What Was The Last Movie You Watched?

[Fading Fast]

An American Tragedy from 1931 with Phillips Holmes, Sylvia Sidney and Frances Dee


This uneven effort at bringing Theodore Dreiser's 1925 novel An American Tragedy to the screen has been eclipsed by the better-known 1951 movie version titled, A Place in the Sun. Still, for all its issues, there is something engaging about the rawness of the 1931 version.

The novel and the two movie efforts have the same core story, which starts with a poor boy, raised by religious zealots who run a mission. He grows into a troubled young man who hangs out with a bad crowd. He even flees the scene of a crime in which a young woman was killed.

His wealthy but distant uncle offers the boy a chance in his shirt factory, where, after an apprenticeship, the boy becomes a manager of the collar-stamping department. Despite company policy, he begins an affair with one of the young women working under him.

Through his uncle, the young man also meets a pretty and wealthy socialite who opens up "a place in the sun" for him, which is what he has always wanted. Just as the future is looking bright, the factory girl tells him she's pregnant and demands that he marry her.

So close, yet so far. He puts the factory girl off as much as he can, but she's rightfully persistent, so murder enters his heart, his head, or the penumbra of his thoughts. After an event similar to what happened in A Separate Peace, there's a body, a trial, and a verdict.

Phillips Holmes plays the boy, but the part exceeds his range, so he often has a dumbfounded look on his face, no matter what emotion the scene calls for. He's not talentless and is a nice-looking young man; he just doesn't have the acting range needed to carry the picture.

Sylvia Sidney, who plays the factory girl, does have the range. Her performance is movingly sweet, yet with backbone when the going gets tough. In the 1951 version, Shelley Winters plays the girl as a vicious harridan, while Sidney brings a more-rounded touch to her characterization.

Frances Dee, in the much smaller role playing the girl representing the place in the sun, also has a nice balance to her acting. In the 1951 version, the role was greatly expanded for Elizabeth Taylor, but in this earlier version, Dee is appealing as the just-out-of-reach dreamgirl.

The trial itself also stands out in the earlier version, with both the prosecuting and defense attorneys presenting their cases like bad actors in summer stock. Their performances are so obviously hammed up that one assumes they were directed to perform this way.

That direction would have come from Josef von Sternberg, who never focuses his picture on one theme, perhaps owing to the weakness of Holmes. The core, or centering, story is that of a boy reaching for the American Dream that proves to be just outside of his grasp.

The question is why is it outside of his grasp: his upbringing by religious zealots, his own limitations and demons, or an upper class that shuts the door to outsiders? The latter, as presented here, is the least likely, but the first two are never explored to the degree they should have been.

While the movie is often noted as showing the difficulty of achieving the American Dream for those of the lower classes, the movie's story shows a boy who got a girl pregnant and then didn't want to do the right thing by her (in that era) because he now had a better option.

That isn't a condemnation of the American Dream, it's a condemnation of one boy's moral failings. He had a respectable position in the company and a good future; the dream was in his grasp, but he wanted the rich not poor girl now.

Since we only have a sketchy outline of the boy's past – a poor upbringing, but heavy with Christian values – it's hard to say definitively, but if anything, his humble upbringing would have taught him that marrying the girl was the right thing to do and, of course, murder is mortal sin.

Maybe being poor instilled in him a blinding desire for wealth and status, but as presented here, he is only sympathetic in an abstract way. His actions, though, are not justifiable, so while you feel a little bit sorry for him, you still believe he, not "the system," is responsible for his behavior.

For modern audiences, much of this will seem foreign because contraception, abortion, and major shifts in societal norms have thankfully removed almost all the risks and stigma around premarital sex and pregnancy, but those events could destroy lives back in the 1930s.

What's left for viewers today is seeing that wreckage, and seeing the passions raised when the norms were broken. It's easy now to dismiss that as "ridiculous," but all societies, even ours today, has its deeply held, oh-so-important beliefs that will look silly in decades to come.

An American Tragedy is clunky, dated and needs a strong leading man, but it has such a passion for its ideas that it still holds your interest. You care about what happens to these tragic characters: You feel for the factory girl and the poor boy reaching for the brass ring.

 

[Fading Fast]

Bank Holiday from 1938 with Margaret Lockwood, Hugh Williams, John Lodge, Rene Ray, and Merle Tottenham


Despite its cheerful title and charming promotional poster, Bank Holiday is an intense and poignant slice-of-life movie that captures important turning points in several characters' lives over a long holiday weekend punctuated by crowded trains, piers, beaches, and hotels.

Margaret Lockwood plays a dedicated nurse about to go away on a "clandestine" weekend with her fiancé for their first round of premarital nooky, when that was a big deal. But before leaving, she's affected by a case where a woman dies in childbirth, leaving her husband bereaved.

The husband, played by John Lodge, immediately becomes a lost soul – which Lockwood senses. She wants to help him, but Lockwood's boyfriend, played by Hugh Williams, is anxious to start their weekend – one can only wonder why – so he pressures her to leave.

She goes away with her boyfriend but feels guilty for leaving Lodge, which annoys Williams, as he wants her focused on the, ahem, business at hand. At a high level – away from several smaller side stories marginally entwined with Lockwood and Williams – that is the plot.

Those side stories, though, include a Cockneyed family on vacation, two seemingly ditzy girls at the seashore because one is entering a holiday-weekend beauty contest, and finally the travails of a seaside follies troupe praying for rain to bring in customers.

The weekend, crowded from start to finish, doesn't go as planned for anyone. The Cockney family fight their way through the weekend as dad wants to drink and the wife wants to have a true vacation with maybe even a little glamour that her husband is incapable of giving her.

The ditzy girls are annoying until they get a bit drunk and reveal their sad backstories. Director Carol Reed shows a talent he'd perfect later in his career for making regular lives interesting, as he does in the touching and sad – and smartly filmed – bar scenes of the two girls just talking.

The main show, though, is Lockwood and Williams. She wants to get back to help Lodge while he tries to salvage his lost "romantic" weekend. No vacancies, rain, and her indifference turn it into a series of contretemps and fights that are often quite uncomfortable to watch, but real.

Set mainly at the seaside, Reed does intersperse scenes of Lodge aimlessly wandering around London thinking about his wife, played in flashbacks with warmth by Linden Travers. This personalizes his grief, while movingly juxtaposing it with the frivolous vacationers.

