The Housekeeper's Daughter

This week's Noir Alley selection is a foreign film I've blogged about before: the 1960 South Korean movie The Housemaid, airing at midnight between July 27/28 (on the east coast; as always, that's still Saturday, July 27 in more westerly time zones) and again Sunday, July 28 (in all time zones) at 10:00 AM. With that in mind, I figured it's time to do a post about a movie that's been sitting on my DVR for several months, that's only related by title: The Housekeeper's Daughter.

Joan Bennett plays the daughter, although as the movie opens up there's no housekeeper involved. Bennett plays Hilda, who is watching one of those 1930s poker games in hotel rooms that, to anybody who had seen enough movies from the beginning of the decades, was obviously rigged. However, there's still one mark who must not have seen enough such movies, and keeps losing hand after hand. Hilda finally drops a hint that perhaps the mark can't win, which is trouble for her, as her boyfriend Floyd (Marc Lawrence) is one of the crooks fleecing the mark.

Hilda realizes she needs to get away, so she heads for her mother's house. Or, at least, her mother's living quarters, since mom Olga (Peggy Wood) is the housekeeper to the Randall family, an archeology professor and wife with an adult son Robert (John Hubbard) who wants to be a reporter instead of following in his father's footsteps. The parents are going away for a working vacation, so there's enough space for Hilda to stay at least until her troubles boil over. Meanwhile, Robert, partly wanting to earn his own living and partly from having seen Hilda, decides to stay.

Back to Hilda's boyfriend Floyd. He's looking for a new girl to replace Hilda, and has settled on a showgirl. A Runyonesque bum, Benny (George E. Stone), who helped Floyd procure this showgirl, is distressed at how Floyd is treating her, so serves Floyd a cup of poisoned coffee. Except that Floyd doesn't drink the coffee, giving it instaed to the showgirl, who promptly dies and gets dumped into the river by Floyd.

That story obviously makes the newspaper, and when Robert reads it, he wants to help solve the case. So he simply calls up one of the newspaper editors, Wilson (Donald Meek), and says he wants to help ace crime reporter Deakon Maxwell (Adolphe Menjou). Amazingly, the editor hooks the two up. Deakon is also a hard drinker (another of those 1930s stereotypes), and unsurprisingly Robert is unable to keep up with Deakon's drinking. Robert gets blackout drunk one night but interviews Benny, calling up Wilson and relating Benny's confession, waking up the next morning to have no recollection of having done so but getting a byline in the paper. This is what brings everybody's storylines together, not that Floyd knew Hilda was living under the same roof as Robert.

The Housekeeper's Daughter was produced by Hal Roach at a time when he was trying to get into bigger pictures than the "screenliners" and shorts his studio had been making, even though this one only clocks in at about 79 minutes. It is a bit more than a B movie thanks to the presence of Bennett and Menjou, but it's certainly not anything major. Despite the relatively low production values, it does entertain, at least for people who like old movies already.

Nobody will ever put The Housekeeper's Daughter on a list of greatest pictures of all time, but it's still definitely worth one watch.

Démanty noci

Another of the many foreign films that's been sitting on my DVR for quite some time is a film from the beginning of the Czech New Wave, Diamonds of the Night.

Diamonds of the Night is yet another film that doesn't exactly have a straightforward plot, and nobody famous in the cast. The movie starts with a long tracking shot. It's 1942 in Bohemia, which of course means the Nazi Protectorate and the Nazis transporting all the Jews first to the Theresienstadt/Terezin concentration camp, and from there to extermination camps farther east. Two teenaged boys, wearing coats clearly marked KL for Konzentrationslager, jump off the train in an attempt to escape.

Their escape involves going through the forest, and with the war on it's not as though there's much food to be had anywhere. That, and one of the boys appears to be possibly injured, considering he's walking with a stick. It could just be, however, that this is because of how ill-fitting his shoes are, as we see several scenes of him taking off the shoes and having his feet wrapped in rags.

As the two young men walk toward their possible escape, they have what might be flashbacks. Or they might be daydreams or hallucinations. The movie doesn't make this quite clear, but then that's the point, that the viewer is supposed to be disconcerted, much as the two boys are. Eventually the come across a farmer out in the field whose wife is bringing him some lunch. Ooh, a possibility for them to get food, although there's also the possibility for them to get caught.

