I Married an Angel

I've mentioned on a few occasions that I'm not the biggest fan of the singing of Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy. But I do watch their movies to do posts on here because the pair were a big thing back in the 1930s and I feel a bit of an obligation to see a wide variety of movies to post on here. So I recorded their final film, I Married an Angel, the last time it showed up on TCM, and recently got around to watching it. It's getting another airing on TCM early tomorrow morning (Dec. 5) at 3:45 AM, or overnight tonight if that's the way you look at things.

I Married an Angel was released in the summer of 1942, several months after the US entered World War II, but is based on a play turned into a Rodgers and Hart musical in 1938, which is why the opening informs us the story is set in Budapest in those gay times of years gone past. Anna Zador (Jeanette MacDonald) works as a secretary at the Palaffi bank, run by the third generation of Count Palaffis, with the current Count Palaffi played by Neslon Eddy. Anna has a crush on the Count, and brings wildflowers from the country to his office every morning, but Palaffi's executive assistant Marika (Mona Maris) says the count doesn't notice them. Or Anna, who is really only in the typing pool so why would she be noticed by the count? Besides, Marika is pretty certain the count is interested in her.

In fact, the Count is interested in a lot of pretty, upper-class women to the point that people see him as a sort of playboy, with the most important among such people being the largest depositors in the bank. They could move their assets elsewhere, which would start a run on the bank that would likely cripple it. So he really ought to get married and settle down. When another of the assistants, Whiskers (Reginald Owen) hears that the count is not only not planning on settling down but hosting an extravagant costume party for his birthday, Whiskers has Marika give an invitation to a regular bank worker -- Anna, of course -- to make it seem at least a bit more like a work function.

Anna doesn't have the money for the sort of costume that people wear to these high-class costume balls in movies of this era, so she wears a largely homemade angel costume instead. This subjects her to some ridicule because she clearly doesn't fit in, and didn't necessarily want to be in the spotlight like this even if it allowed her to get close to the count for one night. What Anna doesn't know is that Palaffi had said that the only woman he'd ever marry would have to be a real angel. So during the party he goes into one of the drawing rooms while everyone else is out on the terraces and lawns partying away, and falls asleep and starts dreaming. (I'm not giving anything away here since in the context of the movie, we know that what follows is an extended dream.)

In the dream, Anna comes back to him as an actual angel, named Brigitta, telling Palaffi that she's just the sort of angel that Palaffi needs to marry to save the bank. Palaffi marries her and takes her on a honeymoon to Paris, although he finds out that being married to an angel isn't all he bargained for. The first issue is that the angel is just too virtuous, with the sort of inability to lie that leads to her telling truths that people don't want to hear. If anything, that's going to make the investors more likely to want to start a run on the bank. Of course, we know that this is the sort of movie that's going to have a happy ending, with several songs along the way for both MacDonald and Eddy.

To be honest, I Married an Angel isn't exactly a bad movie, although my view of the sort of singing that MacDonald and Eddy do stands. It's just not my thing. As stated above, the movie was released in the summer of 1942, and I get the impression that public tastes were really changing, accelerated by the US entry into World War II. Several stars of the 1930s (notably Greta Garbo and Norma Shearer) saw the writing on the wall and retired, but I think MacDonald and Eddy were suffering the same fate if you will, only without a voluntary retirement. I Married an Angel was a box office failure and gets panned by the critics, but I don't think it's any worse than the other MacDonald/Eddy movies I've seen.

For some values of "nice"

Some months back, TCM ran a Sunday night double feature of films starring Deanna Durbin. The first was It Started with Eve, but when I sat down to watch it I had the distinct feeling I'd seen it before. So instead I watched the other, Nice Girl?, to do the obligatory post on here. Now, as it turns out, I have seen It Started With Eve, but have never done a post on it; I wouldn't be surprised if the last time it was on TCM was before I started blogging since Deanna Durbin was at Universal and TCM doesn't get the rights to their films all that often. So I'll watch it again and eventually do a post on it.

Durbin plays Jane Dara, middle daughter in a family that is somehow middle class enough to have a maid Cora (Helen Broderick), as well as a father Oliver (Robert Benchley) who is doing experiments on the diets of rabbits that Jane helps with. Indeed, Dad is hoping to get a fellowship with a prestigious institute in New York to be able to help fund his studies. Jane has a boyfriend in Don Webb (a young Robert Stack), who has an interest in cars and could probably make a reasonable living as an auto mechanic, although I get the impression that even in those days this wasn't necessarily the profession a middle class man would want his daughter to marry.