There's a forced climax involving hitchhiking, stolen box office receipts, the very British police, and even a suicide attempt. Movies demand exciting climaxes, so the writers give us one, but the value in this picture is in the telling, not the action.

It's also in Lockwood's outstanding performance as a strong woman comfortable with her decision to have sex, until she is emotionally pulled back to London by her concern for her patient. How it all got by the censors is a mystery, but she is girl-power 1930s style.

Her big, dark eyes, manly square jaw, unruly hair, translucent skin, and supple body compose an offbeat but beautiful woman whose looks match her character's strength – just as they did in her starring role in that same year's The Lady Vanishes. In both, Lockwood is a full-force woman.

She outshines the men here – in particular Williams, who comes off as selfish and even a bit creepy at times. Lodge is good, but you can only do so much playing a grieving man all movie. The surprise is Rene Ray, as one of the ditzy girls who shows unexpected emotional depth.

Ray and her friend, played by Merle Tottenham, appear frivolous and stupid, but after a few drinks, we see that sorrow – a jilting for Ray, no attention from men for Tottenham – created the "shell" of harmless idiocy they project. It's quietly heartbreaking, but excellent character building.

Reed shot all this in a studio, using background footage of London and the seaside for framing. Yet, by using that incredibly crisp black-and-white cinematography the UK seemed to have perfected then, his movie is visually engaging, even today, as it "feels alive."

While Reed would become famous for his later movies like The Third Man and Odd Man Out, his ability to create compelling narratives from "average" people is on display again in The Fallen Idol from 1948, where the life of a butler and young boy drive a gripping narrative.

Bank Holiday is a style of movie that is all but lost today: one that sets up a story, tells it in a straightforward manner – while developing and rounding out its characters – without any real gimmicks or "auteur" touches, and then finishes with mainly clear resolutions.

It lets the characters' predicaments and emotions draw you in as you follow along for the journey. It's refreshingly smart and uncomplicated storytelling, something that modern movie makers have all but forgotten how to do.

 

[Julian Shellhammer]

In no particular order, recent filmic fun-times include

Kansas City Confidential (1952) directed by Phil Karlson, who was behind the camera for several well-directed Charlie Chan movies, here telling the story of John Payne's character who is wrongly accused of involvement in a bank robbery and, though cleared, can't get a job with a tarnished reputation. He sets out to find the gang that pulled the heist and so restore his good name. Preston Foster is the mastermind, who is slowly tracked down by Payne to an idyllic Mexican resort. Listen, any movie that has Jack Elam, Lee Van Cleef, and Neville Brand all in it, playing the deeply troubled bad guys, you can ignore plot issues and watch the characters act all criminal-like. Colleen Gray is along for some romantic drama. Karlson uses the noir/hardboiled close-up scheme well, with screen-filling porous faces delivering tough hoodlum-ese: "You didn't have to burn your boss, he wasn't crossing you" and "Why you tossing my joint?" as Payne's motel room is being semi-ransacked. (I'm 99% positive I've posted about this in the past...)

Sabotage (1936), directed by Alfred Hitchcock prior to taking up life in the US; with Sylvia Sidney, who is married to Oscar Homolka, who is the titular character. John Loder is a Scotland Yard sergeant gone undercover to bust the saboteurs. Famous for the extended bomb on the bus sequence. Hitchcock sets up several two-shots as characters converse, and makes good use of high-contast lighting. Peter Bull, uncredited, has a short part, but he looks like Homolka's uncle. Vaguely Continental operatives are sabotaging parts of London: it's 1936 and we know things are getting bad fast on the mainland; who are the bad guys? You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.

The Key Witness (1947) a low-budget sort of thriller*, with John Beal, Trudy Marshall, and Jimmy Lloyd, directed by D. Ross Lederman, who had a substantial career in directing television programs. Beal accidentally gets connected to a murder, goes on the road, finds a corpse along the train tracks, swaps identities with the dead guy, and ends up faking his way as a millionaire's long-lost son. Through a series of Hollywood coincidences, Beal looks to be ID'ed as himself, not the real dead son. Things sort of work out, but I won't spoil it for you.

* It starts out promisingly enough, but the bulk of the story seems like Blondie and Dagwood Meet Crime, heavy on the Dagwood.

 

[Fading Fast]

The Big Shakedown from 1934 with Richard Cortez, Charles Farrell, Glenda Farrell, Bette Davis and Allen Jenkins


Judged on an "is this a good movie" scale, The Big Shakedown is a mess, but if you like a lot of Warner Bros. precode crazy jammed, truly jammed, into a one-hour "message" movie, it all but leaves you breathless. (Note: Warners released this one under its First National Pictures brand.)

The plot is very of the moment as the mob, with prohibition repealed, moves into the counterfeit drug business using both stolen patent formulas and inferior ingredients to undersell legitimate competitors. This was a ripped-from-the-headlines story in 1934.

It starts with a nice small-town drugstore, run by a young pharmacist, played by Charles Farrell, and his fiancée, played by one-second-away-from-stardom Bette Davis. The store hardly breaks even, but it is an important part of the neighborhood.

Davis has a small role here as the girl stuck playing the conscience of Farrell, but her talent shines through even in her brief scenes in the drug store. She's so good, you forget she's acting because she just seems like a girl who knows how to run a corner pharmacy.

Trouble for Farrell and Davis starts when the mob, headed up by a smooth gangster, played by Richard Cortez, convinces Farrell to make products like toothpaste for them, which the mob then illegally sells with counterfeit labels under trademarked names at cheaper prices.

This is bad, but Farrell convinces himself no one is getting hurt because the products he makes are of equal or better quality to the real stuff. Of course, that ignores the fact that he's stealing copyrights, patents, and other intellectual property – the kind of theft that can bankrupt a legitimate company and its shareholders.

While Farrell is being slow-walked into corruption by Cortez, Cortez is dealing with gun moll problems as his old moll, played by the insanely wonderful Glenda Farrell, has a hair-pulling catfight with his new moll. It's a reminder of the old "heaven has no rage..." maxim.

It's also a fun scene because, well, there's no need to explain why a catfight scene is fun. What makes this one extra special is G. Farrell firing off insults right in the middle of it. Warners Bros. had the fastest talking stars on earth back then, with G. Farrell near the top of the list.

