At least Mickey Rooney doesn't strip

A movie that Eddie Muller presented on Noir Alley some months back that I was surprised to see I hadn't blogged about before considering it's an MGM movie with Mickey Rooney is The Strip. It's schuled to air tomorrow, Sept. 12, at noon as part of TCM's Saturday Musical Matinee with Dave Karger, so I watched the movie so that I could put up a review here.

The Strip, of course, refers to the "Sunset Strip", that portion of Sunset Boulevard in what is now West Hollywood, not quite as far west as where Joe Gillis got the swimming pool he always wanted. At the time of the movie, it was in an unincorporated area of Los Angeles County, meaning that the only government was the county (and therefore the sheriff's department, not the LAPD) with no municipal government. After an opening narration informing us of all this, the police come to the apartment of one Jane Tafford (Sally Forrest). She's in very bad shape, but not as bad shape as Delwyn "Sonny" Johnson (James Craig). He's quite dead.

Stanley Maxton (Mickey Rooney) knew both of them, and he's known to have plans to leave the Los Angeles area, so that makes him a natural suspect in the murder and the attempted murder. He's brought in for questioning, and he tells us his story in that most original of all Hollywood plot devices, the flashback. Stanley was originally from Los Angeles before being drafted to fight in Korea, where he got injured enough to wind up in a series of Army hospitals before his last stop in Kansas City. His buddies at the hospital know he was a drummer in the before times, so now that he's getting discharged they spring to buy him a drum set to start life again in Los Angeles.

Unfortunately, on the way west, he gets in a car accident caused by the other driver, which also destroys his drums, which probably shouldn't have been on the passenger and back seats of a convertible anyway. That other man is the aforementioned Sonny Johson, who offers to pay for the drums as well as offering Stanley a good job out in Los Angeles.

The only catch is that the job isn't exactly legal, since Sonny runs the numbers racket for a good portion of Los Angeles. It makes Stanley good money, but brings him to the attention of the police. It's in trying to escape the police that Stanley first runs into Jane, who works as a cigarette girl at Fluff's (William Demarest) nightclub on the Strip. Jane, however, has dreams of becoming a movie star. Part of the policy Fluff has is wanting to meet the prospective dates of his female employees, knowing that the wrong guy can be a bad influence and bring the police his way. Not that Stanley is a bad guy; Fluff, on learning that Stanley plays the drums, would like Stanley to give up his job and become a drummer in the house band which is a prestigious job considering the bandleader is Louis Armstrong.

Stanley and Jane start a romantic relationship, although Jane isn't ready to settle down since she still wants that chance at stardom. Stanley knows that Sonny has an in with any number of Hollywood types, so he introduces Jane to Sonny, telling Sonny in no uncertain terms that Jane is his girl, not Sonny's. Yeah, right. You know that Sonny is going to waste no time putting the moves on Jane while Stanley becomes incredibly jealous, leading to a shooting that we know is going to happen since all of this is in flashback and we were already informed of the shooting at the beginning of the movie.

There's nothing original to the plot of The Strip, although it holds up reasonably well thanks in part to Mickey Rooney's performance. That, and all the jazz music going on here, which is probably the real highlight of the film.

Thirty Minus Eight

The second of the movies that are on my DVR and coming up on TCM is one that they showed in August as part of Jeanne Crain's day in Summer Under the Stars: Twenty Plus Two. That airing comes up tomorrow, September 22, at 6:00 AM.

Crain isn't the star here although I think she's the highest-billed woman in the cast. The lead is David Janssen, playing Tom Alder. But we don't see him for a few minutes. The movie opens up with a scene at the apartment/office of one Julia Joliet. She runs a service which handles fan mail for movie stars; I assume fans would write to a postal drop and then a service like this would pick up the mail and do whatever the agent and star want done with it. But Joliet's real purpose in the movie is to get murdered.

That's where Alder comes in. He's not the murderer; instead, he's called by one of his police detective friends to look at the case (this rather seems like a plot hole to me). Surprisingly, the place looks like the police haven't gone over it yet. And Alder isn't a police detective. Indeed, he doesn't even like to think of himself as a private detective. Instead, he's the sort of person who goes out and finds missing heirs, which really is detective work but sounds classier. All of this is likely to keep the name of one of Joliet's clients, Leroy Dane (Brad Dexter), out of the papers. And when Alder goes through Joliet's files, he finds some things that he thinks would pertain to a famous missing persons case from a dozen years earler, that of wealthy Doris Delaney.