And then a bunch of old-fart Germans do catch them, with the likelihood that the Germans will turn them over to whoever will take them back to the camps or else just kill them forthwith for trying to escape. As the old men sing, the local boss calls his higher-ups, leading to an ambiguous ending....

Diamonds of the Night is based on a book by Arnošt Lustig, who as a teenaged boy was sent by the Nazis to Theresienstadt but escaped before going on to become a successful writer well after the war. The movie is definitely well made, although the non-linear plot may be a bit off-putting to some viewers, especially those who like more conventional movies.

The movie also has a fairly low amount of dialog compared to most movies, so those who aren't thrilled at the prospect of reading subtitles don't have to read so much. Diamonds of the Night isn't a standard-issue movie, but it's definitely one that should be seen.

Roadblock

Another one of those movies that I saw several years ago but for whatever reason never blogged about -- heck, I wouldn't be surprised if the last time I saw it was before I started the blog -- is the B noir Roadblock. So the last time it ran on TCM I recorded it, and recently re-watched it in order to be able to give it a full-length review.

The movie starts off in Cincinnati, where Joe Peters (Charles McGraw) holds a guy up, looking for a cool $100,000 that the guy supposedly had. With a gun in his side, the man drives to a cemetery and goes in one of the crypts, where he undoes one of the tiles to reveal a banker's box protected by a gun. At that point, a third man enters the crypt, and it's revealed that Peters actually works in insurance recovery, with the third man being his parnter, Harry Miller (Louis Jean Heydt). This man had robbed a bank; Joe and Harry's employers ensure against robberies, and they want the cash back for the bank.

Joe sends Harry back to their home base of Los Angeles with the cash while he stays behind to deal with the police and whatnot. At the airport he sees a pretty woman who astute viewers could guess looks suspsiciously like a femme fatale. But Joe is a character in a movie, and he probably hasn't watched enough noirs. The woman flirts with him, and then goes over to the ticket counter. She wants to get to Los Angeles and doesn't have enough money for a ticket. But she knows of a scheme the airline has that one this day of the week a full-fare passenger can travel with a spouse who only pays half price. The woman, named Diane (Joan Dixon), claims to be Mrs. Joe Peters. Joe, unsurprisingly, is none too pleased when he learns of the deception.

Worse, he has to spend a fair deal of time with Diane because the plane has to land to avoid weather and the airline puts everybody up overnight. Diane is a woman with expensive tastes, hence the cheating to get a half-fare ticket rather than going by bus. But she also taunts Joe, telling him that one of these days he's going to develop a taste for something that his insurance detective salary can't cover. And that something just might be her. Those of us who have seen enough noirs can figure where all this is going, but Joe obviously hasn't.

So we know they're going to see each other again, and it doesn't take all that long. Joe and Harry immediately get put on another case, investigating who might be behind a string of robberies against a prominent furrier. No; it's not Diane who is behind it. But she's become the woman on the side of the racketeer who they think is responsible, Kendall Webb (Lowell Gilmore), and this would explain how she's able to go around in fine furs.

At this point the film gets a bit ridiculous. Joe decides to go bad in order to be able to get enough money to win Diane away from Webb. At the same time, Diane realizes that being a moll isn't all it's cracked up to be, and thinks about going straight and even possibly settling down with Joe. But since this is a noir, we know that Joe is going to make that fatal error, which involves working for Webb. Even if there weren't a Production Code, who could think this would go well?

Despite the plot twist that I don't think bears any resemblance to real life, Roadblock is a highly entertaining B noir. McGraw is well-suited to the genre, while Joan Dixon is a good femme fatale. Gilmore might be the weak link here, along with the plot that strains credulity more and more.

There are better noirs out there. There are better B noirs out there. Heck, there are even better B noirs out there that starr Charles McGraw (The Narrow Margin comes immediately to mind). But Roadblock is more than worth a watch.

Aren't parties supposed to be fun?

