That Lonelyhearts column again

Back in the studio era, it wasn't uncommon for studios to remake their B movies. After all, the previous versions weren't really showing up anywhere to remind people of them, and it was a budget saver on the screenplay. Paul Muni's Hi, Nellie! was remade three times within about 15 years. The third of four versions of the movie is titled You Can't Escape Forever and aired on TCM back when George Brent was Star of the Month.

Brent plays Steve Mitchell, editor of a big-city paper whose girlfriend Laurie (Brenda Marshall) is trying to make it as a reporter. However, she has issues like fainting when she covers an execution only to discover too late that the condemned man was pardoned. For this, she gets demoted to the "advice to the lovelorn" column. Meanwhile, the condemned man was believed to be working for Greer (Eduardo Ciannelli), the local crime boss, since this was an era where all of the crime was managed by gangsters, or so it seemed if you watched the movies.

A man named Crowder shows up at the newspaper having written a manuscript by hand that he claims will blow the roof off of the Greer gang. Not long after, Crowder dies in what is an accident to everybody but Steve. So Steve publishes a headling claiming it wasn't an accident, only for the autopsy to say otherwise. So this time it's Steve who gets demoted to the lonelyhearts column.

Thankfully, there's a singles' club in town meaning there's ample work for a romance columnist. But there's something odd about this place and the weddings it performs, so Steve decides to investigate, figuring he can use this as a way to get out of the newspaper building and try to get the evidence that will prove he was right all along about Crowder's death. And, as it turns out, Crowder met his wife at the club, and wasn't the first person to get married at the club and die under mysterious circumstances.

Steve and his photographer Mac (Roscoe Karns) go to the club with Laurie following along, and she sees that the club is indeed a "respectable" front for a criminal organization, and probably laundering money to boot. Furthermore, the owner of the club, Robelink (Gene Lockhart) is the brother-in-law of Greer. Robelink, for his part, got the manuscript that Crowder wrote, but he's not planning to tell anybody where it is if he can avoid doing so.

You can probably guess how all of this is going to go, which is that Greer figures out Robelink may crack and that Steve is a threat. But this is the sort of movie that's going to have a happy ending. Crime does not pay, especially during the Production Code era.

I think now I've seen all four versions of this movie. I think my favorite is Love Is on the Air, which moves the story to radio and benefits from the presence of Ronald Reagan who was well-fit to Warner Bros.' B movies. In You Can't Escape Forever, Brent comes across as a bit of a conman and mildly unsympathetic, while Roscoe Karns is obnxiously incompetent at times. But this was B material, and released in the midst of World War II when audiences wanted escapism. You'll definitely escape here.

FBI Girl

George Brent was TCM's Star of the Month back in March, and I recorded a bunch of his movies that TCM ran. One that they didn't show was a public domain movie from late in his movie career: FBI Girl.

Now, obviously, Brent is not the title character here. In fact, you could argue that there isn't one title character, as there are multiple "FBI girls" here. In the context of the movie, they're women who work in the fingerprints divison of the FBI, pulling the cards for various law enforcement agencies that need to match prints to identities, as a brief opening narration informs us.

Cut to a generic southern state. Governor Grimsby (Raymond Greenleaf) is the governor, giving a live speech on TV to the people who are interested in the new US Senate crime committee that's coming to the state to investigate corruption. Grimsby says he looks forward to the commission since he's got nothing to hide. Now, for a movie like this, that's an obvious clue that the governor does indeed have a lot to hide, as he informs his chief advisor Blake (Raymond Burr in his bad-guy pre-Perry Mason phase). The thing is that some 20 years ago Grimsby was involved in a murder, when he was going by the name John Williams. If the crime committee suspects anything, he'll be fingerprinted, those prints will be sent to Washington, and Grimsby will be found out as Williams, ending his career. But then he's to the point where he would be relieved to get this off his conscience.

Blake, however, is having none of that, and decides that the best thing to do would be to get one of those FBI girls to remove the Williams fingerprint file. Blake knows just the girl, as Natalie Craig's brother Paul is a small-time crook who has to repay some favors. Natalie does get the file, apparently not wanting to put her brother in danger, but she screws things up just enough that one of the male employees will be able to implicate her in the subsequent investigation. Except that the investigation is into her death, as Blake has her killed in a road accident to prevent her from talking.

Worse for Blake and Grimsby is that Natalie doesn't have the file on her when she's killed. They have to come up with another way to get the file, and FBI agents Stedman (Cesar Romero) and Donley (George Brent) are on the case and begin to suspect things. They talk to Natalie's roommate Shirley Wayne (Audrey Totter), who agrees to help, although things get much more complicated when Stedman and Donley reveal that one of the people who's going to be implicated in the case is the lobbyist Chercourt (Tom Drake). That's because Chercourt is engaged to Shirley. She doesn't realize how much danger even a lowly FBI girl like her can get into in the pursuit of justice.

FBI Girl is one of those low-budget movies that, a few years later, probably would have been the subject for an episode of one of those TV shows that glorified the work of the FBI. It's not a bad movie, although it does strain credulity in a few places -- there are just too many coincidences for the case to be wrapped up so neatly and quickly. And for as ruthless as Blake is, he's also surprisingly incompetent at times.

FBI Girl is perhaps a bit more interesting as a time capsule into the way people looked at the FBI back in the early 1950s, as well as the appearance of a very young Peter Marshall back when he was still paired with Tommy Noonan. Entertaining, but there's a good reason the movie fell through the cracks.

The Keyhole

George Brent was TCM's Star of the Month last month, and one of the movies that they ran is showing up on TCM again, although this time it's as part of a night of movies starring Brent's co-star in tonight's movie, that star being Kay Francis. The movie in question is The Keyhole, which comes up overnight tonight, or in the wee hours of tomorrow, at 3:15 AM.

Kay Francis plays Anne Brooks, née Vallee. As the movie opens up, she's reading a note from a man named Maurice (Monroe Owsley) that is a suicide letter. Anne is married to a wealthy man, so she has her chauffeur drive her over to the apartment where Maurice is staying. It turns out that Maurice and Anne danced together in Europe as one of those Vernon and Irene Castle-like couples who demonstrated new dances in the ballrooms of nightspots where the wealthy gathered. Anne was young and naïve, stupid enough to marry Maurice, and when she learned what a jerk he really was, she left for America leaving Maurice to complete the no-fault divorce proceedings since he was intending to marry another woman. However, Maurice never married that other woman and never got the divorce. Anne married her second husband Schuyler Brooks (Henry Kolker) thinking it was a valid marriage and that she'd never need to tell Schuyler about her past. But it's not a valid marriage, and Maurice is blackmailing Anne over it because she's got money, or at least assets that theoretically can be converted to money although Schuyler is bound to start noticing at some point.

