The Newport Story

TCM is running a mini-feature of programming for Louis Armstrong tomorrow afternoon, starting off with one of those movies that I've seen show up on TCM a bunch of times but have never before gotten around to watching, until the last time it showed up so that I could record it. That movie is High Society, tomorrow (May 8) at 2:30 PM.

If for some reason you don't know what High Society is about, it's a remake, with several songs added, of The Philadelphia Story. Grace Kelly takes on the Katharine Hepburn role of Tracy Lord. She's a society daughter, but one who's extremely high maintenance. She was married to C.K. Dexter-Haven, played here by Bing Crosby. That marriage ended some time in the past, and as the movie opens it's the day before Tracy is about to get remarried, to George Kittredge (John Lund, appropriately wooden in the role).

One way in which High Society diverges from The Philadelphia Story is that C.K. is a dilettante musician, living next door to the Lords in another big mansion in Newport, RI. Newport was and I think still is home to a big jazz festival, which is what enables C.K. to put up Louis Armstrong and have Armstrong be a part of the cast. Armstrong serves no real plot purpose, other than to sing a sort of prologue and epilogue, as well as his band to do a musical number at a party the Lords have the night before the wedding.

Tracy's father Seth (Sidney Blackmer) is having an affair with a chorus girl, and one of the gossip mags not only knows about it but is planning on doing a story on it. So Tracy's unvle Willie (Louis Calhern) imposes on the magazine not to run that story, in exchange for getting an exclusive about Tracy's upcoming wedding. To that end, the magazine sends a writer, Mike Connor (Frank Sinatra) and a photographer who's in love with him although he doesn't realize it, Elizabeth Imbrie (Celeste Holm).

C.K., living right next door to the Lords, is able to crash the place, much to the consternation of Tracy although not to her kid sister, who has always loved C.K. and is the one person who really understands that C.K. is the one man who really is right for Tracy. Tracy also gets tipsy the night before the wedding and goes off to the pool with Mike, but theirs is a relationship that could never last.

For fairly obvious reasons High Society is always going to be compared to The Philadelphia Story. Unfortunately, High Society never quite hits the heights of The Philadelphia Story, which I think is largely due to the casting. Katharine Hepburn's reputation as box office poision, which was shattered by The Philadelphia Story, imbues her Tracy Lord with something that makes you want to see her get her comeuppance; Grace Kelly never had that sort of screen persona. Likewise, Bing Crosby feels too old for the Dexter-Haven part; he was born before Cary Grant in real life but essaying the asame role 16 years later. Sinatra isn't bad but doesn't really sparkle; the only one who does is Celeste Holm who looks like she's having the time of her life getting to do comedy.

High Society isn't exactly bad; it's more that it's burdened by being a remake of an all-time classic.

The Swan of no particular color

I mentioned yesterday that there are two Grace Kelly movies on my DVR that I hadn't blogged about before that were coming up as part of her day in Summer Under the Stars. (A search of the blog suggests I haven't done a full post on The Bridges at Toko-Ri either, having briefly mentioned it a few times. But I don't have that one on my DVR yet.) Running relatively early in the day was The Country Girl; showing overnight at 12:15 AM -- so technically on August 25 on the east coast but still August 24 in the rest of the time zones -- is The Swan.

A title card tells us that the action takes place in 1910, somewhere in Central Europe, in one of those minor royal houses. Grace Kelly plays Princess Alexandra, the eldest daughter in the house. She's got two much younger brothers, who are still young enough that they need a tutor, Dr. Agi (Louis Jourdan). The matriarch of the family, Princess Beatrix (Jessie Royce Landis), is a widow, and worried about both marrying her daughter off to someone suitable and getting the family line back into real royalty, as this branch no longer rules any lands, having lost everything to Napoleon a century earlier.

Then news comes that from a monarchy rather farther west, the Crown Prince, Prince Albert (Alec Guinness), will be coming for a visit. Beatrix realizes this is a perfect opportunity to try to play matchmaker and set up Alexandra with Albert. Not only that, but the two are cousins from a few generations back, so keeping everything in the extended family also seems like a great idea. And who couldn't resist somebody as beautiful as Princess Alexandra?

Apparently, Prince Albert can. He seems more interested in all the things the kid brothers are learning, and getting out in the fresh air around where the family lives, than in Alexandra herself. It should go without saying that this greatly distresses Alexandra, but even more so Beatrix. How to get Albert to notice Alexandra? Beatrix has the brilliant idea to try making him jealous.

There's going to be a going-away ball for Prince Albert, and Beatrix suggests to Alexandra that she might try inviting Dr. Agi and making it look to Albert as though Alexandra is interested in him. That would seem scandalous, since Agi is of course a commoner and in those days the higher-ranking princes and princesses. But desperate times call for desperate measures. Things get complicated, because Dr. Agi has long held a flame for Alexandra despite knowing he could never take the initiative because of the commoner/royalty divide. Worse is that this ruse doesn't seem to get Prince Albert interested in Alexandra.