Actor Don Murray died earlier this year at the age of 94. One of his movies that's been sitting on my DVR for some time now is The Bachelor Party. I'd seen part of it from a previous TCM showing ages ago, but for whatever reason didn't watch the whole thing, which is why I made a point of recording it when it showed up again. This time, I did watch all the way through.

Don Murray is not the bachelor; his character is Charlie, a New York bookkeeper married to Helen, very recently having found out that his wife Helen is pregnant with their first child. Charlie loves Helen, but having knocked her up presents some problems for them. Charlie has been going to night school to study to become an accountant, and was hoping to be able to take a year off work to complete all the courses at lightning speed while the couple lived off Helen's wages. But her getting pregnant means she's going to have to quit work, and Charlie is going to have to drag out his education. He tells this on the way to work to his colleague Ken (Larry Blyden), who is having issues in his own marriage.

Meanwhile, both of them have another colleague, Arnold (Philip Abbott), who is engaged and getting married that weekend. So the bachelor party, being planned by another co-worker Eddie (Jack Warden), is going to be that night. Neither of the married men is certain they want to go, but eventually the two of them decide they will join in, along with another man who works in their cramped office, Walter (E.G. Marshall).

It's a relatively small party, and a good portion of it is held in public, as the men start off as a restaurant and then go bar-hopping. Along the way, Charlie runs across a strange woman, credited only as "The Existentialist" (Carolyn Jones). Each of the married men starts revealing that perhaps marriage isn't all it's cracked up to be, or at least a lot more work than just being in love. Arnold even lets on that he's not certain why he got engaged in the first place.

Against the backdrop of all this, we learn that the married women aren't finding marriage a bed of roses either. We learn about Charlie's impending fatherhood from a conversation his wife is having with her sister-in-law. While the men are out partying, the two sisters-in-law spend some time in Charlie and Helen's apartment, talking about their difficulties. Helen isn't certain Charlie is happy about becoming a father, and the sister-in-law came over more to announce she's convinced her own husband is having yet another affair.

The Existentialist had invited Charlie to a bohemian party in Greenwich Village and he, by now sick of the bachelor party, decides to go to this bohemian gathering. At least she'll get him to think and be honest with himself as to whom he really loves.

I have to admit that I didn't exactly like The Bachelor Party. It feels way too talky to me, and filled with characters who aren't exactly likeable, although that might be because the situation itself, with a bunch of men getting drunk and doing drunk things, isn't particularly appealing to me. Other people are probably going to like The Bachelor Party a lot more than I did.

Don't forget the 1920 version

One of the TCM programming features this month that I didn't discuss before was one looking at the way Hollywood treated themes before and after the introduction of the Production Code in July 1934. Every Monday evening they've been having blocks of movies with pairs of thematically similar films. Tonight (July 22), that includes the two famous sound versions of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: first, the 1932 Fredric March version at 11:30 PM, followed at 1:15 AM by the 1941 Spencer Tracy version. Not airing, as it doesn't fit the programming theme, is the 1920 silent version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, starring John Barrymore as Robert Louis Stevenson's doomed scientist/doctor. But I had that one on my DVR, so I watched it to be able to review it in conjunction with the airing of the other two versions.

The only bad thing about trying to do a synopsis of a movie like this is that it's based on a work where pretty much everybody knows the basic story, or at least thinks they know the basic story. (I've seen the two sound versions before, but it's been years.) One thing I didn't know is that the movies are actually generally based on a stage adaptation, which has some significant differences from Stevenson's original book. But the basic plot is there.

John Barrymore, as I mentioned, plays Dr. Jekyll, who at the beginning of the movie is a paragon of virtue, working as a doctor and spending a considerable amount of time doing charitable work among the poor people of 1880s London. Jekyll has a belief that every man has within him two natures, one good and one evil. He's thinking that it would be a wonderful thing for mankind if a way could be figured out to split those two natures, such that we could cast out the evil nature and leave ourselves with the good one, although frankly to me a world in which we're incapable of having wrongthought sounds horrifying.

Dr. Lanyon, one of Jekyll's colleagues, doesn't agree with Jekyll, who decides he's going to go and do some research to come up with that way to split the natures. He also tells his friend Sir George Carewe about it. Sir George is also the father of Millicent, who is in love with Dr. Jekyll, just like in all the later versions. Like Lanyon, Sir George doesn't believe any of this is possible.

