooming his son Tony (Stewart) to take over the family business at one point, but there's a hiccup-Tony is in love with his stenographer Alice (Arthur), and they know nothing about her family.  It turns out that Alice's family is full of eccentrics, led by the understanding & wonderful Grandpa Vanderhof (Barrymore).  As the film continues, we see a meeting of the stuffy Kirby's with the laid-back Vanderhof's which results in all of them going to jail (due to an illegal fireworks explosion).  After this, Alice breaks up with Tony, not comfortable with the way that his family has been judging hers, but as this is a Frank Capra film, we do find a happy ending for all.  Mr. Kirby, who has been trying to buy the Vanderhof's house the whole film (and successfully does when Grandpa wants to move to be closer to Alice, who has fled), gives back the house, Tony & Alice end up together, and the family is filled with a group brimming with even more eccentrics.

I have seen You Can't Take It With You before, though it has been at least 20 years (if not longer), and it was one of the first films I caught when I started watching Best Picture winners.  I remembered relatively little about the film, to the point where I remembered a woman frequently dancing, but it wasn't until I saw the movie that I suddenly understood the "no talent" hoofer in the film is actually Ann Miller, one of the greatest dancers of Hollywood's Golden Age.  As a result, I kind of had downgraded my initially pleasant interactions with the picture because I assumed that the more saccharine elements that I had encountered with the movie would hold, perhaps over-washing them, as does on occasion happen with Frank Capra's "lesser" classics.

This wasn't the case here, though.  You Can't Take It With You is genuinely charming, and like I said, thoroughly modern.  While the film's racial politics do present some problems (the white people live a life of leisure where they pursue their dreams while the two black characters are both servants who are not given the same kind of leniency with their interests), it does show a world where people don't put all of their value in money, and more importantly, don't put it on work.  Grandpa Vanderhof occasionally indulges in libertarian conversations with random people about his dislike of taxes, but really there's a lot of socialist indulgence here which is refreshing-the movie's politics basically say "pursue your dreams-life is short, and what makes you happy is the best thing for you," and I honestly can't think of a lot of movies of this era (or any era) that say to do this, even if it doesn't mean you'll make money from it.  There's something really shocking about putting value into hobbies & interests without needing to justify it through finance that I found hit a nerve with me (a man who spends much of his time watching & chronicling movies for a blog that he gets no financial compensation for), and that resonated in a way that felt refreshingly Millennial/Gen Z.

The movie's actors have all had bigger classics (Mr. Smith, It's a Wonderful Life, On the Town, Shane), but really this cast is A+ and Capra achieves something with a call sheet that reads like a Film Twitter dream list of the 1930's.   Arthur got top billing here (Stewart was still one year away from being the eternal "first name" on the poster), and shines-if you like Jean Arthur, with her omnipresent perkiness, you'll love her here as she's at her brightest (Arthur's offscreen persona was vastly different to her onscreen one, loathing publicity & regularly struggling with even the briefest of public interactions, to the point where her later theatrical career was a series of breakdowns...she'd make a good biopic if Hollywood is listening).  Stewart is charming & lovely, given a side role but one that he manages to make affable.  Edward Arnold gets to play what would become a prototypical part for him (the large-and-in-charge wealthy villain).  Arnold had to have enjoyed this film's reputation more than anyone.  Earlier in 1938, he'd been labeled "Box Office Poison" by the Hollywood Reporter, saying he was one of the actors that theater owners most loathed seeing on a movie poster...that he ended up months later starring in a movie that won Best Picture and was a financial success had to have been great revenge.

The Vanderhof's are all great too.  Barrymore, like Arthur & Stewart, could play this part in his sleep, but that doesn't mean that we should just assume that his movie star aura is easily administered.  Spring Byington & Ann Miller are both fun in small roles as people pursuing their passions without a hint of success; Byington won the only Oscar nomination of her long career for this part, and in a lot of ways it resembles some of the "character nominations" we see even today, where a longtime side favorite gets their due in a successful Best Picture contender (think June Squibb or Laurie Metcalf).  All-in-all, this is a great ensemble, one where it's difficult to single out a specific actor, but where everyone is at peak condition.

