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 one that sounds more complicated when trying to write it down than it is when actually picking the movies. Each of this week's three movies are supposed to have people who are members of the same family in real life, and in the movie they have that same family relationship. Now, there are several cases of real-life husbands and wives playing a married couple in a movie, but I've already used The Guardsman (Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne) before, as well as The Clock (James Gleason and his wife Lucille). In the end, I only used one husband-and-wife combo:
Room for One More (1952). Cary Grant was on Wife #3, Betsy Drake, and they star together in this movie. Betsy plays a woman who is willing to take in stray dogs, and even foster children, without consulting her husband (obviously played by Cary Grant). Two of the kids are particularly difficult cases, although this is the sort of movie you just know is going to have a happy ending.
In the Goold Old Summertime (1949). OK, I'm cheating a bit on this one. The movie is a remake of The Shop Around the Corner, with Judy Garland playing the shop girl who has a pen pal she falls in love with, not realizing that the pen pal is Van Johnson, her co-worker with whom she decidedly does not get along. At the end of the movie, Judy's character is seen carrying her daughter in her arms, and that daughter is played by one Liza Minnelli in her first screen appearance.
Five of a Kind (1938). The Dionne quintuplets were born to a French-Canadian couple in Ontario in 1934, and were the first surviving set of quintuplets. As the Dionnes already had a bunch of kids, and would go on to have a couple more(!), the province of Ontario decided to step in and make them wards of the state and turning them into a tourist attraction, which included putting them in a couple of Hollywood movies, here playing a group of quints called the Wyatts. The plot involves their heroic doctor (Jean Hersholt), and the two reporters (Claire Trevor and Cesar Romero) who find out about the quints and try to get the scoop. Of some interest is that the then-new technology of television is used to display the "live" footage of the quints to an audience watching in a theater.
3 comments:
When I hear "Room for one more" I think of the short story from Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. This one sounds a lot less creepy. lol
I almost went with Summertime. I gave not seen1the other 2 but want to one day. The poor Quints were really a sideshow attraction where even the oarents were not allowed to see them. I know one committed suicide and another became a nun. This is still historic because it was before the age of taking drugs to get pregnant like Kate plus 8 and Octo mom
I believe the "Room for one more" story also shows up in Dead of Night, the British horror anthology.
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