Of course, in Stevenson's world, all of this is in fact possible, as we wouldn't have a movie otherwise -- or, at least, we'd get a lot of slow space like in Madame Curie before the Curies figure out what radium is. Jekyll experiments, and eventually comes up with a potion that he tries on himself, because it would be unethical to try on anybody else. The potion actually works, turning Jekyll into what he calls Mr. Hyde, and also dramtically changing Jekyll's physical appearance. Hyde, however, keeps coming back, and Hyde's violent nature causes all sorts of problems.

This version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, being from 1920, has some advantages and disadvantages that are a result of being that old. Technically, they couldn't do as much with effects in 1920 as they'd be able to do in later decades. Barrymore has to show the transition as much if not more with acting than make up compared to the later Jekylls, and unsurprisingly, Barrymore is able to pull this off. A positive is that in 1920, and especially with a stage actor like John Barrymore, there wasn't quite as much need for the studio to protect an actor's image. So the movie can go farther with Barrymore and his descent into monstrosity, which is a big plus for a story like this.

One minor negative is the score on the print TCM ran, which to me is quite intrusive and doesn't really work. I suppose you could always turn the sound down since there's no spoken dialogue, or look for another print on your favorite video site, since the movie is in the public domain. Note, however, that various prints have had different running times.

The Hardy Family Noir

I mentioned a few months back upgrading my home "theater", not that it's much of a theater, by buying a 40" TV for the upstairs room and getting a Blu-ray player for the TV. The player, it turned out, was misconfigured out of the box in that it was set up to show everything in full-screen, so when I put in a DVD of an old movie not in a wide-screen format, it filled up the screen with no pillarboxing. I couldn't figure out how to change the aspect ratio on the TV until I figured it might be an issue with the Blu-ray player. So that's part of the reason I haven't gotten to my rather severe backlog of DVDs that I have. Well, that, and the fact that stuff only stays on the DVR for nine months while the DVDs are closer to permanent. But recently, I finally decided to watch another movie out of my Will Rogers box set: Too Busy to Work.

A brief establishing sequence shows something that's going to come up again later in the movie: a small town where a hold-up takes place one night, and there's shooting when the getaway car tries to get away. An older guy named nicknamed Jubilo (Will Rogers) witnesses all this. The next morning, we discover the guy is actually a hobo, and one who is very averse to work. He gets involved with another tramp trying to catch a rabbit, before coming upon a swimming hole where a third man has left his suit jacket hanging on a tree. So Jubilo exchages jackets, before walking to a house where we see on a mailbox, "Judge Hardy".

Now, this isn't the Judge Hardy from MGM's popular series of the late 1930s and early 1940s; that's just a coincidence albeit a rather humorous one. Jubilo gets treed by a dog, before the Hardys' maid (Louise Beavers) shows up. Jubilo charms her with stories about being from Alabama, even calling her "Mammy", and basically cons her into giving him some food. As for the man whose jacket he took, that's Axel, who works as a ranchhand on the Hardys' spread since the Hardys have a bit of a soft spot about helping out Depression-era hobos in exchange for doing work around the place.

But Jubilo is work-averse, and tricks Axel into doing what should be Jubilo's jobs, in a way that makes Jubilo seem like a very unsympathetic character. Then again, that's not the reason why Jubilo decided to stop at the Hardy place. He asks Mammy about the Hardy family history, and learns that the judge (Frederick Burton) lost his first wife ages ago and married another woman who had a young daughter Rose who is now an adult (Marian Nixon). Rose's mother died a few years back, and she's in love with the judge's son from the first mother, Dan (Dick Powell, yes, that Dick Powell before he did those Warner Bros. musicals).

That family is actually why Jubilo is here. Jubilo claims that he served honorably in World War I, although considering how we've seen him con Mammy and Axel, one wonders whether this is a made-up story as well. However, Jubilo also says that when he returned from the war, another man had run off with his wife, and that broke him, which is why he's now a tramp, having spent a long time going around the country looking for the man who did this to him. It doesn't take much to guess that Jubilo has concluded that it's Judge Hardy who married Jubilo's wife, and based on conversations the two men have, Judge Hardy knows it, too.