A running subplot is Cora's relationship, or her being pursued by, the mailman Hector (Walter Brennan), who also leads the town's band that meets in the small-town park band shell for holidays like July 4, this being one of those Connecticut small towns that populated Hollywood movies like this in the years leading up to World War II. Hector brings Oliver a special delivery letter informing him that the foundation is sending a man from New York to look over the experiments with a view to the foundation funding these experiments. Jane goes to the train station to pick that man up: Richard Calvert (Franchot Tone). Richard has done research on various pygmy populations and the extent to which diet has made them short, and this has caused him to travel all over the world (and as we'll see later, have an impossibly big New York apartment for someone of his employment). That travel makes him sophisticated in the eyes of the three daughters, all of whom put on airs in the hopes that he'll take an interest in them, even if they're all too young for him.

Eventually it's time for Calvert to go back to New York, and Jane offers to drive him to the train station, in Don's convertible since Don's working on her car. However, she sabotages the convertible so that it won't get to the station on time, meaning she has to drive him to New York. They get stuck in the rain, and in a series of coincidences, Jane winds up wearing a pair of pajamas belonging to Richard's sister while her own clothes are drying. Then when Calvert makes it clear there's no romantic interest between them, Jane drives home in the middle of the night, arriving home at a scandalous time and making the whole town gossip about her.

Now, this is a Deanna Durbin movie, so we know that everything is going to come out right in the end. But to see exactly how that's going to happen, you'll have to watch for youreself. Nice Girl? is the sort of movie that I can see why it would appeal to fans of Deanna Durbin, especially back in 1941 when it was released. However, I can also see why Deanna Durbin was growing tired of these ingenue roles and wanted something more talent-stretching. This being Deanna Durbin, there are also several opportunities for her to sing, which again fans of hers will enjoy. The misunderstandings plot doesn't always work, and to me it felt wrapped up a bit too quickly. But for the most part Nice Girl? is simply inoffensive fun.

Maid for a Day

I've mentioned a couple of times now that I've been recording some of the shorts the TCM Saturday matinee block for when I want to blog about something on a day where I have another post that's not going to be a traditional review going up. We've got that again today, and this time the short in question is a Vitaphone two-reeler, Maid for a Day.

Peter Lind Hayes, credited here as just Lind Hayes, plays Freddie Hayden, a college student who wants to become a radio star, this being the mid-1930s. Needless to say, he gets teased by his roommates, although he tells them about the big hit his mother Grace (played by Peter's real-life mother Grace Hayes) had on stage with a song called "My Man Is on the River", performed on a stage with a curtain that depicts black people eating watermelons which of course everybody reviewing the movie today has to mention.

Grace is now working as a maid out on Long Island, where she serves a pair of society matrons. One of course, is her boss, while the other one is the boss' friend, who is running a bizarre little charity scheme, if you want to call it a charity. It's designed to set up a special beach just for the servants, although the real point of it is so that the rich people can have their own private beach without the servants seeing them. In any case, Freddie has gotten a job performing at that benefit radio show, which has elaborate musical numbers because of the live audience that's paying to show up.

It's only revealed later that Grace took on the job of a maid under an assumed identity to learn about maids for a performance she's going to give at some point in the future. She's saved her money from performing, and is somehow able to snag a ticket to the benefit. She has one of the ushers give a message to the producer telling him who she really is, which gets her backstage and ultimately performin in the finale, which just happens to be the song her son is doing.

I'd really only noticed Peter Lind Hayes in the movies he did when he was rather older, notably The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T and the terrible Once You Kiss a Stranger, so seeing him here so young is interesting. Grace Hayes isn't the best, but she's not exactly bad either. The songs are all rather odd choices for a short like this, notably one called "Two Cigarettes in the Dark". WIth all that, I can understand why Maid for a Day is even less remembered than other Vitaphone two-reelers.

TCM Star of the Month December 2025: Merle Oberon

Merle Oberon as Cathy in Wuthering Heights (Dec. 16, 8:00 PM)

Once again, we're into a new month, which as always means it's time for a new Star of the Month. For December, that Star of the Month is Merle Oberon, who was last TCM's Star of the Month back in early 2015. Oberon's movies will be airing on four of the five Tuesday evenings in December. There's going to be a break on December 23, since this being December, TCM has its annual marathon of Christmas movies that I'll be mentioning again when we actually get to the marathon.

