Well, Debbie Reynolds loves him

TCM is running a couple of Debbie Reynolds' movies tomorrow (March 23) morning. There's one that I hadn't blogged about before, but that I have on my DVR, so I watched it as I always do with an intention to writing up this review for the airing. That movie is I Love Melvin, which comes on at 7:45 AM.

Debbie Reynolds plays Judy LeRoy, a chorine who has dreams of making it on Broadway although she currently is only appearing in the chorus of one of those dumb college musicals. (This is not an indictment of the movie; it's that the college musical as a genre is disproportionately insipid in my view as musicals go.) Not having hit it yet, Judy still lives with her parents, real surname Schneider (Una Merkel and Allyn Joslyn) and an obnoxious kid sister Clarabelle (Noreen Corcoran).

However! Good news comes for Judy when she gets a call from the manager of the show that she's got the chance for a more substantial role, that of the football in a highly stylized dance scene that Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen might have come up with except that as far as I know they didn't have their fingerprints anywhere near this movie. So Judy heads off to the theater, walking and singing her way through Central Park.

Also in Central park is Melvin Hoover (Donald O'Connor). Melvin works for Look magazine as someone at the bottome of the ladder, a would-be photographer who is still just an assistant to Mergo (Jim Backus). He too is singing his way through the park in the sort of duet where the two aren't together until they literally bump into each other. Judy isn't pleased at first, although you know she's going to fall in love with Melvin by the end of the movie. Never mind that her parents have been trying to hook her up with a guy who's really got nothing wrong with him beyond being boring, Harry Flack (Richard Anderson).

Melvin, for his part, falls for Judy immediately. Knowing that she's a chorus girl, he comes up with an excuse to do a photo shoot on her. He makes a much bigger mistake, however, when he lies to her by telling her that he's going to get her photo on the cover of Look, something he has no power to do. His bosses don't seem to be particularly interested in his work, either. Melvin compounds the lie by getting Mergo to make a mock-up cover of Look that has one of Melvin's photos of Judy on it, which Melvin presents to Judy even though the editors have no plan to put Judy on the real cover of the magazine.

Judy and the rest of the Schneiders are dumb enough to start gossiping about Judy's being on the cover of Look, and as you might guess, everyone goes to buy copies only to find out that Judy is not in fact on the cover. This leads to the sort of complications you might expect from a light romantic comedy, although you also know they're going to get solved with a happy ending, since MGM wasn't about to put Donald O'Connor and Debbie Reynolds into something dark and twisted.

I Love Melvin is a competent enough vehicle for Donald O'Connor and Debbie Reynolds, but it never rises to anything great. Part of that is that it's only programmer length at 76 minutes, and part of that is that it was conceived more as a musical. The numbers take even more away from the story line, leading to a movie with a wafer-thin plot. It's inoffensive, but incredibly minor stuff.

Saratoga

It's fairly well-known that actress Jean Harlow died tragically young while she was in production for the 1937 movie Saratoga. Her fans demanded that MGM finish the movie so that they could see the last footage of her, and MGM relented and used a body double and voice actress to film the remaining scenes. For whatever reason, I had never actually seen Saratoga, so the last time it showed up on TCM I made the point to record it so that I could finally strike it off the list of films I hadn't seen.

Saratoga Springs, back in the 1930s and still today was known as a resort town that spent the month of August hosting a horse-racing meet that catered to the wealthy set. So, as you might guess, the movie deals with that horse set. Grandpa Clayton (Lionel Barrymore) owns Brookvale, a stud farm breeding racing horses. Or should I say owned, because he's fallen into debt and the bank is about to take everything from him. It doesn't help that his son Frank (Jonathan Hale) has incurred heavy gambling debts to professional gambler Duke Bradley (Clark Gable). But Duke likes Gramps as well as Frank's daughter Carol (Jean Harlow) and helps them keep the farm, or at least keep being able to run it, even if they're no longer going to own it -- Duke has the deed.

Carol, for her part has gone over to Europe to become cultured, where she meets a fellow American who's apparently been trying to gain some class too, Wall Street investment banker Hartley Madison (Walter Pidgeon). The two get engaged, although Carol is adamant that she's not going to use Hartley's money to buy back the deed to the farm from Duke.

Carol studies the horse-racing racket in an attempt to win back the money she'll need to buy the deed legitimately. This necessitates her spending a lot of time at racetracks all along the east coast, so she keeps meeting Duke and his gambling friends, Jesse (Frank Morgan) and Fritzi (Una Merkel). Fritzi realizes Duke is in love with Carol, and the more Carol keeps running into Duke, the less she dislikes him, to the point where you know the two are going to wind up together in the final reel even though Carol is still engaged to Hartley.