The Swan is based on a play by the great Hungarian playwright Ferenc Molnár, from whose works a bunch of great movies have been made. Indeed, this was at least the third filming of The Swan, although I haven't seen the first two. This version of The Swan tries to open things up from the stage origins in part by having the duck-hunting scene as well as Agi and Alexandra going for a carriage ride together. I don't think the movie is quite successful in overcoming the staginess, however.

Not that The Swan is a bad movie; the performances are all competent. The production values are, being an MGM movie, quite good, with lovely color and beautiful sets and locations for the establishing shots. It's just that the material feels like it would work better with the spontaneity of a live stage performance and an audience to laugh where appropriate. Watch and judge for yourself.

The Country Girl

I think I might have mentioned at the beginning of the month in conjunction with my post on Summer Under the Stars that I had two Grace Kelly films on my DVR that I hadn't done posts on, and that both are showing up on her day. That day is tomorrow, August 24, but thankfully one of the films is airing overnight. So we'll start with the first of the two movies, The Country Girl, which TCM is showing at noon on August 24.

Kelly is, somewhat surprisingly the titular country girl, although we don't see her for a few minutes. Instead, we see the two male stars of the movie. One is William Holden, who plays Bernie Dodd. Bernie is a theater director, and in a big blow-up with producer Philip Cook (Anthony Ross). They're arguing over a faded star, Frank Elgin (Bing Crosby). They need someone for their new musical drama The Land Around Us who can both sing and act, which Elgin can do. The only thing is, in the intervening years, Frank has gained a reputation for becoming a raging alcoholic.

Frank comes in to audition for the lead role, not realizing at first that that's what they want him for, and when Bernie tells Frank this, Frank seems a bit nonplussed, as though he's not certain he's ready to take on such a big part after all those years of drinking. By the time Bernie and Philip are finished bickering, Frank has already left the theater, presumably thinking he's lost the part or just desperate for another drink.

Bernie goes looking for Frank, eventually going to his current address, which is an apartment in a crappy part of town. Opening the door is Frank's wife Georgie (Grace Kelly), looking decidedly frumpy since the studio obviously thought casting Grace Kelly against type would be exceedingly daring. Frank and Georgie talk, and it's a decidedly standoffish conversation. Frank comes home, and things get even more volatile.

Part of the reason for this is, that, as the movie goes on, Bernie finds himself wondering whether Georgie might be part of the reason why Frank turned to drink. Still, he takes a huge risk on giving Frank the role. The production goes into rehearsals, for the eventual road preview in Boston before opening in New York at some point in the future. Georgie is there, which she may think is for Frank's benefit. Bernie, for his part, thinks her presence is a huge problem. Frank has to deal with that conflict in addition to trying to stay sober.

The Country Girl is based on a play by Clifford Odets, who may not be to everybody's tastes. William Holden had gotten his big break in the movie version of Odets' Golden Boy, which is one of those plays that is a bit strident in trying to get its point across. This movie feels stagey, although to be fair to the movie a lot of that has to do with the fact that it's a play about the theater. It would be hard not to have a movie like this be stagey.

The acting is mostly good; Grace Kelly won the Best Actress Oscar which I think must have been down to the Academy voters being impressed by her playing against type. Frankly I still think I'd have voted for Dorothy Dandridge in Carmen Jones. The best acting here is really done by William Holden.

The Country Girl is one of those Oscar-winning movies that shows up surprisingly infrequently considering the fact that it's an Oscar-winner with multiple big stars. I'd guess that has something to do with being a relatively "little" picture and from Paramount, which is not one of the studios TCM has the easiest access to. Still, it's decidedly worth a watch.

Nowadays it would be a text message

TCM's Star of the Month for April is Ray Milland; he's getting a bunch of movies every Tuesday night this month. Tonight's salute to Milland brings a number of his suspense films. Surprisingly, I don't think I've ever recommended Dial M For Murder before; that's airing at 10:00 PM ET.

Milland plays former tennis pro Tony, who's married to the lovely Margot (Grace Kelly) and living in London. However, he suspects that she's having an affair with an old friend from America, mystery writer Mark (Robert Cummings). Tony is right that Margot is still in love with Mark, so Tony comes up with an elaborate plan to get Margot bumped off, which involves blackmailing one of his old friends from school, who will take Tony's key to get into the apartment and then strangle Margot. However, the plot goes wrong: instead of Margot winding up dead, she's able to grab a pair of scissors off the desk and stab her assailant in the back, killing him and leaving him on the floor of their apartment, which presents a bit of a problem for Tony.

However, quick-thinking Tony gets an idea: he'll pin the killing on Margot, suggesting that she did it because she was trying to kill a blackmailer. Having there be a motive other than pure self-defense means that Margot can be found guilty and sentenced to be executed, which for Tony is just as good as if the original assailant had killed Margot. And the plan would work too, if it weren't for those meddling kids -- or, at least, that meddling American mystery writer.

Dial M For Murder may not be Alfred Hitchcock's masterpiece, but it's one of the many very good movies that he made. It's never less than entertaining, and despite some gymnastics necessary to guide the movie through its limited setting (most of the film is set within Tony and Margot's apartment), it inventively solves most if not all of the plot holes and reaches its natural "crime does not pay" ending in a satisfying manner. The acting is nothing memorable here, but then, it's all in service of the story, which is the more important thing for a movie like this. And the story delivers.