Schuyler has kinda-sorta noticed in that Anne comes home at odd hours, and doesn't seem to wear some of her jewelry any more. But the servants have no idea what's really going on. The one person who does know what's going on is Schuyler's sister Portia (Helen Ware), who is good at discreetly breaking up such unwanted relationships. She learns from Anne that Maurice is not an American citizen. So Anne should take a cruise somehwere to the Carribean, like Havana. Maurice is certain to follow her, and Portia can use her influence to get Maurice's visa cancelled. Voilà: Maurice won't be able to blackmail Anne in the US anymore, and Schuyler need not learn anything about what went on between Anne and Maurice.

However, since Schuyler knows nothing of this, he has some reason to worry that Anne might be up to no good when she suddenly declares that she'd like to go to Havana. So he goes to a detective agency to have one of their discreet, high-class private eyes get on the same boat and see if he can find out who Anne is seeing on the sly. That man is Neil Davis (George Brent), who is accompanied by a second detective, Hank (Allen Jenkins), who will be traveling under the guise of being Neil's valet.

Neil and Anne meet, and the two eventually become friends, although Neil notes that Anne seems to be a more or less perfect wife, never looking for another man and trying to get away from Maurice who, sure enough, has followed Anne on the boat. The things Neil and Anne do together are completely platonic, although eventually Neil finds himself beginning to fall in love with Anne. This presents problems when Schuyler learns the truth from his siter and goes down to Havana himself so that Anne should not find out that her husband has been spying on her.

The Keyhole is an entertaining enough movie, although I have to wonder how much bearing to reality it bears. One plus is that the conflict is set up in a good enough way that it makes Anne's reasoning for why she did the things she did believable. She was on a separate continent in the early 1930s, and expected the divorce was going to go through, so what resaon is there to tell any of this stuff to her second husband? And she's acting mysteriously enough, in part to protect her husband, so he has a logical reason to suspect something is wrong. I do have to say, on the other hand, that the resolution of the film's conflict doesn't quite work for me.

One other fun thing to mention is the subplot. Glenda Farrell is inserted into the movie as Dot, a gold-digger who is clearly looking for a rich guy to fleece. She falls for Hank, not realizing he's not what he's presenting himself as, while Hank is blowing through all the expense money to keep Dot in the lifestyle she's become accustomed to. They both handle their roles well and provide a bit of needed comic relief.

People who want a look at early 1930s values will probably enjoy The Keyhole, as will the fans of the movie's stars, although there are better films out there for all of them.

From Headquarters

Tonight continues TCM's Star of the Month salute to actor George Brent with one of the movies where he's the star and there's not really much in the way of a big female star to eclipse him. That movie is From Headquarters, which comes on tonight at 8:00 PM.

We don't actually see Brent at first. Instead, we see the workings of a bug-city police department, where they're bringing in various people they've arrested. However, the big news of the day is going to be the discovery of the dead body of a famous playboy, Bates, whom we'll see briefly in a couple of flashbacks. It's obvious that somebody has shot him, and, as it turns out, there are going to be quite a few suspects. Multiple department members are assigned to the case, with Dr. Van de Water (Edward Ellis) doing the forensic work. Sgt. Boggs (Eugene Pallette) has definite ideas on what's happened, while Lt. Stevens (George Brent) is much more thorough in trying to figure out who killed Bates.

Part of Van de Water's analysis is to determine the time of death, which seems a bit strange since all of the suspects have conflicting views of when they might have seen him. Some claim they saw him after he died, while others may be able to have an alibi in that they saw him before the shooting, if at least that was the last time they saw him. One of the obvious suspects is Lou Winton (Margaret Lindsay), as she is his ex-girlfriend. She tried to break off the relationship and Bates might have been forcible in trying to prevent that, which might make the case self-defense. Except that Lous has a brother Jack who shows up and seems to be way too protective of his sister, which implies that he knows more than he's letting on and might have something to do with the shooting himself.

And then there's Bates' butler Horton who is less than fully honest. There's also Anderzian, a dealer in Oriental rugs who has been selling stuff to Bates and says there are letters in Bates' safe that Bates wanted him to have in case Bates were to die. But Anderzian also seems a bit too insistent that he gets those letters, which gives Stevens an idea. Meanwhile, that opening sequence comes full circle. One of the guys being booked in that scene has wanted to see Stevens when he hears of the killing of Bates. That guy is found out and gets murdered as well for his troubles. When the detectives discover the dead body, the building goes on lockdown, leading to the killer ultimately being found out.

From Headquarters is an interesting enough little programmer, although I have to say that the police procedural would get much better in later years. Brent does a competent job, even though he's not the sort of actor that you'd think of as playing a police detective. Margaret Lindsay as the nominal female lead is OK too, but she doesn't have much to do. Audiences watching this in 2026 won't find it anything special, but back in 1933 when moviegoers didn't have TV or much chance to see these movies after first-run, I think it would have entertained them.

Out of the Blue

It always amazes me just how many old movies there are that I hadn't even heard of until they show up on TCM, or nowadays, I come across them when I'm on Tubi or one of the other FAST platforms. Then again, there were quite a few lower-budget studios putting out B stuff. In this case, that studio is Eagle-Lion, and the movie in question is Out of the Blue.

George Brent plays Arthur Earthleigh, a businessman in New York who can afford one of those posh apartments with an open-air balcony. He lives there with his stodgy wife Mae (Carole Landis), who wants everything in the apartment to be just perfect. She's really irritated about her neighbor, artist David Galleo (Turhan Bey). He's an artist who has a German shepherd dog that insists on burying bones on the Earthleighs' side of the balcony, and that really ticks Mae off. She wants Arthur to get their lawyer and make David get rid of the dog, which is really more of an excuse to give David the character motivation to do what he does later in the movie. Meanwhile, watching from two stories above are a pair of spinster aunt types, Spring and Ritchie (Elizabeth Patterson and Julia Dean respectively).

Mae has to go up to Connecticut to visit her sick sister for the weekend, leaving Arthur alone at home. He goes out to a bar where he meets Olive (Ann Dvorak), who follows him back to the apartment because she's generally the sort of person following on from Katharine Hepburn's character in Bringing Up Baby. For fairly understandble reasons, Arthur wants to get Olive out of his apartment, despite her claiming to have a heart condition that can be helped by copious amounts of brandy. Arthur thinks he's succeeded in sending Olive on her way, but she goes into the guest bedroom and passes out on the bed.

The next morning Arthur finds out what has happened. Worse, Olive has completely rearranged the furniture, which is going to piss Mae off when she finds out. And then to complicate things further, when Arthur more forcefully tries to evice Olive he accidentally strikes her, causing her to faint and pass out on the ground. Arthur thinks she's died, and decides that the best thing to do is deposit the dead body on David's side of the balcony. David has a string of women visiting his place to do modeling work for him, such as current client Deborah (Virginia Mayo).