Everything heats up as Cortez wants to grow the business by having C. Farrell make inferior versions of life-saving drugs. When C. Farrell declines, the slow-walking is over, as Cortez has his men "work over" C. Farrell until he agrees.

There's more story and action, including a lawsuit by a legitimate drug company trying to protect its patent. Cortez not only kills the key witness, but he places C. Farrell at the scene of the murder so he can hold the threat of arrest over his head.

Believe it or not, there's even more drama, comprising a suicide, a miscarriage related to the inferior drugs, a pre-Joker-from-Batman fall into a vat of acid, blackmail, and prisoners pounding rocks, which apparently was a thing.

All that is just in the main plot, as there's also some precode ethnicity thrown in with a Jewish teenager somewhat unpleasant stereotyped as being very focused on sales tax, but he's also kind of a likeable kid, so it's hard to say what the point was.

There's even a middle-aged woman buying cough syrup supposedly for her sick boy, but it's made clear she's really buying it for herself for the alcohol content, which was very much a thing back then.

Finally, when you're out of breath, there's a silly "the world will be alright" wrap-up that's unrealistic, but it gives the movie a feel-good ending. Eventually, consumer demand for less-expensive products, not the mob, would slowly doom the friendly neighborhood pharmacy.

This jam-packed, even by B movie standards, picture works because the story is crazy fun, and the talented Warners cast – Cortez played gangsters in his sleep back then, as did character actor par-excellence Allen Jenkins – knew how to handle warp-speed pacing and dialogue.

Today, The Big Shakedown is still fun in a kitschy way, plus the core premise of the mob moving in on drugstores and drug companies to sell counterfeit products is a peek at real history. Sadly, while not mainly mob driven, it's also a problem that's still with us today.

 

[Semmi]

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I Walk Alone from 1947 with Burt Lancaster, Kirk Douglas, Lizabeth Scott, and Wendell Corey


I Walk Alone is almost great, especially with its outstanding cast, striking noir atmosphere, and a brilliant face-off scene, but a few plot holes occasionally have you shaking your head at a movie you'll still enjoy overall.

Burt Lancaster plays a gangster just released from prison after fourteen years. He took a rap for his former bootlegging partner, played by Kirk Douglas, who promised Lancaster half of whatever he makes while Lancaster is locked up.

There are promises in spirit, and there are promises in technicalities. Everything here pivots on which type of promise you believe in. Lancaster shows up at Douglas' swanky and legal nightclub wanting half, which Douglas, using lawyer finagling, is happy to provide.

"Technically, I promised you half of a now bankrupt partnership, but when we liquidated it...well, here's half of the few thousand dollars that was left," is a paraphrasing of Douglas' doublespeak. Lancaster's answer is to later show up with a bunch of thugs and demand half of the club.

It's a scene like few others in noir. Lancaster is all 1930s gangster bully "give me, it is mine now;" Douglas says contently, "what's 'it?'" He then has his accountant, played by Wendell Corey, explain "it" is an intricate web of holding companies that legally can't be handed over.

Lancaster is now Gulliver, standing there with all the "muscle" he needs if it were the 1930s, but unable to understand the tangled ownership that makes his "muscle" useless. His rage and Douglas' smugness make it a scene to behold.

It's also a scene between two giants of midcentury noir, but it still needs the brilliant acting of Corey to make it work. Corey's bland, patient accounting speak, barely masking his abject terror – Lancaster looks ready to explode – makes the scene a masterpiece of tension.

A scene does not a picture make, though, so there is a full movie plot around it, with Lizabeth Scott playing a young, pretty, but world-weary chanteuse who's been kicked to the curb by Douglas. He's going to marry a society dame because it's good for business.

Now it's the old "...nor hell hath fury like a woman scorned" as Scott teams up with Lancaster to find a way to break Douglas. It's also some good but standard noir scenes of Lancaster getting beat up in an alley and having a murder wrap hung on him.

Even the climax – no spoilers coming – is pretty good but boilerplate noir, with a gun battle in a dark mansion, a final faceoff at the club, and a last-minute twist even after the police seem to have wrapped it all up.

Unfortunately, a few of the last minute twists are forced and obvious, as is an earlier story pivot around Corey's character and Douglas that has you a bit put off by the plot. The story gets it ninety percent right, but if you can't sell the critical turns, you have an issue.

Director Byron Haskin tried to paper over those script challenges with a classic noir atmosphere of men in broad-shouldered suits, women in cut-on-the-bias slinky silk evening gowns, dark streets, smokey nightclubs, beatings, shadows, and cop cars racing at night with sirens blaring.

You can't, though, fix a plot flaw with cool style, as a story has to stand on its own. The reverse is true: style can enhance a story, but a story can do fine with not much style if the narrative is flawless. Haskin tried to finagle it, but the scriptwriters handed him some unpluggable holes.

Haskin also let his actors run. Lancaster pushes his street-tough 1930s gangster persona to the max, but those boys won with full-force bullying. Douglas, conversely, is perfect as the modern oleaginous gangster more comfortable with a shell corporation than a shell from a .38.

Scott, too, deserves some praise as she is bounced back and forth between Douglas and Lancaster, but carves out a place for herself not as a femme fatale, but a woman trying to do right, or at least better than she did in the past.

Surprisingly not well known, I Walk Alone sits just below the pantheon of postwar noir films. With Douglas, Lancaster, and Scott – and all its noir touches - if you haven't seen it, it's like finding a slightly flawed gem that had been tucked away in the back of a drawer and forgotten.

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A great movie!!!

 

[Fading Fast]

The Devil to Pay! from 1930 with Ronald Colman, Loretta Young, Frederick Kerr, and Florence Britton


What fun. The Devil to Pay! is not art, nor deep, nor serious; it's just a lighthearted romcom from the early era of the talkies with an impressive cast – a cast led by an actor who, as opposed to most Tinseltown tales of woe, saw a career boost from the advent of "sound.”

Ronald Colman plays the bon vivant, playboy son of a lord, played by Frederick Kerr. Colman, at the opening, finds himself broke again – in funds but not spirit – and back on his cantankerous father's quite impressive doorstep.

Colman is so charming, in a not-slick way, that Dad quickly renounces his vow never to help his son again. Colman also charms the pants off of (not shown, but probably true) a pretty friend – played by ethereal Loretta Young – of his sister, played by lovely Florence Britton.