Two other interesting bits about the movie: as I mentioned back in November 2009, the scene in which Milland tries to phone his wife from the club has an obvious prop. Second, the movie was originally supposed to be in 3-D, back in the 1950s incarnation of that overrated technology. The one scene where this is most obvious is when Grace Kelly is reaching for the scissors on the desk; it's shot in such a way that Kelly's hand appears to be coming out of the screen toward the audience.

Mogambo vs. Red Dust

TCM is airing Mogambo tonight at 8:00 PM ET as part of the salute to Star of the Month Ava Gardner. It's a remake of the earlier Red Dust, with Clark Gable playing the male lead in both movies. To be honest, I prefer Red Dust.

In Mogambo, Ava Gardner plays a chorus girl stuck in Africa with big-game hunter Clark Gable, who falls in love with her. Then, Grace Kelly shows up with her husband, and Gable falls in love with Kelly, leading to predictable tension. In Red Dust, the Gardner part is taken by Jean Harlow, while the Kelly part is played by Mary Astor. (Red Dust is set on a rubber plantation in Indochina, but that's not important here.) I think the women are better cast in Red Dust: Jean Harlow exudes much more raw sexuality than Gardner, and the fact that Red Dust was made before the imposition of the Production Code makes it easier to show off the steaminess. As for Grace Kelly, she's lovely, but generally comes across as much too icy. Mary Astor has more ambiguity to her, and you can see why she would become disillusioned being stuck in the middle of nowhere and fall for Gable.

Also, Clark Gable was in his early fifties when he made Mogambo. I always knew he hadn't aged well, although part of that was colored by having seen Any Number Can Play, where his character is supposed to be somebody whom time has treated badly. Things don't get better by the time he made Mogambo. The one thing Mogambo does have going for it over Red Dust, though, is the fact that it was made on location, and in beautiful Technicolor. It's not a terrible movie by any stretch of the imagination, either; I just find it inferior to the original.

Mogambo has been released to DVD; Red Dust apparently hasn't. But you can watch Red Dust in a little under two weeks on TCM, at 5:00 AM ET on November 23. (That is, the very beginning of Tuesday morning; TCM lists it as being late late in the night on Monday.)

A new Star of the Month

You've probably seen the promos on TCM, but Thursdays in November are given over to TCM's latest Star of the Month, Grace Kelly. Her first movie was Fourteen Hours, which is kicking off the month at 8:00 PM tonight. I've already posted about that movie. Kelly only has a small part in it, which means that pictures of her in the movie aren't so easy to come by. That would probably explain why I used a photo of Kelly from High Noon instead. That follows Fourteen Hours on TCM tonight, at 10:00 PM ET.

Getting pedantic with Robert Osborne

Grace Kelly in High Noon

In his comments after the end of On the Beach last night, TCM's Robert Osborne made a comment about the next film up, High Noon, being the movie that introduced America to Grace Kelly. True enough, High Noon made Kelly a star, but it wasn't her first movie. That would be Fourteen Hours.

Fourteen Hours is a gripping little drama about a man (Richard Baseheart) who walks into a hotel one St. Patrick's Day, rents a room, and then walks out of the room onto the window ledge, with the intention of jumping. Of course, somebody notices him on the ledge before he gets the chance to jump, and this is where the drama begins. Who is this man? Why does he want to jump? And can anybody convince him not to jump? Meanwhile, the prospect that a man might jump off a building brings the usual crowd of gawkers to the street below, with the expected crowd dynamics. Also, however, the scene affects people on the ground in what we, or they, might not have imagined. The material isn't anything groundbreaking, and in many ways what we would reasonably expect to happen is what does happen: the film is relatively realistic by the standards of what Hollywood could do in the early 1950s. And director Henry Hathaway handles it all with a deft touch that will leave the viewer guessing whether or not Baseheart will jump.

In the cast besides Baseheart is Paul Douglas as an Irish cop who sees Baseheart, and it the first one charged with getting him off the ledge. In many ways, Douglas is the only person Baseheart can trust. Also appearing are Howard Da Silva as the deputy police chief who's heading the operation to get Basehart back in the building; Agnes Moorhead as Basehart's overbearing mother, and Barbara Bel Geddes as Baseheart's finacée. People with bit parts on the street who aren't listed in the credits are John Cassavetes; Brian Keith; and Ossie Davis playing a cab driver.

What about Grace Kelly, you ask? She's not in the crowd below, but in a neighboring building. Her story line is that of a woman about to get a divorce, and going through all the legal formalities with her lawyers. But when she sees what happens to poor Basehart out on the ledge, she starts to have a change of heart....

It was a pleasant surprise to find out that Fourteen Hours is indeed available on DVD. It was released by 20th Century-Fox, and we know how they can be negligent in showing their classic movies on the Fox Movie Channel.

Edit: Updated to add photo of Grace Kelly