David finds the body, but also realizes that Olive is not in fact dead, a fact which is very useful because he now has a way to get back at Arthur and Mae, by blackmailing Arthur into allowing David to keep his dog, as well as making Arthur think the police are on to him. The two biddies upstairs see the body and naturally call the police, since there's been a string of murders in the neighborhood. As you can guess, things get rather complicated, although everything mostly works out for the good people in this story.

Out of the Blue is a movie that may work for the right sort of person. To be honest, the comedic premise isn't a bad one, making me think of The Trouble With Harry, although in that case Harry was really most sincerely dead. The issue I had with the movie, however, was the Olive character. She gets so obnoxious that it's difficult to have sympathy with her. It's almost as though I would have been OK with if it she actually had died. And since the story is basically one extended joke, it can be a bit tough if you don't like the character at the center of the joke.

But again, I can see why some people are going to love a movie like Out of the Blue, so watch for yourself and reach your own judgment.

Technically it could use more sin

Way back in 2011, I did a brief one-paragraph mention of a movie called They Call It Sin, noting how it had somehow gotten a TV-G rating despite being a precode. The last time it aired, I recorded it, not having done a full-length post on it. Recently, I finally got around to watching it. TCM still gave it a TV-G rating, but that's not really the point of this post.

David Manners plays Jimmy Decker. As the movie opens, he's getting on a train from New York bound for Kansas, where he's supposed to try to secure a business deal. He's leaving behind a fiancée, Enid Hollister (Helen Vinson), who happens to be the daughter of his boss. Fast forward to a small town in Kansas that's preternaturally boring. One Sunday morning, it seems the only person who's doing any work is the soda jerk at the pharmacy; pretty much everybody else is at church.

Jimmy goes to the church, since another trope of these small towns is that everybody in town goes to the same non-denominational Protestant church. After the service ends, everybody leaves with the exception of Jimmy and the church organist, a young woman named Marion Cullen (Loretta Young). She's an aspiring composer, playing some of her own music after the service, and a woman who absolutely hates this stifling small town. It's later revealed that her ridiculously strict parents are in fact her adoptive parents, as her biological mother was a traveling entertainer who died here. Marion is taken with Jimmy when he mentions that he's from New York. He encourages her to pursue her musical dream, even suggesting he might be able to give her pointers if she ever gets to New York. But he can't be bothered to tell Marion that he's got a fiancée waiting for him back in New York.

As you might guess, Marion goes to New York, and looks up Jimmy. She shows up unannounced at his posh apartment just as he's getting ready for a visit from Enid and her parents, which would be mighty awkward. Fortunately for Jimmy, his personal physician, Dr. Travers (George Brent), is also there, and is able to take Marion back to the hotel where she's staying. Travers, for some reason, doesn't tell Marion about Jimmy's fiancée, so she only learns when Jimmy goes to see Marion and then Enid shows up.

Marion tries to get jobs on her own, eventually meeting aspiring actress Dixie Dare (Una Merkel). Both of them get a job with producer Ford Humphries (a young Louis Calhern), Marion as a rehearsal pianist and Dixie as one of the stars. But Humphries has selected Marion for her looks, and when she resists his advances he not only fires her from the show, but steals one of her uncopyrighted compositions and claims writing credit for it himself. Jimmy finds out from yet another trope of 30s movies, the gossip column blurbs, and goes to see Humphries about it, leading to a climax that could threaten everyone's happiness.

They Call It Sin is fun enough, but even for late 1932 it doesn't feel like it's doing that much to break new ground. All of the plot devices feel like things we've seen in a dozen other movies. And, despite the title, any "sin" there is is mostly fairly tame, with Humphries' actions (which nowadays would be considered sexual harassment) being the worst. But the cast pull it off well, and it's definitely worth a watch the next time it shows up on TCM.

Don't call me Byron Barr

Tonight into tomorrow brings the second night of Barbara Stanwyck's turn as TCM's Star of the Month. One of her movies that I hadn't seen before and recorded the last time TCM ran it is The Gay Sisters. It comes on as part of the Star of the Month salute tomorrow (March 13) at 1:00 PM, so I made a point of watching the movie to be able to do a post on it here.

The movie opens with a brief establishing scene set about 25 years before the main action. As the movie was released in 1942 and set more or less at that time (possibly just before Pearl Harbor although World War II doesn't play into the action), that means the opening is set in the mid-1910s, which is the run-up to World War I. The Gaylords are one of the richest families in America, and the current patriarch, Penn Gaylord (Donald Woods), has a wife and three young daughters. Or should I say had a wife. She was somehow traveling alone on the Lusitania, which as we all know was torpedoed and sunk in the Atlantic. Eventually the Americans entered the war, and Daddy Gaylord for some weird reason went off to fight despite having those three young daughters and presumably being the same sort of captain of industry as Jerry Lewis in Which Way to the Front. Dad gets it in France, leaving the thre girls orphans.

Two dozen years pass, and probating the will has been a nightmare. Apparently, somebody over in France claims that Papa Gaylord wrote a codicil before getting killed in action in which he gave ten percent of the family fortune to a French children's charity. The remaining Gaylords back home naturally contested this, and somehow international legal delays have dragged the case out for all these years, while the Gaylord sisters grew up and slowly lost the estate's cash. They have, however, held on to the land, because family tradition has it that land is more important than money.

The three sisters are Fiona (Barbara Stanwyck), the eldest, who is foster mom to an orphan child Austin; Evelyn (Geraldine Fitzgerald), who married an English nobleman and has come back to America in the only sop to the fact that there's now another war going on in Europe; and Susie (Nancy Coleman), who got married except that it's one of those loveless marriages she'd like annulled. Her unseen husband is willing to do it for a price, but since the money has been spent on contesting the will, Susie doesn't have the money. So although she's in a relationship with painter Gig Young (the print TCM ran has the character being played by the Gig Young who became a prominent supporting actor; he was born Byron Barr and took his stage name from this character although I don't know if he did that before the movie was first released or TCM only has a re-release print). Complicating matters is that when Evelyn returns to America, she sees Gig and starts pursuing him.

But since Barbara Stanwyck is the star here, she gets the biggest complication. That comes in the form of Charles Barclay (George Brent), who is contesting the will on behalf of that French charity. Of course, he really wants the land the Gaylord house is built on because he's a land developer who has bought all the surrounding land in order to be able to build a skyscraper. He also seems to know quite a bit about Fiona's past. More, even, than Fiona's first lawyer Gibbon (Gene Lockhart) who gets replaced with Ralph Pedloch (Donald Crisp). Even the poor foster kid gets dragged into all of this.

The Gay Sisters was based on a novel that I'm guessing was popular at the time to the extent that you can see why a studio would want to turn it into a movie. However, something goes wrong in the adaptation, which I think is the screenplay since it seems to go all over the place, with the reveal of Fiona's past being a bit bizarre. And if the Gaylords were supposed to value land over money, couldn't they have just given up that ten percent right at the beginning?