Young, who comes from a wealthy family, is about to become engaged to a penniless Russian nobleman, however, to please her family's social aspirations. Her father, played by David Torrence, made his "new" money in, of all things not socially acceptable, linoleum.

The last piece of this by-the-numbers romcom formula is Myrna Loy playing the stage-actress (the social horror!) girlfriend of Colman...when he's slumming it. Now everything is in place to launch the romcom, proper.

Colman charms Young, who really doesn't want to marry the boring and impecunious nobleman anyway. But Colman's womanizing and spendthrift reputation has Young's father warning her not to get tangled up with Colman, while Loy tries to pull Colman closer to her.

The fun is in seeing Colman and Young fall in love as Colman, immediately smitten by Young (who wouldn't be with the lithe seventeen-year-old), goes full-court press on her, while she does her own version of a not-coy honesty that would warm any man's heart.

She, though, has to untangle herself from the count, and Colman, from Loy. Fans of romcoms know neither will be easy and that misunderstandings and hurt feelings will follow until a big misunderstanding drives the climax, where all hope for the now-separated lovebirds looks lost.

This works for the same reason all good romcoms work: you like the lovers and root for them to overcome all obstacles necessary to be together. It helps that Colman, a successful silent-era actor, has a sonorous English voice that, with the advent of sound, had women swooning.

He's also handsome and ebullient, and his character is a harmless but mirthful devil who lifts everyone's spirits simply by entering a room. Amazingly though, he doesn't overshadow young Ms. Young.

Aglow with youth and beauty and still learning her craft, she has a natural screen presence and the raw talent necessary to more than hold her own with her leading man. Look for the scene where she talks Colman back into proposing for evidence of her confidence beyond her years.

Despite him storming around saying he won't marry her, she calmly tells him she's pretty, companionable, and suited to be his wife, completely unfazed by his bluster. She takes over the scene and wins his and the audience's heart.

The rest of the cast – Loy still kind of in her vamp stage, Kerr doing his usual upper-class British-dad schtick well, and Britton not disappearing as many in similar "sister" roles do – round out the story and fun. You, like Depression-era audiences did, will want to live in their world.

The Devil to Pay! is proof that the basic romcom formula – the one still used in regular and Hallmark TV movies today – was already fully formed in 1930. And like all those romcoms to come – done right, as it is here – it's wonderful and harmless escapist entertainment.

 

[Fading Fast]

These Wilder Years from 1956 with James Cagney, Barbara Stanwyck, Betty Lou Keim, and Walter Pidgeon


Who knows what the expression "They don't make movies like that anymore" really means, but it could certainly be applied to These Wilder Years, a mid-century low-key melodrama about family, adoption, regrets, hope, and, slyly, 1950s values.

Today, if a movie like this gets made at all, it is either amped up by our culture wars to be a "message" movie where the screaming-at-you politics is the point, or it is shuffled off to be a made-for-TV movie, like Hallmark does, where all problems are magically solved by kindness.

In the 1950s, however, a major studio like MGM would put some of its top talent – albeit stars past their career peaks – in a movie that examines a part of the culture – in truth, an evergreen part of life – that was talked about in whispers back then: children born out of wedlock.

Today, we've solved that problem by defining it away. A family can be anything one chooses; marriage is optional, and single parenthood is an acceptable choice by our current values, so there are no "illegitimate" babies anymore.

In postwar America, though, out-of-wedlock pregnancies were seen as a "mistake," or worse, a "sin," by many. Many also accepted them – no shaming, no judgment – but even those who did, did so quietly, as being discreet about it was the water everyone swam in back then.

In These Wilder Years, James Cagney plays a very successful business man who takes a leave of absence from running his company to, we soon discover, look for the child he gave up for adoption twenty years ago when he got a woman pregnant out of wedlock.

Cagney, used to getting his way, quickly finds the charitable organization that handled the adoption, but there he runs into the agency's founder and current head, played by Barbara Stanwyck.

Stanwyck might run a small charity, but her character is a match for Cagney's when he tries all his businessman skills – argument, threats, money, and legal means – to find out, in opposition to the law, who adopted his child.

The actress Stanwyck is also a match for the actor Cagney, as these two pros comfortably share the screen where the scene and not their egos drive their actions. They aren't Joan Crawford and Clark Gable, who, good as they are, takeover movies and scenes.

Cagney's effort and Stanwyck's counter-efforts form the core of this "simple" movie where you come to care about a file with old papers in it, or a small civil court hearing because you care about the characters and their drama. It's what good storytelling is all about.

Woven in is a storyline about a young woman, played by Betty Lou Keim, who is staying at the charity because she is young, pregnant, unmarried – the father bolted – and doesn't want to embarrass her family in their small community.

She serves mainly as a foil to Cagney's memory because he abandoned his girlfriend and child all those years ago. She's also a quiet but firmly planted flag reminding America that these young women exist, and they aren't all "evil sinners." It's a "showing not telling" argument.

It all comes to a head after the courtroom scene as people do some behind-the-scenes good things that allow other good things to happen, to provide the necessary finesse the rigid laws couldn't. Yes, the ending is too easy, but the movie still said a lot of tough things for the 1950s.

The actors as well amplify the saying of those tough things, including – of course, Cagney and Stanwyck. A hat tip is also owed to Walter Pidgeon playing Cagney's lawyer. He handles the courtroom scene so well and with such subtlety; they should show that sequence in acting class.

You also want to watch for the scene where Cagney meets his now-adult son. Cagney's acting is understated and brilliant, as you can see all the pain, regret, hope, and relief he's experiencing simply in his facial expressions. The man is an incredible talent.

To also see Stanwyck flexing her acting muscles, check out her scene in the courtroom where she's under intense pressure, but holds it together. You can feel her cracking, but she never breaks. Later, she's reasonably forgiving about it all in another incredible scene.

Shot, thankfully, in black and white and on a small budget, director Roy Rowland understood the strength in his picture was the acting talent and basic story. He smartly let those aspects shine by not cluttering up These Wilder Years with "artistic" touches and auteur ambition.

Rowland left us with a good, simple movie that is still entertaining today, despite a plot that means all but nothing to modern audiences. As the saying goes, they don't make movies like that anymore.

 

[Worf]

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These Wilder Years from 1956 with James Cagney, Barbara Stanwyck, Betty Lou Keim, and Walter Pidgeon


Who knows what the expression "They don't make movies like that anymore" really means, but it could certainly be applied to These Wilder Years, a mid-century low-key melodrama about family, adoption, regrets, hope, and, slyly, 1950s values.