And then Dan returns home, telling Rose that he's going to have to run off. Dan and Jubilo actually saw each other the previous night, as Dan was tricked into serving as the getaway driver from that hold-up. Dan, seeing Jubilo, figures that Jubilo is there to rat him out to the authorities, not knowing anything about Jubilo's real reason for being here. Rose, similarly, doesn't know anything, and doesn't remember her biological father.

This is all rather strange for a Will Rogers movie, since he's generally more remembered for his folksy, homespun wisdom. In fact, this strangeness is why I had some difficulty warming up to Too Busy to Work. Rogers seems terribly miscast for a man with this sort of dark past, and his dark past turning him into a petty confidence man makes him unsympathetic for much of the movie. Also odd is that this is based on a story by Ben Ames Williams, a name you might recognize from one of his most famous works, Leave Her to Heaven.

I'm glad that a box set included Too Busy to Work, but it's definitely a bit strange and not to everybody's taste.

Technically it's a cyclone

We're in the middle of hurricane season here in the western hempisphere part of the Atlantic, and with that in mind I watched the copy of the 1937 movie The Hurricane that I've had on my DVR for several months, not to be confused with other movies with the same title.

The movie starts off with an establishing sequence of a boat sailing through the South Seas, with a Dr. Kersaint (Thomas Mitchell) among the passengers. The boat passes a deserted island, and Dr. Kersaint starts talking about the island to a female passenger. Kersaint had spent time in these islands, and he has bittersweet memories of them. As you might guess, this leads to a flashback....

The island in question, Manakoora, is part of an archipelago administered by France, who have sent a governor in the form of Eugene De Laage (Raymond Massey). This being the era before airplanes, and most of the islands not having suitable space for runways anyway, the islands are served by sailing ships that go from one island to another. Many of the ships use native Polynesins for the crews, since they have local knowledge of the seas and are accomplished seafarers, having gotten to all of these islands after all.

Among the sailors is Terangi (John Hall). The current voyage brings him back to the main island, where his fiancée Marama (Dorothy Lamour) is waiting for him. Also waiting with romantic interest for a passenger is the Governor, whose wife Germaine (Mary Astor) is on the boat. Also getting off the boat, at least with the movie making a point of showing him so we'll know it's an important cast member, is a new Catholic priest to serve the island, Fr. Paul (C. Aubrey Smith). Now that Terangi is returned to his home island, he can marry Marama and they can live happily ever after.

Well, not quite, since all of this has happened in the first 20 minutes or so. Terangi and Merama are in love, and Merama doesn't want Terangi to leave her. But his job is to go sailing, and he has to leave her, as there's no space for the wives of the sailors. This disappoints Marama, since the next voyage is taking the boat to Tahiti, the big island in the area.

But things go wrong on Tahiti, as a nasty European starts treating the Polynesian sailors like crap, even smacking Terangi. Terangi hits back in self-defense, but he breaks the other guy's jaw and this other guy has connections, which gets Terangi sent to prison for six months. Terangi is like Jean Valjean, having been oversentenced for a minor crime and wanting to escape. He keeps trying, again and again, to escape, which lengthens the sentence. But eventually he does escape, almost in time for the titular hurricane....

If there's a problem with The Hurricane, it's that it goes on too long between the time Terangi gets sentenced and the time the storm comes, with there not really being enough plot development in between. Audiences of 1937 would have wanted to see the storm, however, and that's something that's definitely worth waiting for, as the special effects are quite good for 1937. It's just a shame that the effects aren't in service of a better story.

From Air to Eternity

Some time back, when I was in my previous house, TCM ran The Gypsy Moths and, for whatever reason, I didn't record it. Either it was before I had the DVR, or I just didn't have the space on my DVR. In any case, several months back it showed up on the TCM schedule again, so this time since the DVR is technically unlimited, I decided to record it to be able finally to watch it.

Three guys jump out of an airplane together, although it must be pointed out they have parachutes on. Those guys are Mike Rettig (Burt Lancaster), Joe Browdy (Gene Hackman) and Malcom Webson (Scott Wilson). On their way down, they unfurl a banner, and it's clear that these are actually stunt jumpers, putting on a show for the people watching from the ground below who have paid for the privilege.