Indeed, it was reading about the Delaney case years back in a magazine article that gave Alder the idea to become this sort of investigator. And he's about to get another case, as one Jacques Pleschette (Jacques Aubuchon), son of a French-Canadian farmer who emigrated to North Dakota, wants Alder to look for his kid brother Auguste. Searches of military records reveal that there's some weird stuff going on, and one or multiple people is being highly dishonest.

Now if you're still wondering how Jeanne Crain comes into all of this, that's a good question. She doesn't really; instead she plays Linda Foster, a woman Alder had met as she was starting as an undergrad at UCLA and he was about to start law school. Alder didn't become a lawyer because the US got involved in Korea and Alder got his letter from Uncle Sam. That's part of where the closest to a female lead also gets involved. Dina Merrill plays Nicki Kovacs. We first see her as Alder is flying to New York and she's a passenger on the same plane as him. Alder thinks she looks familiar, and he's right. A decade earlier, after he got demobbed and was in Tokyo awaiting transport back to the States, he spent an evening at a taxi dance-type place where Nicki was working, having wanted to get away from the States because.... Well, they spent the evening together and Nicki was a perfect lady to Alder, who had no interest in anything sexual.

Everything eventually comes together for a finale, but before that I should probably mention a couple of cameos. Agnes Moorehead gets one scene as Doris Delaney's mother, who has remained out of the public eye all those years Doris has been missing, but for whatever reason lets this one private investigator talk to her. And William Demarest shows up as an alcoholic journalist. Both of them steal their scenes, unsurprisingly. Oh, there's a third cameo, but not from someone who succeeded as an actor. When Alder is at the taxi dance place, an obnoxious sailor with a bunch of tickets around his neck wants to dance all night with Nicki. IMDb suggests this is a young Robert Osborne, but the voice didn't sound right. Judge for yourself.

Twenty Plus Two isn't a terrible movie, but because of the convoluted plot it certainly isn't great either. To be honest, to me it felt more like the sort of thing that in the 1970s or 1980s would have been maybe a TV movie of the week. Or, possibly more likely, one of those two-hour movies designed to be a test pilot for a possible TV series. (I'm reminded of the one-season TV series Finder of Lost Loves that I used in the February 2020 TV edition of the old Thursday Movie Picks blogathon.) Such a TV show would have been sponsored by United Airlines, considering how many shots show their planes taking off and landing.

David Janssen does OK; Dina Merrill and especially Jeanne Crain are misused; and, as I mentioned, Moorehead and Demarest steal the show. But even with all that, Twenty Plus Two deserves one watch.

Gallant Lucy

TCM had a spotlight some months back on working women. One of the movies they picked that was new to me in spite of the big-name cast was Lucy Gallant. Since the cast sounded interesting, I decided to record the movie and recently got around to watching it.

The movie, which was released in 1955, opens up after the opening credits with a title card reading "Texas, 1941". Now, you might guess that this means the US is about to be pushed into World War II with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and that this is important for the plot of the movie. You'll be half right. War does come and a main male character does fight, but the movie isn't really a war movie, which you also might have guessed considering the movie was on TCM for a "women at work" spotlight.

Specifically, the movie takes place in a place called White Sage Junction, TX, the sort of place that in a western would be a cattle town. And it was at one time. But showing up at the whistle-stop train station is cattleman Casey Cole (Charlton Heston). He's there mostly to complain to the stationmaster (Jay Adler in a bit part) about how oil has been discovered and that with this, everybody else has switched from ranching to drilling for oil or otherwise servicing the people who drill for oil. They are, however, interrupted by an emergency dispatch over the telegraph informing the stationmaster that the bridge ahead is out due to a rainstorm.

Of course, there's a train coming that has to stop suddenly. On that train is the titular Lucy Gallant (Jane Wyman). She was on her way to Mexico after her wedding was called off, and she's got her entire trousseau with her. Casey helps her off the train, and eventually takes her to a house in town where Casey stays from time to time, owned by his friend Mrs. Basserman (Thelma Ritter). It doesn't take much to figure out the two are going to fall in love.