Today, if a movie like this gets made at all, it is either amped up by our culture wars to be a "message" movie where the screaming-at-you politics is the point, or it is shuffled off to be a made-for-TV movie, like Hallmark does, where all problems are magically solved by kindness.

In the 1950s, however, a major studio like MGM would put some of its top talent – albeit stars past their career peaks – in a movie that examines a part of the culture – in truth, an evergreen part of life – that was talked about in whispers back then: children born out of wedlock.

Today, we've solved that problem by defining it away. A family can be anything one chooses; marriage is optional, and single parenthood is an acceptable choice by our current values, so there are no "illegitimate" babies anymore.

In postwar America, though, out-of-wedlock pregnancies were seen as a "mistake," or worse, a "sin," by many. Many also accepted them – no shaming, no judgment – but even those who did, did so quietly, as being discreet about it was the water everyone swam in back then.

In These Wilder Years, James Cagney plays a very successful business man who takes a leave of absence from running his company to, we soon discover, look for the child he gave up for adoption twenty years ago when he got a woman pregnant out of wedlock.

Cagney, used to getting his way, quickly finds the charitable organization that handled the adoption, but there he runs into the agency's founder and current head, played by Barbara Stanwyck.

Stanwyck might run a small charity, but her character is a match for Cagney's when he tries all his businessman skills – argument, threats, money, and legal means – to find out, in opposition to the law, who adopted his child.

The actress Stanwyck is also a match for the actor Cagney, as these two pros comfortably share the screen where the scene and not their egos drive their actions. They aren't Joan Crawford and Clark Gable, who, good as they are, takeover movies and scenes.

Cagney's effort and Stanwyck's counter-efforts form the core of this "simple" movie where you come to care about a file with old papers in it, or a small civil court hearing because you care about the characters and their drama. It's what good storytelling is all about.

Woven in is a storyline about a young woman, played by Betty Lou Keim, who is staying at the charity because she is young, pregnant, unmarried – the father bolted – and doesn't want to embarrass her family in their small community.

She serves mainly as a foil to Cagney's memory because he abandoned his girlfriend and child all those years ago. She's also a quiet but firmly planted flag reminding America that these young women exist, and they aren't all "evil sinners." It's a "showing not telling" argument.

It all comes to a head after the courtroom scene as people do some behind-the-scenes good things that allow other good things to happen, to provide the necessary finesse the rigid laws couldn't. Yes, the ending is too easy, but the movie still said a lot of tough things for the 1950s.

The actors as well amplify the saying of those tough things, including – of course, Cagney and Stanwyck. A hat tip is also owed to Walter Pidgeon playing Cagney's lawyer. He handles the courtroom scene so well and with such subtlety; they should show that sequence in acting class.

You also want to watch for the scene where Cagney meets his now-adult son. Cagney's acting is understated and brilliant, as you can see all the pain, regret, hope, and relief he's experiencing simply in his facial expressions. The man is an incredible talent.

To also see Stanwyck flexing her acting muscles, check out her scene in the courtroom where she's under intense pressure, but holds it together. You can feel her cracking, but she never breaks. Later, she's reasonably forgiving about it all in another incredible scene.

Shot, thankfully, in black and white and on a small budget, director Roy Rowland understood the strength in his picture was the acting talent and basic story. He smartly let those aspects shine by not cluttering up These Wilder Years with "artistic" touches and auteur ambition.

Rowland left us with a good, simple movie that is still entertaining today, despite a plot that means all but nothing to modern audiences. As the saying goes, they don't make movies like that anymore.

Great review, as usual. Also a VERY interesting subject. Makes me wonder... is there a "middle ground" between the shame that kills (ie drives some to kill themselves) and no shame AT ALL? The "all or nothing" shame that characterized most of America's existence served a purpose. It was needed to prevent tragedies as detailed above but many people took it too far. They reveled in the destruction of others for the sheer fun of it. They did it often in the name of religion but also out of plain cussed pleasure. Those people disgust me to no end and I have little or nothing to do with them if I can..... BUT!

I'm not a fan of living in a world WITHOUT shame either. Some of the things I see posted online for all to see makes me want to vomit. Not only are people willing to post their crimes for the world to see but their moral turpitude as well! It's madness, sheer madness there MUST be some middle ground to be found somewhere!

Worf

 

[Fading Fast]

Great review, as usual. Also a VERY interesting subject. Makes me wonder... is there a "middle ground" between the shame that kills (ie drives some to kill themselves) and no shame AT ALL? The "all or nothing" shame that characterized most of America's existence served a purpose. It was needed to prevent tragedies as detailed above but many people took it too far. They reveled in the destruction of others for the sheer fun of it. They did it often in the name of religion but also out of plain cussed pleasure. Those people disgust me to no end and I have little or nothing to do with them if I can..... BUT!

I'm not a fan of living in a world WITHOUT Same either. Some of the things I see posted online for all to see makes me want to vomit. Not only are people willing to post their crimes for the world to see but their moral turpitude as well! It's madness, sheer madness there MUST be some middle ground to be found somewhere!

Worf

I agree and would say we need an Aristotelian balance, but man, we (humans) are not good at that.

 

[Fading Fast]

Rooney from 1958 with John Gregson, Barry Fitzgerald, Muriel Pavlow, and Marie Kean


Love and hate are reasonably easy to show on film, but charm takes finesse – go too far in one direction, and it becomes a treacly mess – too far in the other, and it's lost altogether. Rooney manages to nail charm – the right way – almost from the first scene to the last.

Set in Dublin, John Gregson plays a big, good-looking dustman – a garbage man – who is also a noted weekend athlete, "a hurler" (think something like lacrosse with some baseball tossed in), which makes him something of a local hero to his small community.

He seems a bit scared of women, though, as the older women who run the bordering houses he lives in keep taking a shine to him, forcing him to move. Finally, a local bigwig, impressed with his athletic prowess, secures a place for him in a "nicer" house than he's used to.

That's when the story really kicks off as the family in this house is run by a hard-nosed widower, played by Marie Kean. She and one of her daughters are proud and concerned about the family's social standing, so they have mixed feelings about having Gregson forced on them.