TCM is only airing 17 of Oberon's movies, as far as I can tell. There are a couple of movies in the tribute that I'm not certain whether I've seen yet, so I'll be recording them. There's also at least one that's on my DVR that's airing, so I've already watched it and schedule the post for when it actually airs in a few weeks time. There also seem to be a few omissions of movies that I've blogged about before, which makes me wonder a bit about TCM's finances and what they're able to get the rights to. The Cowboy and the Lady was released by United Artists, although IMDb says that it got a DVD release from Warner Home Video back in 2016; I don't know whether that would be the Warner Archive or not. Also not showing up this month is A Song to Remember, which was released by Columbia. I'm not surprised the Fox stuff didn't show up; I'm not certain whether TCM would have to negotiate with Disney to be able to show that stuff nowadays since I don't recall how much of the back library Disney got when they bought part of Fox.

Glory Alley

I've stated two different general thoughts on MGM over the years. One is that, as probably the most prestigious Hollywood studio, they brought a lot of gloss to movies that would have benefitied from having no gloss. The other is that, once the Freed Unit musicals really got going, it was the other stuff made that's really a lot more interesting. Both of those thought came to mind as I was watching Glory Alley.

The movie is ostensibly set in New Orleans, although it's the MGM backlot's version of New Orleans, which has all the connotations you can think of. Working for one of the newspapers, although about to retire, is columnist Gabe Jordan (John McIntire), who tells his editor that he's never told the full story of boxer Socks Barbararossa (Ralph Meeker). So, as you can guess, we're about to get a flashback that tells us... the rest of the story. Wait, this isn't Paul Harvey, either the radio man or the character actor.

Some time in the past, before the Korean War (the movie was released in June 1952), Socks is about to fight a title bout. But as he's in the ring, he looks up at the very bright ring lights, and realizes... he can't go ahead with the fight! So he just gets out of the ring right then and there and goes to his dressing room in the basement to hide from everyone. Not quite everyone; there's his manager Peppi (Gilbert Roland), trainer of sorts Shadow (Louis Armstrong), girlfriend Angela (Leslie Caron), and Angela's blind father The Judge (Kurt Kasznar). Now, since Leslie Caron had a French accent, she and her dad are portrayed as having fled France when the Nazis occupied it, with Dad hoping to get the family assets back and Angela training to become a nurse to get the money for Dad to have an operation. Except that that last bit is only what Dad thinks; Angela in fact dances in one of the dive nightclubs which brings in rather more money. Anyhow, why did Socks just up and leave the ring? The full reason isn't explained until the end of the movie, but Socks looks at himself in the mirror and sees some of the toll boxing has already taken from him.

Peppi buys a bar of his own while Socks lets himself go, drinking heavily to the point that he's going to have to accept a pity job at Peppi's place. Peppi holds the contract of one other fighter, "Newsboy", which he gives to Socks. Socks intends to raffle off the contract to get some money and to get out of the boxing game for good, but he and Newsboy both get drafted to serve over in Korea. Then, in a truly nutty twist, Socks is able to show some real bravery and win the Congressional Medal of Honor, except that's an award he doesn't really want although he can't really sell it legally to make money.

Socks returns from Korea, and eventually tells Angela the real reason why he left the ring just as he was about to fight for the title, and... everyone lives happily ever after? Yes, basically that's what happens, and the "official" reason Socks gives for running away from that previous title fight is one that makes no sense.

In fact, the movie as a whole doesn't make much sense, seeing as how it veers wildly from one genre to the next. The characterizations are also all wrong. Ralph Meeker is asked to play something much too gentlemanly for a boxer who came up from poverty. Leslie Caron was most likely cast here because it was just after An American in Paris made her big. With her French accent, the studio had to make her character French, necessitating that back story. The melodrama with Dad's operation is an odd thing to shoehorn in here. Even worse is how the movie suddenly switches to the Korean War, looking like a cheap B movie at the same time it's doing this.

So Glory Alley goes wrong in so many ways, and yet that's something that actually makes the movie interesting, to watch how it goes so badly wrong. Not good, mind you, but interesting nevertheless.