All of this is leading up to the eventual climax at Saratoga. Huntley has bought a horse after inadvertently outbidding Duke at a horse auction. Huntley wagers that this horse will be able to beat one that Duke is backing at the big race in Saratoga. Duke, for his part, has other ideas, and Carol still has divided loyalties....

It's hard to escape the poignancy of knowing that Jean Harlow died before Saratoga was completed while watching it. Not only that, but she was already terminally ill. Still, despite her health she does the best she can with the material and gives a reasonably good performance. The only thing is, the material isn't the greatest, not that this is the fault of anybody in the cast. They're all professional, while Hattie McDaniel as a maid gets to sing a verse as the whole train car does a song, and shows what a good performer she could have been if she had been given a real chance.

I also couldn't help but wonder what might have become of Harlow's career had she not died young. Sadly, I have the feeling that, as with several other big actresses of the 1930s, notably Joan Blondell or Kay Francis, World War II would have put a serious crimp in her career. She had talent, but the sort of roles that were good for her at MGM would have gone by the wayside once the more serious atmosphere the war engendered took hold.

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.

Murder in the Private Car

Back in July, I think, TCM ran a spotlight on B movies. I recorded a whole bunch of them, not having seen a lot of their selections. Another one that was new to me despite it being an MGM movie was Murder in the Private Car. Having recorded it, I finally got around to watching it and now I can do the review on it here.

May Carlisle plays Ruth Raymond, who works the switchboard at a stock brokerage in Los Angeles, in the days when it wasn't easy for people to buy stocks, especially if they weren't in New York. No electronc trading or mutual funds. She works with her best friend Georgia (Una Merkel), and has a boyfriend John who loves her. One day, a strange guy walks into the office where the switchboard operators work. Not long after that, Ruth is called into her boss' office.

It turns out that she's not in trouble at all. In fact, Ruth is now at the heart of a mystery. Luke Carson (Berton Churchill) is a railway magnate who many years ago lost his daughter when she was kidnapped by his brother (ie. the young girl's uncle). Ruth always thought she was an orphan after her dad died young, but somehow an old fingerprint of the little girl who was kidnapped survived, and Ruth's fingerprint matches that one. Ruth being confirmed as the biological daughter of a titan of business, she's in line to become a very wealthy woman.

However, a lot of people know that she's set to become wealthy. Indeed, some of them have plans to kidnap her again, although we don't know who's behind it. Indeed, she's picked up by a car that's trying to kidnap her, but that car is followed by a taxi, and who is the passenger in the taxi but one Godfrey Scott (Charles Ruggles). We already saw Godfrey, in that opening scene when he was talking to Ruth and Georgia. Godfrey is a detective, but not one who solves crime; instead, he focuses on preventing crime from happening in the first place, and he's the one who foiled the first kidnapping attempt on Ruth.

We then get a scene of the telegraph agency receiving a telegraph for Ruth from her biological father, saying he'll be coming to Los Angeles to get her. But somebody intercepts that telegram, and replaces it with one saying that Mr. Carson will be putting a special car, the private car of the title, on a train from Los Angeles bound for New York. So we already know that something is going to happen on that train, although of course Ruth and her friends don't.

Sure enough, the lights go out and a murder takes place, along with a bunch of other mysterious happenings of the sort you'd see in the old Scooby-Doo cartoons. Who's causing them, and why? Will Ruth get to meet her father and inherit the money? Will she and John be able to live happily ever after?

This being a B movie, Murder in the Private Car is breezy and extremely fast-paced. Sure, it's not completely well developed, but these B movies generally weren't since they had to be finished quickly. It is, however, quite a bit of fun, and definitely worth watching if you get the chance to see it.

Man Wanted

I'm always up for watching another Kay Francis movie. One that I hadn't seen before and showed up on TCM a little while back was a pre-Code film called Man Wanted, so I made a point of recording it and watching it.

Francis obviously doesn't play the man, but the woman who more or less winds up wanting the man. She plays Lois Ames, a woman who is actually in the world of business, editing a high society magazine called The 400. Perhaps more surprisingly is that she's married, although her huband Fred (Kenneth Thomson) seems more interested in living the good life and being a bit of a playboy, including stepping out on his wife. Lois, for her part, seems more married to her job, but that's probably as much Hollywood making a moral judgment about women that high up in the working world as it is the truth. It's to the part that her long-suffering secretary is sick of having to work nights.