Now, at this point, I was expecting a period piece, but after putting on the show the guys go to the next town to put on another show, and judging from the automobiles, it's contemprorary, meaning the late 1960s. The next town is Bridgeville, KS, which is an interesting place if only because Malcolm used to live there. He left many years ago, not having looked back, largely because his parents no longer live there. In fact, his parents no longer live at all. They died when Malcolm was young, and his aunt and uncle lived in Bridgeville. Now that he's back, perhaps he ought to look them up and see if they're still in Bridgeville.

Of course, they are in Bridgeville, and it's eventually going to become clear why Malcolm wanted to get the hell out of Bridgeville. Aunt Elizabeth (Deborah Kerr) and Uncle John Brandon (William Windom) never had kids of their own, and that has long been a bone of contention between them. But the couple is nice enough that they're willing to put the three skydivers up for the one or two nights they're going to be in town.

Although the Brandons never had kids of their own, they've got a big enough house not only to put the three men up, but to have boarders. Generally, that's students at the local college, although one, Annie Burke (Bonnie Bedelia), is staying there over the summer. She eventually becomes a bit of a love interest for Malcolm.

As you might guess, there's going to be love interests for the other two men. It also doesn't take much to figure out that one of the women involved is going to be frustrated Elizabeth, although at least she doesn't get into a relationship with Malcolm, because that would be really creepy. Instead, she and Rettig connect while the creep factor is from Joe trying to bed a dancer from the local strip club. They still have to perform the aerial stunts for the crowd, however....

The Gypsy Moths is the sort of movie that's too serious for its own good. The Production Code had recently gone out the window, and you can understand Hollywood wanting to deal with grown-up themes in a more grown-up way. But The Gypsy Moths has too much conversation between the various people involved, rather than aerial action. You'd think that in a movie dealing with parachute jumpers people would want to see the effects photography, instead of a romantic drama.

Everybody involved tries their best, and the movie's flaws are definitely not the fault of the actors. But it's still a movie that doesn't add up to all that much 50 years on.

Harve Presnell is Girl Crazy

A lot of people will recognize the song "I Got Rhythm", written by George and Ira Gershwin. It was from an early 1930s musical called Girl Crazy. You may also recognize that as a film title, as there's a famous Judy Garland/Mickey Rooney movie version of Girl Crazy from the 1940s. It's actually not the first movie version of the musical, as there was one a decade earlier that was retooled as a vehicle for Wheeler and Woolsey, of all people. It's also not the last version of the musical, as MGM revived it in the mid-1960s, using the title When the Boys Meet the Girls.

Danny Churchill (Harve Presnell, fresh off a big starring role opposite Debbie Reynolds in The Unsinkable Molly Brown) is a young playboy and student at an all-men's college. He's been given the job of procuring some women for a revue so that the male students don't actually have to go on stage in drag and do a chorus line number. The dean, as well as the attorney for Danny's trust fund, both show up backstage, which causes all sorts of problems since it gets him in the newspapers with absolutely terrible publicity.

The next day, Tess (Sue Ann Langdon), shows up claiming that she's a victim of a breach of promise from Danny. He's been expelled from college, and the stockholders want to take over his father's old firm that's the trust fund. So Danny's lawyer comes up with the brilliant idea that Danny should finish up his graduate degree by going to his father's alma mater, Cody College in the middle of nowhere in Nevada.

On the way out to Nevada, Danny and his friend Sam (Joby Baker) come across a horseback rider, with the horse bucking and eventually throwing the rider. The rider in question turns out to be a woman, Ginger Gray (Connie Francis), who was delivering mail for the US Postal Service. She's delivering the mail because her father Phin (Frank Faylen), the real mailman, is up in Reno gambling again and about to lose the ranch the family lives on.