They like that he has athletic cachet, but are chagrined by his day job. Not chagrined are the household's invalid grandfather, played by Barry Fitzgerald – Kean's father-in-law – and his lovely granddaughter, played by Muriel Pavlow – they like the easy-going big lug of a dustman.

This is less of a plot-driven movie than a slice-of-life tale at a crucial point for several characters. Gregson is drifting well into middle age with no direction, which is pleasant but risks becoming less pleasant as he ages to the point of having missed his chance at love and family.

Fitzgerald, almost held like a prisoner in the house by his often mean daughter-in-law, stays in the background, but sees how his granddaughter Pavlow is treated like a servant by Kean. Pavlow, in her late twenties, is also at risk of sliding into spinsterhood (a real thing back then).

Throw in a few other quirky characters, which include some of the other dustmen and some more relatives – plus a couple of subplots about stolen/not-stolen jewelry, the "big game," and the potential disposition of Fitzgerald's few things should he pass – and that's the movie.

What works is the characters, starting with Gregson. He's a guy others like because he's completely sincere and kind in a quiet way where he doesn't even really know he's a nice guy. It's a hard balance to pull off, but Gregson does it – you want to “share a pint" with him.

Pavlow is equally likeable but in a completely different way: she's Cinderella – beaten down by her mean aunt and half-sisters. But like Gregson, her kind heart shines through, especially in her scenes with Fitzgerald and Gregson.

Fitzgerald, as almost always, plays a gruff but kind man who likes a drink, gives advice, and grumbles at just about everyone, yet you know he'll do the right thing. It's a role he could play in his sleep.

It isn't hard to see that Gregson and Pavlow should find each other, but these two have absolutely no skills when it comes to flirting, dating, or romance, so they stumble past each other all movie. Fitzgerald sees the problem, so the sly old devil tries, from his sickbed, to play matchmaker.

What also works is the humor. It's not laugh-out-loud humor, but the everyday humor of the dustmen commenting on the headlines in the paper before starting work or Pavlow making sure Fitzgerald has peppermints to mask the alcohol on his breath from the ever-watchful Kean.

The Dublin setting too helps pleasantly usher this low-key tale along as the on-location shooting captures the intimacy of the city, making the characters relatable. It's also just a pretty city – cobblestone streets, neat little houses, classic pubs, etc. – in a not upscale way.

The climax combines a bunch of disparate threads – the big game, Fitzgerald's failing health, and a false arrest – that is a sort of a "settling of scores." But what you'll really care about is whether Gregson and Pavlow will finally admit to themselves – and each other – how they feel.

Rooney works if you like quirky romantic tales set in a different time and place with a little movie magic sprinkled in to make everything a bit nicer. If so, you'll enjoy this charming effort's fun, spirited vibe, while not thinking too much about its, ahem, questionable veracity.

 

[Doctor Damage]

Looks like another Wes Anderson moving incoming... let's hope it's good instead of crap like the last couple.

 

[Zombie_61]

Looks like another Wes Anderson moving incoming... let's hope it's good instead of crap like the last couple...

To be released in the U.S. on June 6, 2025. The tagline says only, "The story of a family and a family business," starring Tom Hanks, Scarlett Johansson, Bryan Cranston, Benedict Cumberbatch, Benicio Del Toro, Richard Ayoade, Rupert Friend, Michael Cera, Jeffrey Wright, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Riz Ahmed, Hope Davis, Jason Watkins, Mathieu Amalric, Mia Threapleton, Antonia Desplat, Milo James, and Max Mauff. "Rated PG-13 for violent content, bloody images, some sexual material, nude images, and smoking throughout."

 

[Julian Shellhammer]

55 Days at Peking. Again.

Onward, the Pixar movie about a world made up of "mythical" creatures, who aren't mythical there. This was the choice of the grandkids.

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948) directed by John Huston, who also wrote the screenplay. Humphrey Bogart and Tim Holt are on the bum in 1925 Tampico, and connect with Walter Huston for a gold-mining venture. Huston the elder won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, and while it's tough to steal the screen from Bogie, Huston does it with high-speed delivery and jolly-grandpa aplomb. Not a wasted shot in the movie, as we see Bogart's character slowly descend into paranoia, then accelerate into homicidal intent. Bruce (Don't Call Me Herman) Bennett is the latecomer to the gold digging, whose backstory weaves in some poignancy as his character's story unfolds. The story includes the famous "stinkin' badges" quote.

NB: Al "Jazzbo" Collins had a 1960's television program on San Francisco's KGO-TV, with random guests ranging from Moe Howard to Art Linkletter. At some point in the show the "stinkin' badges" film clip ran. Guests would have to recite the line at the camera. I distinctly remember Linkletter going through the bit, wearing a sombrero and gesturing with a juvenile-sized alligator prop. I thought it was funny but had no idea from where it came. In my early lifetime I possessed a lapel badge with a cartoon caricature of Collins riding a donkey with the famous quote running along the outer edge of the circular shape.

 

[Fading Fast]

I Love Melvin from 1953 with Donald O'Connor and Debbie Reynolds,


I Love Melvin is a mid-century Technicolor musical first, a romcom a distant second, and a family drama somewhere over the horizon. In that light, it's a short, entertaining effort because Debbie Reynolds and Donald O'Connor give their all to its musical numbers and silly script.

Reynolds plays the clichéd chorus girl – she's really playing the role of a football in a Broadway play, it's silly and cute – looking for, what else, her big break. But her practical father is pressuring her to quit and marry the boring but dependable beau who keeps courting.

That’s when she meets a photographer’s assistant from a national magazine, played by O’Connor, who – also chasing his big break – fibs that he’s a full-time photographer. He convinces her to let him take a series of pictures of her for the magazine.

He's hoping to "sell" the idea of her photo spread as a story to his bosses to boost his career; she's hoping the article – and, later, the chance to be on the cover when O'Connor's initial lie inevitably spirals out of control – will launch hers.

All of this, in the great tradition of romcoms, is just a construct so that Reynolds and O'Connor can fall in love – which he does quickly. She, though, stays confused as to her feelings for most of the picture. We know long before they do how it will end up – it's that kind of movie.

The romcom and the nonsense around it – Reynolds wants to act, Dad wants her married, and O'Connor's fib could blow up in his face – is the plot, which is as banal and silly as it sounds. But you don't come to this movie for its plot – you come for the song and dance numbers.