The film's Oscar nominations are all worthy.  The cinematography is standard, but well-utilized-you get a sense from the way the camera moves that they know that the house itself (a surefire Art Direction nominee if that category had existed yet) is a great supporting player in this piece.  The writing is sharp, with silly (sometimes schmaltzy, but not too bad) dialogue, while the editing is solid-giving us enough fun moments with the Vanderhof's to get you to really know them without it ever feeling long (and at 2+ hours that was a risk for a movie that doesn't really have much of a plot to speak of other than boy-meets-girl).  The sound design is also great-the film's fireworks pop & crackle, and the regular musical interludes play perfectly.  I honestly had a great time-this isn't a landmark Capra film (it's not quintessential like It Happened One Night or It's a Wonderful Life), but if all of the Best Picture winners are "immortal," similar to my presidential theory above, this is one that feels like a president you didn't realize was impressive as history books would have led you to believe.

OVP: Louisa (1950)

Film: Louisa (1950)

Stars: Ronald Reagan, Charles Coburn, Ruth Hussey, Edmund Gwenn, Spring Byington, Piper Laurie

Director: Alexander Hall

Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Sound Recording)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

An unexpected theme over the last month on this blog has been me revisiting the very strange Best Sound Recording nominations of the 1940's & 50's at the Oscars.  I've talked about this a few times, but sound nominations today seem to have a logic, even if it's not a solid one.  Musicals, action films, Best Picture nominees...it's pretty easy to understand the why behind each sound nomination that happens at the Oscars.  That wasn't the case in the 1950's, though, as we'll see once again today with Louisa, a romantic-comedy that has literally nothing special about its sound design, and at the time its sound designer (Leslie I. Carey) had only even been nominated once before.  As for the film itself?  Let's find out!

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is about the Norton family.  Hal (Reagan) has had his widowed mother Louisa (Byington) move into their home, much to the chagrin of the rest of the family.  Louisa frequently critiques his wife Meg (Hussey) as well as his two children, particularly daughter Cathy (Laurie, in her film debut), and is deeply opinionated about everything.  She eventually apologizes to a green grocer, Henry (Gwenn), she yelled at, seeing how persnickety she has become, and they start dating.  This makes Hal upset, not wanting to see his mother with a new man, but things take a turn when during a social event, Louisa meets Hal's boss Abel (Coburn), who also takes a fancy to Louisa, setting up a rivalry between Abel & Henry that ends with Henry ultimately winning Louisa's affections, and in the process also winning over Louisa's family.

The film is fun, especially in 1950's Hollywood, because the focus isn't really on the romantic adventures of the headliners.  In most movies it'd be Reagan & Hussey whose romance would take central stage, but instead we have Byington, Gwenn, & Coburn, scene-stealers all, get the central romance.  This works better in theory than execution though.  None of the actors seems to take advantage of this new centerstage the way you'd hope (Coburn comes across the best), and while Reagan, a generally limited actor, is better at comedy than he ever was at drama, he has little chemistry with either Hussey or Byington, and as a result the film drags as we hit the last 40 minutes or so.

The Sound recording nomination, as I said, is bizarre.  Nothing stands out from the sound work.  The score is minimal (and not memorable), and while there is a western-themed dance sequence, it's not outstanding & really just involves a couple cheating at the limbo.  Other than that...it's literally just talking.  Nothing noteworthy or technically challenging...I have no explanations as to how this got nominated, and shall stop ruminating on it as it's been driving me bonkers since I saw the film how the Academy even noticed it (it's the film's only nomination!)

OVP: When Ladies Meet (1941)

Film: When Ladies Meet (1941)

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

Director: Robert Z. Leonard

Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Art Direction)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

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

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

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

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

OVP: Broadway Hostess (1935)

Film: Broadway Hostess (1935)

Stars: Winifred Shaw, Genevieve Tobin, Lyle Talbot, Allen Jenkins, Phil Regan, Spring Byington

Director: Frank McDonald

Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Dance Direction)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

I am, if you couldn't tell from the countless articles on this blog, a relatively organized person.  I don't like chaos (though currently my messy kitchen would beg to differ), and I'm someone who is always armed with at least a dozen "bucket/to do/goal" lists that I'm working on.  One of the ones I've been focusing on is trying to finish a certain number of OVP films each month so that I am completely done with the project by the time I reach a specific age (that will remain between myself & my birth certificate, but let's just say it's a long way off so don't worry if you love the series).  This month, because it's a shorter one, I'm kind of cheating my way through it, and only watching the shortest films on my DVR, one of which is Broadway Hostess, a largely forgotten musical from the 1930's that was cited for Dance Direction, but who got its "play button click" on Saturday due to only being 68 minutes long.