The first meeting between Danny and Ginger of course goes bad, at least until Danny starts singing "Embraceable You"; Gershiwn tunes are apparently almost as good makeout music as Ravel's "Bolero". Even if you hadn't seen any other version of Girl Crazy, you've probably seen enough of this romantic comedy to know that The Boy and The Girl are eventually going to fall in love. Here, Danny, falling in love with Ginger, feels he needs to come up with some sort of sceme to save the family ranch, which is to turn it into a place where women can stay while waiting for their divorce to go through. I suppose it's something that would be a nice money-spinner at least until other states got the idea to permit no-fault divorce.

When the Boys Meet the Girls was made in 1965, a time when social norms were beginning to change, and movie musicals were beginning to lose steam. One thing MGM tried to do to make this more popular was to include non-Gershwin tunes, from a variety of acts such that moviegoers would like at least one of them. For the teens, there was Herman's Hermits, a British act that was part of the "British Invasion" of pop groups. For women, there was Liberace, and for older viewers in addition to the Gershwin tunes was the presence of Louis Armstrong.

The mishmash doesn't always work, but it's not as bad as review of the time made it out to be. It's hard, after all, to go wrong with George and Ira Gershwin as well as a lot of the supporting cast here.

Scenery vs. Story

Tomorrow (July 18) on TCM is a morning and afternoon of the movies of Constance Ford. One of the movies airing happens to be on my DVR from a recent showing, so I watched that movie: Rome Adventure, which will be on at 4:30 PM.

Ford is in a supporting role, as the real star is a woman who gets an "Introducing" credit, a young Suzanne Pleshette. She plays Prudence Bell, who at the start of the movie is an assistant librarian at a conservative women's college in New England. So conservative, in fact, that they ban books like Lovers Must Learn, which is a bit of an in-joke since that's the book on which the movie is based. Prudence has suggested to one of the students that the student read it, and this ticks off the faculty council enough that they're going to fire her. Prudence, however, knowing that, quits before they can fire her.

Prudence's plan is to go off to Italy to learn about love, which seems a bit nuts because who knows where she's getting her money from, and it's not as if she's got a place to live once she gets to Rome. Well, I suppose she's getting her money from her wealthy parents. At the pier, the Bell parents run into a Mrs. Stilwell, whom they met at a charity function and whose son is also heading off to Rome to study the ancient Etruscans. The younger Albert Stilwell (Hampton Fancher; for some reason I was thinking this was Chad Everett whose name appears down the credits) is actually standing right next to Prudence on the boat, so Mrs. Bell tries to hook the two young Americans up. However, Prudence misreads the signals and turns to the passenger on the other side of her, an Italian named Roberto Orlandi (Rossano Brazzi).

Both of these men are decent people, but since neither of them are at the top of the credits, we can guess that they're not going to wind up with Prudence in the final reel. But Roberto is so good that he directs the two Americans to the villa where he rents a room from a contessa, and both of them take him up on the offer to take rooms. (How many bathrooms did those old villas have?) Among the younger set of Americans living in the villa is Don Porter (Troy Donahue), who is finishing up his graduate degree in Rome. We first meet him as he's leaving the villa in a huff, having learned that his girlfriend Lyda (Angie Dickinson) is dumping him to spend time in Switzerland.

Now, Troy Donahue is top-billed, with Angie Dickinson second, but because of Pleshette's "introducing" credit and the fact that she's clearly the lead here, you know who is going to wind up with whom. Don falls for Prudence, and the feeling is mutual, and he starts showing her around Italy, even though by this time Prudence has gotten a job at the American bookstore run by Daisy Bronson (that's Constance Ford). How Prudence can just take the time to go traipsing around Italy and blow off her job is another unanswered question.

But Rome Adventure is one of those movies where you don't really care about the plot. It was released in 1962, at a time when travel to Europe still wasn't such a common thing, so movies like this set in "exotic" locations in lovely color were still a bit of a big deal in allowing American moviegoers to see these places as glamorous. I think I said in my post about Three Coins in the Fountain that somebody must have seen Roman Holiday and thought that what was needed was Technicolor and widescreen. It's a thought that's not wrong, but a movie still needs a good plot, or else you just have a Traveltalks short. Rome Adventure, I'm sorry to say, doesn't have that plot.

So watch Rome Adventure for a look at Italy as Americans might have wanted to see it back in the early 1960s. Just don't expect a good story.