Even though they don't disappoint, there also isn't a single breakout number that became a chart hit or a memorable one for movie fans. That, combined with its, ahem, "thin" plot, probably explains why the movie is not well known today.

All the numbers, though, are peppy mid-century fun. Look for Reynolds' opener, "A Lady Loves," which was soon echoed in Marilyn Monroe's famous "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend" number from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes – released just a few months later.

Another fun one to watch for is the very silly "Saturday Afternoon Before the Game," where Reynolds plays the aforementioned football. There's so much athleticism and artistry (check out the wonderfully abstract stands) involved that it's a visual treat.

Artistry, athleticism and music really come together in "Life Has Its Funny Little Ups and Downs" where O'Connor shows that he cedes nothing to Gene Kelly or Fred Astaire when it comes to singing and dancing on roller skates.

Shot in bold Technicolor with many on-location New York City scenes, the movie is still a visual treat today – and a mid-century New York City time capsule.

Proving the exception to the rule that all young precocious siblings in movies are annoying, Noreen Corcoran adds some nice spice playing Reynolds' nine-year-old sister who sees where everything is going – and helps it to get there – before almost anyone else.

If you are new to mid-century musicals, there are some big names – like Singin' in the Rain – to see first. But if you've already seen the big ones, I Love Melvin is a fun, fluffy musical snack that entertains with song, dance, scenery, and a very talented cast.

 

[Bushman]

To be released in the U.S. on June 6, 2025. The tagline says only, "The story of a family and a family business," starring Tom Hanks, Scarlett Johansson, Bryan Cranston, Benedict Cumberbatch, Benicio Del Toro, Richard Ayoade, Rupert Friend, Michael Cera, Jeffrey Wright, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Riz Ahmed, Hope Davis, Jason Watkins, Mathieu Amalric, Mia Threapleton, Antonia Desplat, Milo James, and Max Mauff. "Rated PG-13 for violent content, bloody images, some sexual material, nude images, and smoking throughout."

Yep, sounds like a Wes Anderson movie.

 

[Worf]

Yep, sounds like a Wes Anderson movie.

Say what you will about his recent works... The man STILL knows how to garner a great cast for whatever he's up to.

Worf

 

[Trenchfriend]

I got time to kill, so Boot - 1985 uncut.

 

[Fading Fast]

About Mrs. Leslie from 1954 with Shirley Booth and Robert Ryan


You can dismiss About Mrs. Leslie because it's a soap opera, but what is a soap opera but life with its dramatic moments – its romance, disappointment, exhilaration, love, hurt, and all the other human emotions – telescoped into one story that reveals a common thread of humanity?

Here, Shirley Booth plays the titular Mrs. Leslie – a well-earned title, not legally, but undeniably hers. Starting out as a second-rate chanteuse, a young Booth meets a handsome and successful man, played by Robert Ryan, who, and let's call it what it is, picks her up to be his mistress.

He's basically honest about it; she doesn't kid herself, and other than some nonsense about separate bedrooms to get past the censors, we all get what's going on. But we only learn all this in flashbacks, as the movie opens with an older Booth running an upscaled boarding house.

The boarding house has its own soap operas – a lost "rich kid," a wannabe actress, and a couple visiting their sick daughter – which Booth handles with care but proper detachment, as she has both the wisdom to help and the wisdom to know her help won't always be embraced.

The heart of the movie, though, are the long flashbacks as we see Booth struggle with becoming what was then called a "backstreet girl." She and Ryan connect in a way few do, but of course, they have limited time together and arrange to meet for six weeks every year.

That time is spent at a house he rents for them on the California coast, which becomes "their home" for those weeks. They swim, eat, read together by the fire at night, and just enjoy each other's company. They even acknowledge that the limited time together helps make it perfect.

For appearance's sake for the era, she becomes "Mrs. Leslie" (which is his middle name) when they are together. Eventually, she assumes that name as her identity even when not with him. It's a symbolic and emotional acknowledgment of what matters to her.

At one point, by sheer chance and all alone at the time, Booth comes face to face with her place in Ryan's life. It's not that surprising, nor does it make Ryan a liar or bad man – but it forces Booth to fully and painfully acknowledge to herself the tiny corner of his life that she occupies.

There is a narrative arc, yet the movie's power is seeing Booth come to terms with her small place in Ryan's world and what that means for her life. Is what she learned that day by chance important? Yes and no, as she already had to know he had a meaningful life away from her.

Booth, an atypical star – a bit matronly in appearance and with a squeaky voice – brings such a natural warmth and humanity to the role that she becomes "Mrs. Leslie." You see and feel her struggling to make her life work as she smartly assesses the good, the bad, and the alternative.

One of the surprising strengths of the movie is the scenes of Booth – standing by herself on the lawn of her house or walking down a busy street alone – sharing her thoughts in voice over. It's less about brilliant moviemaking than the smart writing providing a window into a human soul.

As good as Ryan is – his role as the handsome industrialist who is happy in his six-week-a-year redoubt with Booth is critical to the movie's balance – this is Booth's movie and she owns it in a Barbara Stanwyck low-key "I just am this character" way.

It's an honest portrayal that touches you throughout. When she's trying to help her boarders, we understand her reserve, because the flashbacks expose the place she is coming from. When her help is sometimes rejected, we hurt for her, but know she has the stuff to take it.

In one poignant scene, a snotty teenage girl hits Booth hard with a snide comment her mother made in private about Booth. We see Booth absorb the blow with only a little pain and even deliver a sincere lesson to the child that flies by, but says so much about Booth's character.

The question, however, hanging over the entire movie – did Booth have a good life? – is only "answered" by inference and left to the viewer to decide. Booth would probably say, "I had the best life I could have given the circumstances," plus, "It's not worth worrying about it anyway."

Thankfully shot in black and white as color would only be a distraction and an unwanted "mood" changer, the movie is a wonderful mid-century time-capsule. It portrays a society that keeps its surface clean, while all of life's emotional struggles bubble just below that shiny, thin veneer.

Director Daniel Mann understood that his unconventional movie – a story with a mood of nostalgic melancholia – required a gentle touch to allow its emotional pull to slowly wash over the audience, so he smartly gave his story and themes time to build without histrionics or theatrics.

About Mrs. Leslie wasn't a hit perhaps because audiences wanted a more conventional narrative arc or a more dramatic ending – or a more typical star – but for a sincere story about a real person experiencing a quietly atypical life, About Mrs. Leslie is outstanding filmmaking.

