Thursday, August 8, 2019

Thursday Movie Picks #265: The Mrs. Robinsons



This being Thursday, it's time for another edition of Thursday Movie Picks, the blogathon run by Wandering Through the Shelves. This week's theme is "The Mrs. Robinsons", which I'm guessing is a callback to Anne Bancroft's character in The Graduate:



I decided that that was a bit difficult of a topic for me to come up with three movies, so I decided to go in a different direction, with three suitable movies from the 1940s:

A Dispatch From Reuters (1940). Edna Best plays the wife of Edward G. Robinson, who stars as Baron Julius Reuter. Reuter founded the news organization that bears his name, first using carrier pigeons and then other means to get accurate news out before anybody else could. Sure, it's typical Hollywood biopic stuff, but with Edward G. Robinson you can't really go wrong.

Mr. Winkle Goes to War (1944). Ruth Warrick plays the wife of Edward G. Robinson, who stars as Mr. Winkle. Winkle is a 40-something bank clerk whom the whole town sees as meek and not particularly deserving of much respect. He somehow gets drafted during World War II and winds up becoming a war hero, which changes how everybody in town looks at him.

Our Vines Have Tender Grapes (1945). Agnes Moorehead plays the wife of Edward G. Robinson, who this time is a Norwegian immigrant father raising his daughter (Margaret O'Brien) in World War II-era rural Wisconsin. A lot of the movie is about O'Brien's adventures, while there's a subplot involving the town teacher (Frances Gifford) and newspaper editor (James Craig).

Now to see what everybody else has selected.

2 comments:

Tom said...

Mr. Winkle Goes to War sounds really good; it's a title I'm not familiar with. Will look for it on DVD.

Birgit said...

Love the Edward G Robinson theme and have yet to see these films. I would add Scarlet Street where he plays a meek cashier who becomes enamoured with the floozy Joan Bennett. Since he is also a painter and one of his paintings becomes well liked by art dealer, his work is passed as if she painted it. Excellent thriller as you know.