Still, The Gay Sisters isn't a terrible movie. It's just not what you'd want to show as the first movie for any of the main players involved.

Talk about bad luck in men

I don't know how many times I've mentioned it, but I'm always up for a pre-Code movie. One that I recorded a while back and thought that I did a post on, although a search of the site says I didn't, is Lilly Turner. With that in mind, I watched it again and now you get the belated post on the movie.

Ruth Chatterton plays the titular Lilly Turner, who as we see almost from the start of the movie has incredible "bad luck" in the sort of boyfriend she chooses, although at least in some cases she doesn't necessarily have much choice. Not with the first guy, however. Rex Durkee (Gordon Westcott) is a magician, and, being on the stage, is the sort of thing that seems to charm Lilly, who lives in one of those small towns that people in movies of this era always seemed to want to get away from. So, thinking Rex has made it big in vaudeville, she basically elopes with Rex against Mom's advice.

Fast-forward six months, and life on the road isn't nearly all that it's cracked up to be, as she's in one of those traveling carnivals that is struggling to make ends meet. Not only that, but Rex seems to be more interested in his assistant Hazel (Mae Busch in a small role). And then when Lilly finds out that she's gotten pregnant, Rex leaves in a hurry. Although, he's got other reasons for leaving, as we see when a process server comes in looking for him, with Mrs. Durkee in tow. Yes, there's already a Mrs. Durkee, which at least means Lilly isn't legally married and can dump him without consequences. (The baby is stillborn as a plot convenience.)

The closest thing Lilly has to a friend is one of the show's assistants, Dave Dixon (Frank McHugh), who cares about Lilly but also has the problem of being an alcoholic. The carnival boss gets fed up with that, so Dave and Lilly both leave the show, eventually winding up with a medicine show run by "doctor" McGill (Guy Kibbee) and his wife.

Part of the show involves showing how McGill's patent medicine works, and to do that, he has a "strongman" in Fritz (Robert Barrat). Fritz is thoroughly interested in Lilly, although the love is unrequited, and that fact is slowly driving Fritz insane. Literally. When taxi driver Bob Chandler (George Brent) shows up in the audience and starts making eyes at Lilly, Fritz gets some sort of "headache" that's diagnosed by a doctor as a precursor to hereditary insanity, sending Fritz to the insane asylum.

Bob takes on the strongman role, because the taxi driving is really beneath him. In fact, he's got a degree as a civil engineer, but with the depression on he hasn't been able to get any jobs in the area he's qualified for. As you can unsurprisingly guess, he and Lilly fall in love with each other. But then Fritz literally breaks out of the asylum, and comes lookin for poor Lilly....

Lilly Turner is a movie that has an absolutely bonkers plot, fitting so much into its 65 minute running time. And just when you think it's about to settle down, it gets even more nuts. Now, to be honest, for some movies that might be a strike against it, and I can't blame anybody who has a problem with Lilly Turner as a result. It probably didn't bear much resemblance to reality even in 1933. But the cast make this one so absurdly fun.

Living on Velveeta

I mentioned last month when Kay Francis was TCM's Star of the Month that at some point in the past, possibly even before I started this blog, I had seen the movie Living on Velvet that was airing as part of the tribute, but that I had never blogged about it. So I made it a point to record that movie, and then sit down to watch it and do a post on it here.

Kay Francis gets top billing, but the real lead here is played by George Brent, whose role at Warner Bros. was to make his female leads look good, first Kay Francis, and then by the late 1930s Bette Davis. Brent plays Terry Parker, a professional airplaine pilot back in the days when the profession was rather more dangerous than it is now. Indeed, Terry is at the controls of his plane in the opening scene when it crashes, killing his parents and sister but not him, since otherwise he couldn't really be the lead in the movie. Terry then goes overseas to fly as we learn from a series of newspaper articles, first to the Far East and then Venezuela where he keeps getting in trouble because of hs desire to live the sort of life he wants to.

After a year of this, he's returned home to New York where he flies in an air show, in a plane that's owned by his friend "Gibraltar" (Warren William). Gibraltar is one of those gentlemen pilots, one of those idle rich who has his own plane more to impress the society types than to be truly adventurous. Gibraltar invites Terry to one of those society parties of the sort we saw at the beginning of One More Tomorrow, this one hosted by Amy Prentiss (Kay Francis) and her aunt Martha.

Amy and Terry meet, and she's taken by him, not minding that he was a pilot even if he doesn't want his past reputation to precede him. She's so taken by him that she leaves the party to go out for a night on the town. This, even though she's supposed to be Gibraltar's girlfriend. It only takes that one night for Amy and Terry to realize they want to marry each other, and Gibraltar is even generous enough to let the couple live in his house out on Long Island for a ridiculously low rent even by 1930s standards.

Of course, part of the implied agreement of living out on Long Island is that Terry will settle down and get the sort of job where people commute to and from Manhattan by train and play bridge on the way in and out since they all take the same train in and out every day. Terry has never even played bridge, and still has dreams of going back to being a pilot, even though he doesn't have the money for a plane and there's no way he can support Amy on that sort of income.

Amy, wackily enough, continues to support her husband despite her desire for him to get a more regular job. It's only when he sells some stock and uses the proceeds to try to start that airline business rather than renovating the house and saving for a rainy day that she finally thinks of leaving him. But you just know that the first time there's an emergency, she's going to go running right back to him....

Living on Velvet was released in 1935, and feels like the sort of movie that Warner Bros. would try to force upon Kay Francis to try to get her to ask out of her contract since they knew they were soon to have a new queen of the lot in the form of Bette Davis. Kay, unlike Bette or Olivia de Havilland, didn't rebel much, so she got stuck in some lesser movies, as well as this one with ridiculous character motivations.

However, there are definitely things worth watching in Living on Velvet. Kay Francis was known as a clotheshorse, and at the final party, she's wearing a dress that's extremely backless. It's possibly even more backless than the one that Jean Harlow wore in Dinner at Eight where she tells the joke about not being able to expose her skin, only to turn around and show that backless dress. The other highlight is when Kay and George Brent have that night on the town. Kay recites the "30 days hath September" poem, and when she gets to April, George's character notices the speech impediment and comments on it. The fact that Kay Francis would be willing to do such a scene is a bit surprising.

Living on Velvet is a typical lower-tier programmer from the era. It's certainly not terrible, but there's not all that much special about it.

The Goose and the Gander

I've mentioned in the past how much I tend to enjoy Warner Bros. programmers and B movies from the 1930s. Another good example of that output is The Goose and the Gander.