 

[Fading Fast]

The Girl in the News from 1940 with Margaret Lockwood, Barry K. Barnes, Margaretta Scott, and Roger Livesey


British cinema from the 1930s into the 1960s is chockablock with little gems like The Girl in the News – a modest-budget, modest-runtime, no-special-effects, intelligent movie, where the story, actors, and director make it engaging viewing.

Margaret Lockwood, with her dark, refined, but approachable looks, plays a nurse in private duty falsely accused of murdering her charge for the stipend the charge left her in her will. After a sensational trial, Lockwood is acquitted, but a cloud of suspicion hangs over her.

Even her lawyer, played by Barry K. Barnes, has his doubts about his client's innocence, which is poignantly shown by director Carol Reed in an early scene when Lockwood is thanking Barnes for his belief in her.

He shows a flicker of doubt; she winces ever so slightly while softly expressing her disappointment; they both apologize and away she goes – hurt but head held up high. It's so perfectly of-the-era British – so beautifully understated – you'll miss it if you aren't paying close attention.

That is just the set-up, though, for the main event when, after a long struggle to find a job – prospective employers are wary for obvious reasons – Lockwood, now using an assumed name (you do what you have got to do in life), lands a position at a wealthy invalid's estate.

He is a young, paralyzed man married to a very pretty young woman, played by Margaretta Scott. They hire Lockwood without checking her references, they say, because the last nurses they had, who had excellent references, were terrible.

Lockwood does well, but then we realize Scott and the butler, played by Emlyn Tracy, have a yen for one another. Yet with both being proper British, it's like watching two icebergs trying to make love. Nevertheless, they want what they want and need her husband out of the way.

While they're plotting, Barnes, feeling guilty for the way he and Lockwood parted, asks her out. This leads to the start of a romance, but then all heck breaks out. Lockwood's patient dies of a drug overdose, and Lockwood is accused, with her past loudly hanging over her.

There is no mystery – we know the truth all along, other than the trial’s outcome, which is only a mystery if you don't know how cinema worked in that era. Still, there's gripping drama and tension in seeing how Barnes tries desperately to prove Lockwood's innocence.

The police investigation is headed by Barnes's roommate, played by Roger Livesey – a useful but too-obvious coincidence. After a bunch of twists and turns, with Scott and Tracy convincingly playing the innocent, the movie climaxes in a wonderfully British trial.

The British, to this day, love their murder mysteries – a genre they have elevated to an art form – which means these stories are often less about believability than craft and intricacy, which is true here.

Helping all this unfold is director Reed who uses his limited budget and black-and-white cinematography to create some proto-film noir scenes and atmosphere, as when the poison – a legal, well-documented prescription – all but becomes a character itself.

You'll also notice Reed echoing Hitchcock – in particular in the trial scene where Scott is incredibly British cool under cross-examination as Barnes struggles to crack her. It is no surprise Reed went on to have a successful career making notable films like The Third Man.

The entire effort here benefits from the deep bench of skilled British actors on display with Lockwood – at her career peak – bringing a quiet dignity to the twice wrongly accused nurse who has the audience rooting for her all along.

If made now, a movie like The Girl in the News would be an episode in a TV series, because the economics of moviemaking have changed. But today, these "small" British efforts, full of talent in front of and behind the camera, are incredible gems for old movie fans.

 

[Fading Fast]

You're Telling Me! from 1934 with W.C. Fields, Joan March, Adrienne Ames, Louise Carter and Kathleen Howard


W.C. Fields was a comedic genius, even if much of his humor is an acquired taste today. What impresses in You're Telling Me!, though, is not the comedy so much as the scenes where Fields lets his comedic persona drop and honest human emotions and pathos slip in.

If you do, however, like the Fields' comedic repertoire, most of it is here, including his somnambulant wisecracking voice, inebriated walk, put-upon mien, and famous golf routine. The latter would be one of those "acquired tastes" for most people now, but it was huge in its day.

All this Fields' persona is driven, in You're Telling Me!, by a very standard script where Fields is a failed inventor – the town joke – who is disrespected by his wife, but loved in a protective way by his teenage daughter, played by Joan March.

March is also in love with the son of a socially prominent family in town. When the boy's mother, played by Kathleen Howard, visits the Fields household, Fields’ somewhat drunken, uncouth behavior causes her to call off the engagement.

Any hope for redemption at home for Fields lies in his effort to sell his newest invention, a puncture-proof tire. When that effort fails, not because the tire isn't good, but for screwball circumstances that are the stock in trade of Fields' movies, Fields is depressed.

On the train back from the city where he had the failed tire meeting, a near suicidal Fields meets a genuine European princess, played by Adrienne Ames, whom he mistakenly thinks is attempting suicide herself. His efforts to save her, endear him to the princess.

This is one of the few truly sincere scenes in the movie because the usually joking Fields is quite human here, connecting on an emotionally intimate level with Ames. Impressively, Ames not only holds her own in scenes with Fields, but she provides the spark and balance the movie needed.

With a lot of contrivance, act three of this sixty-six minute movie plays out with Ames proving to be Fields' guardian angel, while Fields reverts to his vaudevillian schtick. It's a movie formula that worked for 1930s audiences, making Fields a huge star in his day.

Fields wisely surrounded himself with professionals. His shrew wife is played by the talented Louise Carter and, as noted, his daughter is played by Joan March, an adorable and convincing actress, who like Ames, holds her own in scenes with Fields.

Unfortunately, most of these roles are written as two-dimensional characters. Carter plays a 1930s cliché of a harridan wife, while Howard plays a parody of a snobbish society doyenne. Still, with Marsh and Aimes, a little nuance and character complexity sneaks in here and there.

Whether or not you like You're Telling Me! all comes down to whether you enjoy Fields' brand of comedy – a cynical slapsticky 1930s style of humor – which is a tough sell to modern audiences. Although, look closely in a few scenes, and Fields' full range of acting peeks out.

That might be a surprise for modern audiences, as they would see that Fields was more than just a 1930 comedic clown. He was a well-rounded actor, even if he rarely got to use the full breadth of his skills.

The real spark here, though, even for modern audiences, is Ames. Her on-screen chemistry with Fields elevates the movie beyond a running gag. Their scenes together are fun and full of compassion, giving the movie the touch of heart and humanity it needed.