(Spoilers Ahead) You know the plot of this movie, or at least you think you do, from pretty much the opening scene when Winnie (Shaw) works her way into a musical act for a failing nightclub & quickly becomes the show's star.  Lucky (Talbot), a Broadway hoodlum who has Park Avenue dreams, sees her & gets her to the top, but while she's madly in love with him, he has his eyes on Iris (Tobin), a beautiful society dame who won't marry a guy from such a low class.  The movie positions their love triangle alongside another love triangle, that involves, Lucky, Winnie, and Tommy (Regan), Winnie's piano player who has an eye for her, even though all she sees is Lucky.

Broadway Hostess is an underwhelming film, and not an interesting one.  Shaw can sing, but has zero chemistry with either of her leading men, and I honestly spent more of the film cheering for Tobin's Iris, even though she's meant to be the "spoiled rich girl who needs to be taken down a peg."  But the weird thing is...the script agrees with me.  Iris does end up with Lucky, though he nearly dies when her brother shoots him in a truly bizarre & unexpected final act moment, and Winnie does with Tommy, so the cardinal rule of romantic comedies (that you cheer for the leads to get married) is upended here.  That's not enough to save the movie, and neither is the best part of the film (Spring Byington's randy society lady who also marries a Broadway commoner in Allen Jenkins' Fishcake), but it is enough so that I'll remember this longer than I normally would such a film.

The movie's Oscar nomination feels something of a cheat.  In 1935 the Dance Direction category was more for the choreographer himself than just for the film, and choreographer Bobby Connolly (who would be nominated all three years the category existed) was cited both for this and for Go Into Your Dance with Al Jolson & Ruby Keeler.  Broadway Hostess has exactly one dance number, and it's not that impressive though it is bizarre.  During one of Winnie's final torch songs, we zoom in on a champagne glass that is filled with a number of beautiful women decked in veiled swimsuits, who are doing a coordinated "seduction-style" dance, though it's hardly worth of Salome.  We literally have at one point young women's heads floating out of the glass and popping like bubbles...it's not impressive, but it is trippy, and one of the weirder nominations so far I've found in the Dance Direction category.

Werewolf of London (1935)

Film: Werewolf of London (1935)
Stars: Henry Hull, Warner Oland, Valerie Hobson, Lester Matthews, Spring Byington
Director: Stuart Walker
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

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

We continue on with our month devoted to classic Hollywood horror with a move into some of the deeper cuts of the Universal Monster canon; while we'll interject other classic horror throughout the next few weeks (and move away from this motif into 1950's horror in the last week leading up to Halloween), this is where we're going to stay with the series for the next two weeks, entrenched in the Universal Monster movies of the 1930's & 40's, and here we're going to investigate a strange flick.  One of the most iconic universal horror films was The Wolf Man, with Lon Chaney, Jr. as the title character, but this wasn't the first foray that Universal did into werewolves.  While other films had used werewolves dating as far back as 1913, Werewolf of London is considered to be the first major motion-picture from a Hollywood studio to feature a werewolf, and as we'll see below, was highly influential in the 80 years that followed on what would become a staple of horror cinema.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is prototypical of the werewolf genre.  We have Dr. Wilfred Glendon (Hull), who is a brilliant-but-distant botanist who is visiting Tibet in search of a rare plant that flowers due to moonlight.  While there, he is bitten by a creature who turns out to be a werewolf, and he also when he returns meets a strange man named Dr. Yogami (Oland), who claims to have met him in Tibet (which we learn later is because Dr. Yogami was the man who bit him).  Both men are werewolves, and Glendon starts to terrorize & murder young women around London.  He tries to put distance between himself and his wife Lisa (Hobson), as he is told that a werewolf will hunt the one he loves the most, which of course is his wife.  The film progresses to Glendon eventually running out of cures (Yogami steals the flowers that are supposedly the anecdote), and before he can kill Lisa, is shot by a police officer, thus stopping him and turning him back into a man, as Lisa looks on in grief.

The movie is hard to gage in some respects because it would become so prototypical of the werewolf genre-the more successful The Wolf Man would borrow heavily from this film, even using the same makeup artist.  Hull is not that impressive as the creature (originally Boris Karloff was supposed to be paired with Bela Lugosi as Dr. Yogami for this film, but scheduling precluded both men from appearing in the film), and you get why this film was kind of a dud at the box office-its lead is boring, and the only really good performance in it is by Spring Byington, taking on the role of a wealthy, wisecracking aunt (she would have made a far more fascinating werewolf).