Enter Tommy Sherman (David Manners). He's a salesman working for an exercise equipment company in the days when exercise equipment was quite expensive. He actually goes off to clients' homes and offices to demonstrate the equipment, which is how he's about to meet Lois. Tommy, meanwhile, has a best friend in Andy (Andy Devine), and is engaged to Ruthie (Una Merkel), the perfect working-to-middle-class couple. At least, until Tommy meets Lois. It just happens to be on the very same day when Lois' secretary has finally gotten fed up with all those nights working, and quits right then and there. Tommy decides to offer himself up for the job, at least on an emergency basis.

Surprisingly, Tommy shows himself to be adept at the job of executive assistant, quickly making himself indispensible to Lois. This, as you can guess, causes all sorts of problems. Lois, after all, still has a husband, even if he is cheating on her and she's about to find that out once and for all. And now Ruthie is about to become similarly suffering. Worse for Tommy is that when Andy consoles Ruthie, he starts to fall in love with Ruthie and thinks about putting the moves on Ruthie himself!

Man Wanted is a movie that has a lot of potential, but one that I felt unfortunately couldn't figure out a good way to resolve all the plot developments it had built up. It's a pre-Code, so it doesn't have to adhere to the strictures that a post-1934 movie would, but the ending still seemed a bit anodyne to me. Worse is that it all comes across as so old hat and not particularly memorable compared to other pre-Codes, and I don't mean old-hat and dated simply because it's from over 90 years ago.

Still, fans of any of the principal stars here will probably find something to like about Man Wanted.

Road to Zanzibar

I've mentioned a fairly big box set of Bob Hope films that I picked up some time back. I think it's actually two box sets repackaged as one, with a bigger set of just Bob Hope, and a smaller set of Hope with Bing Crosby. The Hope/Crosby set has some but not all of the "Road" pictures, and recently I watched the second of those, Road to Zanzibar.

Hope and Crosby are still a team after getting off the Road to Singapore, starting off here as a carnival attraction in which Crosby is Chuck Reardon the barker, while Hope is Fearless Frazier, the human cannonball. But Fearless isn't just a cannonball; on top of that his outfit is supposed to be doused in kerosene such that when he's shot through a ring of fire, he'll (or at least his outfit) catch fire before landing in some body of water.

However, that's not really the way the act works. In fact, the cannon has a secret compartment in the base, and "Fearless" hides there while a kerosene-soaked dummy goes through the ring of fire. It's really much safer that way, after all. This time, however, there's a glitch. The dummy doesn't land in water, but instead crashes into the circus big top which, being fabric, catches fire, burning to the ground and sending everybody running to escape. Fortunately, nobody's found dead, not even Fearless.

That of course is because Fearless was still in the cannon. But it also means that the ruse is going to be figured out sooner or later, so Chuck an Fearless need to start up a new act somewhere else. That's how they wind up on the island of Zanzibar, which at the time was a British possession before becoming nominally independent for a few years in the early 1960s and ultimately joining with Tanganyika to become Tanzania.

Before they can restart their carny schemes however, Chuck gets the duo into more trouble, as he buys a worthless diamond mine. Fearless sells it on to someone else, but that's going to necessitate them making another quick escape. This is how they meet Donna (Dorothy Lamour) and Julia (Una Merkel). Julia says that Donna has been capured by white slavers, and indeed, she takes the two men to a slave auction where Donna can be bought. So Chuck and Fearless buy Donna's freedom, before finding out that this was a scam and the two women were in cahoots with the supposed slave trader. Donna also supposedly has a wealthy boyfriend, and she and Julia get the two men to take them on a safari so that she can scam them by eventually meeting her rich boyfriend.

Of course, both Chuck and Fearless fall in love with Donna, complicating matters. Both of them get the opportunity to sing a number of songs along the way, before the eventual more or less happy ending.

There's not a terribly coheren't plot to Road to Zanzibar. Apparently, after the success of Road to Singapore, Paramount wanted to make a sequel for Crosby and Hope, which meant that the movie would be more about their gags and singing, ultimately feeling more like a series of sketches than a fully coherent movie. This may not appeal to some viewers, but if you like the amiable humor of Crosby and Hope, you'll probably like the movie. Audiences back in the early 1940s certainly liked the pair, making the movie a hit.

Some modern viewers will also be a bit uncomfortable with the thoroughly inaccurate look at Africa, but it should also be pointed out that part of the humor in the Road movies is that they were spoofing popular movie conventions of the day, much in the same way the Dogville shorts did at the beginning of the sound era. Hope and Crosby never made a "Road" movie about Europe, but I get the impression it would have had the same inaccurate and stereotypical view of European villages a lot of Hollywood movies from that era had.