Kay Francis plays Georgiana Summers, who's vacationing at the sort of beach resort where the well-to-do go for their vacations. Also there is Betty Summers (Genevieve Tobin), who is only related to Georgiana by marriage, in that both of them have been married to Ralph Summers (Ralph Forbes). Georgiana was the first wife, before Betty came into the picture and took Ralph away while Georgiana was doing one of those rich people's vacations in Europe, which would explain why Georgiana hasn't seen Betty before.

Ralph is there as well but pre-occupied with business, so accompanying Betty at the beach is Ralph's brother Arthur. Showing up is Bob McNear (George Brent), who's clearly in the movie to wind up with the lead actress in the final reel and make her look good the rest of the time. But right now he's carrying on a fling with Betsy that seems innocent enough on the surface and which Ralph suspects not a jot.

Georgiana, having seen the interaction between Betty and Bob, upon learing that Betty is the second Mrs. Ralph Summers, hatches a plan to have Ralph catch Betty in flagrante delicto. Bob mentioned in passing to Georgiana that he has to go away on business on the night train, but is really intending to get off that train and head back to the beach to surprise Betty. And since Betty and Bob are each planning to go up to the mountains for some alone time, Georgiana bribes the one service station along that road to come up with a ruse that will force the two of them to spend the night at Georgiana's place in the hills, at which point Ralph will show up. She's gotten the license plate numbers of Betty's and Bob's cars, which is how only those two will wind up at Georgiana's place.

But of course things don't quite work out that way. When Betty takes Ralph to the train station to see him off, Bob follows, and after Ralph leaves, the two of them get in Bob's car, with a guy from the garage coming to pick up Betty's car. Except that he's going to show up late. There's been a couple of jewel thieves at the hotel, Lawrence (John Eldredge) and Connie (Claire Dodd). They need to make a quick getaway, and when they see the keys still in Betty's car (this was the 1930s, after all; nobody would do that today), they steal Betty's car and head off for the mountains.

So Bob and Betty, claiming to be married, show up at Georgiana's place, followed by Lawrence and Connie, and then eventually Ralph and the cops. The thieves still have the jewels on them too, including one of Georgiana's that she didn't notice had been missing. It gets complicated from there.

Never mind the complications, however; The Goose and the Gander is a silly little piece of fluff that works for the most part on the strength of its cast. It's not terribly memorable and will never be considered a great in the careers of any of the cast members, but then that's not what the studio was looking for. They just wanted to keep their stars in the public eye, and a movie like The Goose and the Gander does that perfectly well while entertaining movie goers for an hour and change.

The last I checked The Goose and the Gander has a standalone DVD courtesy of the Warner Archive, but it really another of those movies that really should have been included in one of those four-film TCM-branded box sets Warner Home Video used to put out.

In which person?

Another of the movies that I DVRed and happens to be available on DVD courtesy of the Warner Archive is In Person. So I recently sat down to watch it to do a review on it here.

George Brent plays Emory Muir, a man interested in things like bird photography. One day in a hotel elevator he runs into a mysterious woman wearing a veil. He follows her until she nearly gets run over by a taxi, resulting into fleeing to another hotel, but not before Emory gets to see the woman without her veil. It turns out she's an incredibly homely woman named Clara Colfax, with horn-rimmed glasses, buck teeth, and a bad hairdo among other things.

In the next scene, when she's escaped into that other hotel, we see a man referring to her as Carol Corliss, with her telling the man not to call her that. We then see Carol, who is of course also Clara, but minus the wig and other make-up job, and she's pretty darn good looking, which isn't a surprise considering that she's played by Ginger Rogers.

Emory has followed her up to the hotel suite, where he meets the other man, Dr. Sylvester (Samuel Hinds), along with one Judge Parks (Grant Mitchell), who is Carol's uncle. Carol apparently suffered from some sort of nervous reaction to one of her crowds of adoring fans, to the point that she's become afraid of going out in public, which explains the veil and disguise.

Dr. Sylvester has an idea. Not telling Emory the real identity of his patient, he suggests that Carol would do well by getting away from it all at a place up in the mountains, which Emory just so happens to have. Emory is just going to have to pretend to be some sort of therapist. But since he was intrigued by the woman in the veil, and he was planning on going up there anyway, he agrees.

Alone up in the cabin, Carol decides she can take off the disguise. Emory sees a newspaper clipping of Carol and realizes who she is, but for whatever reason, pretends not to know who she is and doesn't believe she's a Hollywood actress no matter what she does to try to prove it. Perhaps taking him to one of her movies in town will do the trick, when she can show by her adoring fans' reaction that they recognize her as Carol. It could cause other problems, however.

Meanwhile, Carol's acting partner Jay Holmes (Alan Mowbray) is in love with her, as well as wanting her to get back to work on her next movie. So he shows up at the cabin and causes a scene, although Emory is able to defuse it by claiming to be one of Carol's doctors. The local sheriff has seen Jay, however, and thinks that he's the man the sheriff's obnoxious young daughter is referring to when the daughter sees Carol's sorrow. We know who should end up together in the last reel, but it's going to take some time getting there.

In Person is a bit of a mess, in large part because it doesn't seem to know exactly what it wants to be. It shoehorns multiple plot lines together, not too successfully. It also varies between genres, with some it seeming to be a light drama, and others trying, but not doing particularly well, to be a comedy. Ginger also gets a couple of song and dance numbers. The one in the first movie-within-a-movie is particularly bad, as though the songwriters had been given the task of coming up with a bad song for an actress character to be saddled with in a movie.

Ginger Rogers tries her best with the material she's given, but ultimately I think that even she can't save it. In Person is the sort of movie that should have wound up on one of those four-movie box sets that TCM used to put out with Warner Home Video, rather than (or in addition to) a standalone disc. At that price point, it might be worth a watch, but at the Warner Archive price point, I'd go for a bunch of other Rogers movies first.

The Last Page

I didn't mean to do two British pictures back to back, as I like to vary genres, eras, and stars as much as possible depending as well as what's coming up on TV. But thanks to being busy the past couple of weekends, I was looking for something short on my DVR that's also available on DVD, and that led to my picking Man Bait from Diana Dors' day in Summer Under the Stars.

Dors gets an "introducing" credit here despite having been in over a dozen movies in the preceding five years; the nominal star is George Brent, this apparently being one of those British movies where the producers thought getting an aging Hollywood star would make getting distribution in the US easier. (The Man Bait title was also for US distribution; the original title was The Last Page.)

Brent plays John Harman, manager of a London bookstore where Dors' character, Ruby Bruce works. Ruby, however, isn't exactly the best worker since she keeps showing up late. One day at work, she catches a customer named Jeffrey Hart (Peter Reynolds) trying to get into a cabinet to take a rare book. Rather than reporting Hart to her boss, Ruby decides that since he puts the book back, there's nothing more to go after. Jeffrey, meanwhile, invites Ruby to the club where he's a member.