That being said, the film, along with The Wolf Man and some of Universal's other horror movies, basically defined the rules to what we normally assign to "werewolves."  Before the Universal monster movies, werewolves were a part of folklore, but they were more associated with witchcraft, specifically that you became a full wolf and could do so through magic.  Here, though, the tropes of a werewolf becoming a werewolf through biting another person (adding a tragic twist to the process), that they are triggered by full moons, and that they are not full wolves but human hybrids are all became established as horror movie canon.  As a result, while this movie isn't that good, it's deeply influential on future horror films, including several we'll see later this month.

Past Horror Month Reviews (Listed Chronologically): The Golem, The Phantom of the Opera, Dracula, Frankenstein, Freaks, The Mummy, The Old Dark House, The Invisible Man, The Black Cat, The Bride of Frankenstein, Mad Love, Son of Frankenstein, The Wolf Man, The Ghost of Frankenstein, The House of Frankenstein, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, It Came from Outer Space, Creature from the Black Lagoon, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Masque of the Red Death

OVP: The Devil and Miss Jones (1941)

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

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

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

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

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

OVP: The War Against Mrs. Hadley (1942)

Film: The War Against Mrs. Hadley (1942)
Stars: Fay Bainter, Edward Arnold, Richard Ney, Jean Rogers, Sara Allgood, Spring Byington, Van Johnson
Director: Harold S. Bucquet
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Original Screenplay)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

World War II had a profound effect on the films of the 1940's.  During the era, most of the biggest stars, particularly the male stars, were off fighting and as a result, the films made during the era were predominantly about women, and oftentimes didn't even need to revolve around a man.  Such is the case for the bulk of The War Against Mrs. Hadley, yet another one of the OVP films that I haven't heard of that Turner Classic Movies has graciously put in front of me this month.  Here we have Mrs. Stella Hadley (Bainter) a woman who has decided that, despite the fact that everyone around her has gotten into the war spirit following Pearl Harbor, she herself is going to go on with her life as usual, and make a personal stand against everything going against her.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film elicited a few strange reactions in me, quite frankly.  Being as it's from the 1940's I expected sexism to rear its ugly head, but oddly enough it came about in ways I hadn't quite anticipated.  Fay Bainter, an actress I know little of other than her trio of Oscar-nominated performances, is the title protagonist of the story, and she is frequently finding herself at odds with those around her, including her daughter Pat (Rogers), son-in-law-to-be Mike (am I the only person who never found Van Johnson attractive?), friend-who-is-in-love-with-her Elliott (Arnold), and her drunken son Ted (Ney, who is Minka Kelly's grandfather if you want a truly random fact for today).  The others rally quickly to the war effort, but Mrs. Hadley has no intention of seeing her life turned upside-down by the war and doesn't see why everyone else behaves differently as a result of it.

It's actually a pretty interesting conundrum, particularly when seen through the lens of World War II and when this film was made.  After all, in 1942 the war had just started and having someone who wasn't aiding the war effort was bordering on the illegal, certainly stamping into unpatriotic territory.  And yet, Mrs. Hadley, though the screenwriter tries to stop her from being so, is occasionally quite reasonable.  While she's made to be a silly, flitty character, Bainter instills in her enough sense and decorum that she never feels completely inauthentic in her grievances.  After all, her daughter comes to her saying she wants to get married to a man that Stella has only known for a very short while, and wants her blessing instantly, which feels a tad rushed.  The same could be said for Elliott, who lies to her repeatedly in order to stave off a frustrating confrontation, and one has to have sympathy for her trying to keep her son, who has shown himself to be a wastrel for much of the movie, out of a war before he's matured.  Honestly, it feels like for most of the film Mrs. Hadley is being unduly pressured to support a war she didn't agree with politically and befriend herself to people she's never cared for in the past, and seemingly with good reason (she disagrees with them politically and likely is upset with the way her late husband lost his business and job).