Meanwhile, Lucy being a jilted bride (there's a back story about her dad's financial issues leading to his suicide and her unseen fiancé not wanting any part of Lucy thereafter) from New York, she's got a lot of fancy clothes with her. And when she wears them in town, all the wives of the men who have suddenly gotten money hitting oil wish they could wear something like what Lucy is wearing. So she gets the brilliant idea to stay in town and open a couturier selling the finest of big-city fashion to the other women. She's going to need capital however, so she takes out a loan from banker Charles Madden (William Demarest), and runs the store out of the building that used to house the house of ill repute, run by a Lady MacBeth (Claire Trevor).

The store becomes a success, but Casey wants to marry Lucy and raise a family, and being nine months pregnant isn't really going to do for a businesswoman. So in Casey's mind, Lucy should sell up shop. Fortunately, however, World War II intervenes. Casey goes off to fight, and after the war gives up cattle for the oil business himself. But the store is still there, and despite Casey's having been engaged during the war, you know that the two still carry torches for one another. Casey just might be able to come to the rescue when Lucy's business winds up in danger....

Lucy Gallant is one of those competently-made movies the studio system churned out one after another back in the day, but to be honest it's not exactly a great movie. I think part of that is that despite having been released in 1955, it really feels stuck in the 1930s with a very antiquated attitude toward married women working. And Casey is a bit of a jerk toward Lucy. Plus, romance isn't exactly Charlton Heston's strong point. There's also the odd presence of an ex-governor of Texas playing himself. On the bright side, Lucy hosts a fashion show and present at that show is Edith Head, playing herself as the host of the show.

So Lucy Gallant is an interesting movie, even if it is a bit of a misfire.

Behave Yourself

One of the movies that ran during TCM's Summer Under the Stars that I hadn't seen before and sounded interesting was Behave Yourself. So with that in mind, I recorded it, and recently sat down to watch it and do a review on it here.

The movie starts off with a bunch of gangsters using a trained dog named Archie to deliver messages, much in the way that some people might have tried to use carrier pigeons in a different era. However, one of the gangsters has to make a phone call at a pay phone, and the dog gets away. Meanwhile, accountant Bill Denny (Farley Granger) is celebrating his wedding anniversary. Well, he's supposed to be celebrating it. But he forgot, and there's not a whole lot to celebrate anyway. He and his wife Kate (Shelley Winters) are still living with Kate's mother, and boy does she make Bill feel like he's not enough of a man to be able to support Kate properly.

Bill, having suddenly been reminded of the anniversary, goes out to buy a gift for Kate, which is where Archie shows up in Bill's life. Unfortunately for Bill, Archie makes a mess out of Bill's attempt to buy something nice for Kate, instead following Bill all the way home and making Kate believe that it's the dog that's Bill's anniversary present for Kate.

At least, unlike Room for One More, the other spouse is OK with getting a surprise pet as a present. Bill, however, isn't pleased, because he makes the obvious assumption that a dog as well-trained as this has to belong to somebody, and that somebody is going to want their dog back. And how is Bill going to explain to his wife that no, this isn't really your anniversary gift and I forgot to get you anything? (If Bill is lucky, there might be some reward money for the return of Archie, and might make a good gift for Kate.)

Bill, having pored through the classified ads, finds one that looks like it's Archie's owners looking for him. It was placed by one Albert Jonas (Elisha Cook Jr.). Bill, unsurprisingly, doesn't know that Albert is one of the gangsters. Worse for him, he doesn't know that just after getting in touch with Albert to arrange for the return of Archie, another man, Gillie (Hans Conried), enters Albert's apartment and stabs him to death, or that Gillie is going to try to frame Bill for the murder.

Police detective O'Ryan (William Demarest) enters the case to investigate, while everybody and his brother in the underworld is now looking for Archie, which means that there's danger all around for Bill, who knows at least some of what's going on, and Kate, who doesn't. Now, of course, the Production Code was still around at the time Behave Yourself was made, so you know that things are most likely going to end up well for Bill and Kate, and that the bad guys are all going to face justice in one way or another.

The existence of the Production Code is a bit of a problem for Behave Yourself, but a lot of movies in that era faced the same strictures and handled them just fine. The bigger issue with Behave Yourself is that the story is just too convoluted for its own good. Supposedly the script was written in four days, and it really shows. It's a shame because the premise of using a dog to commit crime is certainly fairly original, even if getting an innocent couple mixed up in all of it isn't. Farley Granger isn't quite adept enough to pull off such a madcap story, and he and Shelley Winters aren't the best of screen couples.

Still, the movie has such an interesting premise that Behave Yourself is the sort of movie you'll want to see at least once, just to judge it for yourself.