Harman's life is more complicated. He's got an invalid wife, but has been able to cash in an insurance policy that will enable her to get treatment in Sweden. Meanwhile, not having been able to get any physical pleasure from that invalid wife, he's been seeing one of his employees, Stella (Marguerite Chapman), who had tended to him while he was in a military hospital during the war.

Anyhow, Harman asks Ruby to stay late after work to get some shipments inventoried and out. Ruby accidentally rips her blouse on a filing cabinet, and Harman offers £3 for a new one, a princely sum for a shop clerk like Ruby in the early 1950s. The encounter also results in Ruby getting kissed by Harman. But when Ruby meets Jeffrey at the club and tells him what happened, he gets bigger ideas in his head. Seeing that a married man kissed one of his employees, this would be a good time for said employee to start blackmailing the boss for much bigger sums -- and as we know Harman has several hundred pounds from that insurance policy.

Ruby isn't happy with the arrangement but feels threatened and needs the money. She writes a letter to Mrs. Harman, and when Mrs. Harman receives the letter, she tries to get out of bed to burn it, which results in her having a heart attack or something that kills her. That's bad enough for Harman, but there's worse to come.

Jeffrey meets Ruby in the shop after hours one evening, trying to get his share of the £100 that was the plan for Ruby to blackmail from Harman. But Harman no longer having need of the insurance money and being pissed with Ruby, he just throws a giant wad of cash at Ruby, well over the £100 she wanted. Jeffrey finds out there's more, and when Harman comes downstairs to investigate, Jeffrey tries to shut Ruby up, strangling her to death in the process.

Ruby's disappearance is noted, and eventually her body is found in a shipping crate that was supposed to be full of books Harman was shipping to himself, so he realizes he's not the chief suspect in the murder of Ruby. As so often happens in these B movie mysteries, the suspect (who we of course know is innocent) has to try to prove his own innocence with the police hot on his tail. At least he's got a woman in Stella trying to help him.

Man Bait is certainly watchable, although I don't think it's as good as another British movie from the time with similar themes, Home at Seven. Brent isn't nearly as good an actor as Ralph Richardson, and the whole blackmail plot doesn't make much sense, since Ruby has no real reason to blackmail Harman.

Dors, for her part, does a more than adequate job, and as an American it's always interesting to see these decidedly non-prestige British movies. Despite the movie's flaws, Man Bait is definitely more than worth a watch. It's on a standalone DVD as well as a box set of Hammer noir.

Hedy Lamarr stars in Gaslight

TCM ran the movie Experiment Perilous during 31 Days of Oscar because it earned a nomination for its art direction. So I DVRed it and sat down to watch it recently.

George Brent plays Dr. Huntington Bailey, who gives a voiceover at the beginning about some days back in 1903 being the strangest days of his life. we then see Bailey on a train during a terrible rain storm, which is where he meets Cissie Bederaux (Olive Blakeney). They're both going back to New York where they live, although Cissie hasn't been there for five years which she spent at a sanitarium where she may or may not have had a heart problem. She vows to move out of her brother Nick's (Paul Lukas) house and asks Bailey to find a good apartment hotel for her. She then asks him to visit the Bederaux place where they'll be having high tea for her birthday.

Bailey shows up, but too late, as it turns out that Cissie has died of some heart condition. But Bailey meets Nick and his lovely wife Allida (Hedy Lamarr). Nick, on finding out that Bailey is a doctor with apparently some research in the then-new field of psychology, asks Bailey to examine Allida surreptitiously to find out what's wrong with her. Since Allida is so beautiful, Bailey naturally accepts.

But there's more going on. Bailey suggested Cissie stay at his apartment hotel, so she had her baggage delivered there. But thanks to a mix-up, she received one of Bailey's bags while he got one of hers. Bailey finds hers, which contains some diaries and research material for a biography she's writing on Nick's life. Apparently they had a tough childhood in Europe, with Mom dying giving birth to Nick and Dad committing suicide. As Bailey reads on, he gets the sinking suspicion that Nick is trying to do something to Allida and their kid, who's constantly kept away from everybody else in the top floor of the house. Allida has been complaining of being followed and Bailey realized he's being followed, too.

Bailey also realizes that he's probably in some trouble, since he knows that Nick will have received his bag. Then he'll put two and two together to determine that Bailey has Cissie's bag and has read the diaries. This probably has something to do with why Nick wanted Bailey to examine Allida too. The fact that Bailey is falling in love with Allida isn't helping, either.

As you can probably guess from the title of this post, I couldn't help but think of Gaslight as I was watching Experiment Perilous. I also couldn't help but think that Gaslight was rather the better movie. I think that a lot of it comes down to the casting of George Brent as the male lead. Brent was at his best at Warner Bros. playing the nominal male lead who was clearly second fiddle to the female lead, often someone like Bette Davis. Here, despite Lamarr's top billing, Brent is just as much a lead as Lamarr. It doesn't work to the movie's benefit. I also didn't find Lukas and Lamarr as good as Charles Boyer and Ingrid Bergman from Gaslight

Still, the movie is lovely to look at, and the story is interesting enough to make it worth at least one watch. It's available on DVD courtesy of the Warner Archive Collection.

Miss Pinkerton

Not too long ago, I mentioned the movie While the Patient Slept. As part of Joan Blondell's turn as TCM's Star of the Month, I recorded Miss Pinkerton, a movie that bears a passing resemblance.

Joan Blondell plays Miss Adams, a nurse at the city hospital who frankly finds her job growing boring. It's always the same old same old with nothing ever happening, except to the patients. Thankfully, she's about to get a bit of change in her life. A wealthy woman in one of those big mansions, Julia Mitchell (Elizabeth Patterson), faints when she sees one of her young relatives apparently shot himself. With Julia in shock, she needs a nurse to look after her, and Adams' boss thinks Julia is perfect!

Of course, there's a bigger reason for Adams to be there. The police are investigating since there's a good probability of murder what with the dead guy having had a substantial insurance policy. Inspector Patten (George Brent) wants more eyes in the house, but nobody's going to act other than proper with the police around. So Patten gets Adams to be a sort of acting detective, on whom he bestows the title Miss Pinkerton. Her job besides looking after Julia will be to try to do what she can to gather clues for Patten.

It should be unsurprising that in this sort of house there's all sorts of strange characters. The doctor himself (C. Henry Gordon) seems a bit off at times, while the butler Hugo (John Wray) keeps acting suspiciously, just so viewers will suspect him as a suspect. There's the maid Mary (Blanche Friderici), a lawyer, and then halfway in, a young woman Paula (Ruth Hall) who claims to have been married to the dead guy although she's carrying on a relationship with another guy. She's also trying to get away from Miss Pinkerton to snoop around the house despite our nurse's sticking her head out to let Paula in the house.

So there's a bit of a convoluted mystery here, and in many ways it really doesn't matter who did it or even if it was suicide. Instead, this is a bit more for Joan Blondell's performance, and her interactions with George Brent. In that regard, it's OK, although some people will probably want a bit more of a story, or at least one that makes sense.