It's an interesting conundrum because the script doesn't really allow for us to think of Mrs. Hadley as anything other than hard and proud, and we get that from Sara Allgood as the weirdly-violent Mrs. Fitzpatrick (she threatens both to beat her son and to have her son beat her daughter-in-law in jest, but it still feels quite outlandish in the moment) who is in charge of the "shape up" scene that was inevitably coming.  The ending of the film has her abandon all of her principles and marry Elliott while going off to war, which is unfortunate because in many ways it feels like Mrs. Hadley had an approach that wasn't totally out-of-sync with some pacifists at the time.  I couldn't help but think of Jeanette Rankin, the only member of Congress who voted against World War I and World War II, who was pilloried by the press and her constituents afterward, but she later used her Pacifist leanings to great use in standing against the military involvement in Vietnam.  Mrs. Hadley would read like bad propaganda at the time, quite frankly, but the questions it raises after enduring less popular wars than World War II (like the Vietnam Conflict and the Iraq War) is interesting, particularly with a very non-judgmental Fay Bainter playing Mrs. Hadley as a human being and not a caricature.

Those are my thoughts on this film, which was nominated for an Original Screenplay citation, though really its interest is only sustained through Bainter's fine work in the lead.  How about yours?  Do you ever find films that, thanks to history, have a completely different lens as a result?  What do you think of the films made in the height of the war, when the B-and-C-Grade stars got their moments at the tops of the marquee?  Share your thoughts in the comments!

OVP: The Enchanted Cottage (1945)

Film: The Enchanted Cottage (1945)
Stars: Dorothy McGuire, Robert Young, Herbert Marshall, Mildred Natwick, Spring Byington
Director: John Cromwell
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Original Score)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

It's hard to imagine somedays, but there was once a time when television and its ability to shape dozens of stories, characters, and ideas into a weekly visit into our living rooms was not a regular occurrence, or even something that was a possibility.  At the time, the only way of doing that was through the mediums of literature, and later movies.  I kept thinking back on this while watching The Enchanted Cottage, as the entire plotline seemed, for better or worse, to be a perfect tale for one of the all-time greatest television series, The Twilight Zone.

(As I just mentioned The Twilight Zone, you know spoilers are coming, so carry on at your own risk) The movie takes place in a small New England town, where a homely girl becomes a maid at a mysterious cottage.  The girl is Dorothy McGuire, though, so "homely" is a bit of a stretch when you have someone as beautiful as she onscreen-they may have subtracted the makeup and given her dumpy clothes but with those eyes and that complexion, "homely" is not the correct word.  She works for a housekeeper played by veteran character actress Mildred Natwick (channelling Judith Anderson in Rebecca, at least in the start of the film) who has lived in the house ever since her husband tragically died during World War I.  They are taking in guests on the eve of World War II, including the dashing bridegroom-to-be Robert Young.  Young goes off-to-war and comes back with tragic scarring and becomes a recluse in the house, only to find himself falling for, and then marrying McGuire's dowdy maid.

The story progresses with a twist, that after their marriage, suddenly they have returned to their movie star good looks (good looks in quotations here for Young-while he's obviously not ugly, I've always found him a little too "Mickey Rooney" looking for my tastes, but for the sake of argument let's proceed once more).  They share this good fortune with no one except their blind friend, played by Herbert Marshall.  What Marshall eventually realizes, and which McGuire and Young find out in an unfortunate scene with Spring Byington later, is that they have not in fact changed, but love has caused them to see themselves as beautiful, and that is the enchantment of the cottage.  After realizing that this is all that matters, we get a movie-star kiss and a happy ending.

For anyone familiar with The Twilight Zone, you can tell that this is the exact sort of "twist, then moral-of-the-story" sort of tale that they familiarized itself with.  Unfortunately, this is not in one of their tight, 25 minute packages, but instead in a 91-minute film, and so there's quite a bit of filler.  The score (which features prominently in multiple scenes in the movie, as the characters are constantly playing the piano) aides the film, and the two leads, whom I'm not a super big fan of, to be honest, both do lovely jobs (particularly McGuire), but it's the sort of film that would be too simple to have been made today-charming, sweet, and with a dash of mystery, but even at an hour and a half, far too long for the film at hand.  Don't feel too badly for them, though-McGuire in particular was having a landmark year in her career-she had also made the classic The Spiral Staircase and my personal favorite of her films, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.  Two years later, she'd be a headliner in her sole Oscar-nominated performance, in Gentleman's Agreement.  Young would continue playing the overly-confident romantic lead roles in B-Grade movies, until finding massive success later on in that already discussed medium of television.

How about you? Have you seen The Enchanted Cottage?  Do you agree with my assessment that it would be better suited for television, or was only the big screen appropriate for this love story?  And what are your thoughts on Young and McGuire-do you have a favorite role, and do you think they should be better-remembered film stars than they are today?