This being Thursday, it's time for another edition of Thursday Movie Picks, the blogathon run by Wandering Through the Shelves. I'm back after a one-week hiatus, which was mostly because it was a TV edition looking for new TV shows in 2020, and I don't watch enough episodic TV to do a Picks post on new TV shows. This week, however, we're back to movies. Since we're in February and there's Valentine's day, we get themes based on different types of love, or lack of love as the case may be. For this first Thursday in February, the theme is "Fake Relationships". I was going to go with movies in which one person marries another for malicious purposes, but noticed that one of my choices, The Two Mrs. Carrolls, is on TCM tomorrow. So I went in a different direction, only to discover that a different choice is also on TCM tomorrow:
Come Live With Me (1941). Austrian-born showgirl Hedy Lamarr is engaged to Ian Hunter, but has overstayed her visa, so she risks deportation unless she can get married. She meets struggling writer Jimmy Stewart, and proposes a sham marriage to him, which he agrees to because he can use the money. He decided to write about the experience, but sends a copy of his work to the publishing company run by Hunter. This is also the sort of movie where you expect the Lamarr and Stewart characters to fall in love along the way, too.
John Loves Mary (1949). John (Ronald Reagan) returns home from World War II with a fiancée waiting for him, Mary (Patricia Neal), who is the daughter of a senator. However, John has also brought a wife home with him, Lilly (Virginia Field). Lilly is a showgirl who was in love with John's best friend Fred (Jack Carson), but news reached Fred that Lilly died so he went back to America. John found out that Lilly was in fact still alive and wanted to bring her over to America for Fred, but the only way to do that was to have a sham marriage and then divorce her once she's in America so she can marry Fred. The catch is that Fred, thinking Lilly was dead, got married to an American who is very pregnant.
Welcome to Hard Times (1967). Aldo Ray destroys the town of Hard Times, leaving an Indian medicine man and three unrelated whites as survivors. Those whites are "mayor" Will (Henry Fonda), Molly (Janice Rule) and young Jimmy (Michael Shea). As other people (most notably Keenan Wynn and his bordello) begin to come to town to rebuild, the three survivors have to pretend to be a family, even though Molly thinks Will was a coward for not stopping Aldo. This one is on TCM tomorrow at 2:30 PM.
2 comments:
It's been a long time since I watched Welcome to Hard Times but I remember it as a decent film with a hard, somewhat bitter outlook.
I usually avoid Reagan movies but John Loves Mary had the attraction of Patricia Neal, Jack Carson and Virginia Field all of whom I love. He was as bland as ever but the three of them made the film a pleasure to watch, even if its a minor one.
We match on Come Live with Me. It is a slight wisp of a thing but the charm of the two leads and Adeline De Walt Reynolds as Jimmy's grandmother make it well worth seeking out.
Other than our match I went with one a bit more recent and one from the year before Come Live with Me.
Picture Perfect (1997)-Kate Mosley (Jennifer Aniston) toils in a junior position at a big New York advertising agency and despite her competence cannot seem to get ahead. Turns out her boss feels she is too much of a free spirit and tells her he needs to see her commitment to settling down before she moves up in the company. So when she goes to a wedding and has a picture taken with a stranger named Nick (Jay Mohr) she passes him off as her fiancée earning her a promotion. Since he lives in Boston all is well with the deception until he becomes famous by saving a child from a burning building and her boss wants to meet him. On the spot she finds Nick and convinces him to play along but complications ensue. Bright, breezy romcom with a terrific cast.
Come Live with Me (1941)-Viennese immigrant Johnny Jones (a ravishing Hedy Lamarr) is in danger of being deported unless she gets married pronto. The problem is that her wealthy boyfriend, publisher Barton Kendrick (Ian Hunter) is already married and wife Diana (Verree Teasdale) isn’t about to give him a divorce! By chance she meets broke writer Bill Smith (James Stewart) and proposes a marriage of convenience. Instantly smitten Bill goes along but has ideas of his own. Though they seem polar opposites Hedy and Jimmy make a most compatible couple.
Hired Wife (1940)-To avoid a hostile takeover of his cement company CEO Stephen Dexter (Brian Aherne) proposes an in name only marriage to his super-efficient secretary Kendal (Rosalind Russell) so he can transfer his assets to her name. She consents but when the danger is passed and Stephen wants a divorce so he can return to his gold-digging former girlfriend Phyllis (Virginia Bruce) Kendal, who carries a torch for him, pulls all sorts of tricks and ploys to maintain the ruse. Roz was one of the queens of this sort of screwy comedies in the 40’s and she’s a vivacious delight here.
I haven’t seen any of your picks which sound quite good to watch on a snowy day...if I had TCM. Now that I am reading your picks I could have chosen 2 different films which I wish I would have chosen.
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