Miss Pinkerton is available on one of the Warner Archives' Forbidden Hollywood box sets, although as far as those sets' pre-Code sensibilities goes, this is one that more than a lot of the other movies could have been made after 1934 without much change. Not that there's anything wrong with that; just that it doesn't feel all that much like what one thinks of when one thinks "pre-Code".

The Major and the Widow

A movie that ran duing Summer Under the Stars that I hadn't seen before is My Reputation. It's available from the Warner Archive scheme, so I DVRed it and watched it.

Barbara Stanwyck plays Jessica Drummond, a woman in World War II Chicagoland living with two sons who has recently become a widow. Thankfully her husband was exceedingly wealthy before the illness that killed him, because he was able to leave her and the kids financially secure. The kids can still go to boarding school, and Jessica can do Red Cross work for the war effort. But there are other issues.

One is that the boys are growing up (after all, they're old enough to go to boarding school in New England) and developing interests of their own that are leaving Mom increasingly alone, despite the fact that she had a large social circle. More distressing for Jessica is her frankly nasty mother Mary (Lucile Watson). Jessica's mother insists that, like all upper-class people in proper society, Jessica needs to mourn in the right way, which means wearing black and a veil in perpetuity and apparently liking it. Mary's been wearing the veil for 25 years.

Jessica has a couple of nice friends in the Abbotts (John Ridgely and Eve Arden). They have to go to California for business and then plan to rent a cabin near Lake Tahoe for a time, so they invite Jessica alone. She thinks the change in scenery would do her good, although her mom insists Jessica go south with her. (I told you she was a piece of work.)

Jessica is supposed to enjoy the early winter weather in Lake Tahoe, but she's a lousy skier who breaks one of her skis so she has to trudge back to the cabin. Thankfully, she meets a nice man who is willing to help her back to the cabin. Scott Landis (George Brent) is a Major in the US Army, doing some sort of service stateside for the time being. He takes Jessica back to the cabin, and they spend an evening together with the Abbotts. As you can guess, they develop a friendship.

But for Jessica, it seems a bit more than a friendship. When she learns that Maj. Landis has been transferred to Chicago, she jumps at the chance to see him. He warns her that he's not the marrying kind, and that he's liable to be transferred overseas any minute now, but she continues to carry on. Her mom is of course pissed off by it, and even all of her friends other than the Abbotts start a vicious gossiping campaign. Can Jessica and the Major live happily ever after?

My Reputation is the sort of movie I had all sorts of problems with, mostly because I don't think I was the target audience for it. The movie was made in 1943 at the height of the war, but held back for release until 1946, so I'd presume the original intended audience was women whose husbands were away. But the bigger problem I had with the movie is that Jessica could have solved her problems with a little honesty. She could have just had a friendship with Landis and told everybody she was shoing him a bit of Chicago while he was stationed here alone. And with the patriotic war fervor, why would anybody have a problem with a widow being kind to a soldier?

I can't really fault the acting, although it was odd to see a script leave Eve Arden strangely subdued. But the plot and the character motivations it gave its characters just drove me bonkers. Still, you may be the sort of person this movie was designed for, and especially if you like Barbara Stanwyck you might like it.

The Painted Veil (1934)

I'm not a big fan of Greta Garbo. But I do have to say that it's not her fault that The Painted Veil is a mess. The movie is available on DVD courtesy of the Warner Archive, so you can watch and decide for yourself how much of a mess it is.

Garbo, at 28, plays unmarried Katrin, an Austrian who still lives with her parents. Her kid sister gets married, and one of the attendees is British Dr. Fane (Herbert Marshall), whose career involves studying cholera in Hong Kong and dealing with any outbreaks on the mainland. Garbo is so desperate that she decides to marry him and go off to China with him!

Katrin, now in Hong Kong, doesn't know anybody there, so she's bored out of her mind until she meets British civil servant Townsend (George Brent), also stationed in Hong Kong. Townsend seems to be relatively wealthy by Hong Kong standards, and is also intersted in Katrin. Katrin has nothing else to do because her husband is spending all his time on his epidemiology studies, so she naturally does what any woman in her situation would do, which is to take a lover in the afternoon.

Of course, Dr. Fane finds out and he's none too pleased. He has no desire to divorce her, but what's a good way to punish her? (Never mind the fact that he should have paid attention to her.) Well, the good doctor but lousy husband is in luck! A cholera epidemic has broken out on the mainland, and Dr. Fane is needed to treat the patients and find the source of the outbreak. Only this time, he's not going to leave Katrin behind to romance Townsend. Oh, no, he's going to take Katrin with him to middle-of-nowhere China even if it kills her. Or especially if it kills her. Of course, he's the one to get cholera eventually.

The Painted Veil is sunk by its thoroughly ludicrous plot. Garbo as a woman who is unmarried and not by her choice is nonsense. If she weren't married, it's because she didn't want a man, like the characters in the recently-mentioned Antonia's Line. The movie also completely overlooks the fact that both of them screwed up in the marriage. George Brent is also the sort of actor who would be right in Herbert Marshall's role, but not as the lover Katrin takes on the side. And the resolution of the whole cholera thing left me shaking my head at the improbability of it.

Still, as I said at the beginning, you may want to judge for yourself. The movie was based on a story by Somerset Maugham, and was remade about a decade ago. The 2007 version has actually been released as part of a box set, but not the Garbo version, which is only on the pricier standalone Warner Archive DVD.

In This Our Life

I mentioned last week that I apparently haven't done a full-length post on In This Our Life before. It's coming on tonight at 8:00 PM as part of the salute to Star of the Month Olivia de Haviland, and it's worth a watch.

Bette Davis stars as Stanley Timblerlake, sister of Roy (that's de Havilland); both are nieces of Uncle William (Charles Coburn). Stanley is engaged to Craig (George Brent), while Roy is already married to Peter (Dennis Morgan). But Stanley decides she'd rather have Peter, so she schemes to get him, and then runs off to the big city with him! Once Peter's divorce from Roy is finalized, he and Stanley get married, but Stanley continues to be a controlling blankety-blank. In fact, she's so controlling that poor Peter decides the only way out of this marriage is to kil himself! Meow.

So Stanley comes back to her old home town. By now, Roy is doing well for herself by having fallen in love with Craig; after all they were both screwed over by Stanley. Craig is a prosperous lawyer, helping out young black clerk Parry (Ernest Anderson), who has dreams of going on to law school to become an attorney. (Pretty daring stuff for a 1940s film, to be honest.) Not that Stanley is any more racist than the rest of American society; she's just a selfish controlling you-know-what. So one night Stanley has a little too much to drink, and gets into an accident. What's the easiest thing to do? Why, blame it on the young black kid!

All along the way Stanley has been enabled by her uncle William, as the family was wealthy and Stanley was more like her mother (William's sister). But this time when she tries to get help from William, there's a plot twist, that allows Bette Davis to have one of her better screen rants.

Supposedly Bette Davis didn't think much of In This Our Life, but I think that's quite unfair. Sure, it's a melodrama, but it's a really fun melodrama, and one that gives Davis a chance to strut her stuff in spades. It's only natural that she takes the chance and runs with it. Everybody else does well, although George Brent and especially Dennis Morgan don't have much to do. This one is Davis' picture all the way.

In This Our Life doesn't seem to be in print on DVD.

Stamboul Quest again

I briefly mentioned Stamboul Quest back in November 2008. It's on again tomorrow afternoon (July 18) at 12:30 PM as part of TCM's Friday look at World War I in the movies. What I said about it back then holds true, I think; if you haven't seen it before, it's worth a watch. But I wanted to mention it again since it doesn't seem to be available on DVD.

Snowed Under

There are several interesting movies coming up in the next day or so, but there's one that I'd prefer to mention because it doesn't currently seem to be on DVD: Snowed Under, which is on TCM at 1:00 PM tomorrow (April 7).

George Brent plays Alan Tanner, a formerly successful playwright who has fallen on a bit of hard times. That is, he's got two acts of a play written, but he's unable to come up with a third act for that play. And that's a problem, since the play is supposed to open in a week's time! So Alan's agent gets a place out in the country for Alan to go for a weekend where he'll have the peace and quiet necessary to come up with that third act. Unbeknwonst to Alan, the agent is also sending somebody else to that cabin out in the country: Alan's first wife Alice (Genevieve Tobin). They had collaborated on his plays back when she was the first Mrs. Tanner, and that's how Alan became successful. Plus, she still holds a candle for Alan. So getting Alan to finish the play, and to spend some time with the first Mrs. Tanner, might not be a bad thing.

That's because there's a problem with the second Mrs. Tanner, Daisy (Glenda Farrell). That marriage hasn't been successful either, and it resulted in a divorce that required Alan to pay Daisy a substantial amount of alimony. But without any hit plays, Alan isn't able to scrouge up the money to make the alimony payments, and has fallen behind. Daisy wants those alimony payments, to the point that she's willing to have a court order enforced on her ex-husband. As if that's going to help Alan finish up the play. But, sure enouhg, Daisy shows up with the local sheriff's deputy Rowe (Frank McHugh), with that court order.

If you thought things were complicated for Alan before, they're about to get a whole lot more complicated. There's actually a third woman in the house, Pat (Patricia Ellis). She's supposed to be Alan's typist, but claims that she and Alan are engaged, and that she's going to become the third Mrs. Tanner. Having one woman after you is bad enough, but having three? Yikes. And there's still the matter of finishing that play.... As for the title, Snowed Under, it comes from the fact that a snowstorm is coming, threatening to strand everybody at each other's throats in that small cottage.

Thankfully, Snowed Under was conceived at Warner Bros. as a programmer for George Brent. He's not exactly the best comic actor out there, but was good at being the man whose purpose in the plot was to let the women around him (often Bette Davis) sturt their stuff. When it came to these shorter movies that were clearly designed to be second-billing to Warners' prestige films, though, Brent isn't that bad. (See a movie like Front Page Woman for an example.) And with the short running times, these movies don't wear out their welcome, being over quickly if you think they're going to drag. Snowed Under is nothing spectacular, but it's reasonably entertaining.

Rainy days and Mondays

Myrna Loy, early in her career before playing Nora Charles in The Thin Man, played quite a few exotic characters who were often femmes fatales. She's not quite so exotic, but is certainly the temptress, in The Rains Came, which is airing tomorrow at noon on TCM.

We don't get to see Myrna Loy at the beginning of the movie. That honor goes to George Brent, who plays Tom Ransome, an American roué now living in Ranchipur, a prinicpality in British India. His reputation preceds him, as the polite society of Ranchipur want him to change his ways. On the other hand, Fern, the daughter of the head of the missionary school (Brenda Joyce) likes Tom, and in fact would like to run away with him, just to get away from the stultifying missionary life.

Enter Myrna. She was an old lover of Tom's, but they went their separate ways, at least until now. She's now the Lady Edwina Esketh, the wife of Lord Albert (Nigel Bruce), who is in Ranchipur to buy a bunch of horses. Edwina hasn't exactly been faithful to her husband, and he knows it, keeping a list of all hre conquests. So, when Edwina meets Tom again at a party given by the Maharajah and Maharani (HB Warner and Maris Ouspenskaya, respectively), you'd think that the two of them are going to get back together and live happily ever after, at least after the quickie divorce in Reno.

But if you were watching the opening credits, you'll have noticed that Tyrone Power's name is ahead of George Brent's in the credits, and we haven't gotten to him yet. He's Major Rama Safti, a doctor in the medical corps of Ranchipur. Edwina is immediately smitten with him, because he's just so damn handsome and exotic. Tom is friends with the doctor, and thinks this isn't a good idea, but you know that when love is in the air, there's no way anybody's going to break it up until the two lovers learn the futility of it themselves.

Edwina and Rama start seeing more of each other, until... the earthquake. The earthquake is just the first of a series of disasters. It's bad enough just to have an earthquake, but this one also damages the foundations of the dam, which eventually bursts and sends a flood of water towards all of the main characters! They survive the flood, more or less, so you'd think that, as in a movie like San Francisco, this is the point where all the survivors get to live ever after, if not necessarily happily. Oh, but The Rains Came has a long ways to go.

If you though an earthquake and flood were bad enough, wait a minute -- you ain't heard nothing yet. The stagnant flood waters bring... the plague! Rama, being a doctor, takes charge of the situation as best he can, setting up emergency hospital wards to care for the sick and dying, and asking for help anywhere he can get it. And wouldn't you know, Edwina wants to help. She's got no experience in nursing, but dammit, she's so in love with the doctor. And she needs to expiate her sins too, since her husband was one of the folks who didn't survive all the other disasters. Still, Edwina's got a lot of expiating to do.

The Rains Came is unrelentingly melodramatic, which at times isn't to the movie's benefit. Just when you think there's going to be a resolution to people's problems -- boom! comes another disaster. The cast all do a fairly good job with characters who range from the not-quite appealing to severe ethnic mismatches. Yes, Tyrone Power and Maria Ouspenskaya are playing high-cast Indians. Ouspenskaya, in particular, looks incredibly silly doing it. But she rises above it, as do the rest of the cast.

The Rains Came is the sort of movie that shouldn't quite be to my liking, what with the melodrama and general Lifetime Channel-worthy material. And yet, it's not a bad movie at all. I think I'd recommend other movies first to people who aren't necessarily fans of old movies, but for anybody who does enjoy old cinema, this is a worthy addition to your movie viewing.

The Rains Came has received multiple DVD releases.