Judge Hardy and Son

There were 16 movies made in the MGM Hardy family series, if you count the one from the late 1950s after Lewis Stone died. Surprisingly, I haven't done posts on all that many of them. But one of them aired on Father's Day and is getting another showing tomorrow since the plot nominally deals with July 4. That movie is Judge Hardy and Son, on TCM on July 4 at 6:30 AM.

Lewis Stone is once again Judge Hardy, who shows up at court only to find that there are no cases on the docket. That tranquility is interrupted by an immigrant couple, the Volduzzis (Maria Ousepnskaya and Egon Brecher), who have been served with a writ that they're going to have to leave their house for being unable to pay the mortgage, which seems like a surprise since Mr. Volduzzi has only been out of work for three weeks and you'd think he's old enough to receive Social Security which had been in place four four years by the time the movie was released. If they have any surviving children, perhaps she could be imposed on to do something to help them. But Mrs. Volduzzi claims their daughter is dead. Judge Hardy suspects this is a lie.

Andy is at home getting ready for the Independence Day celebrations, except that all of the innertubes in his car's tires keep bursting, leading to a bunch of financial issues yet again. He's already borrowed money from Beezy, and now he's going to borrow some from big sister Marian (Cecilia Parker) before she heads off to a cabin with friends for the holiday. Mom (Fay Holden), meanwhile, and Aunt Millie (Sara Haden) are planning to head off to their parents' house for their parents' 50th wedding anniversary.

Andy needs to do something to get more money before Polly Benedict (Ann Rutherford) returns for Independence Day. One way he hopes to do so is to help his father find that Volduzzi daughter, which involved interviewing everyone in town who has the middle initial V because a grandkid would have the middle name Volduzzi. (It wasn't uncommon in those days for people to get their mother's maiden name as a middle name.) The other idea is to win the public oratory contest by writing a speech on Alexander Hamilton. Unfortunately, he misreads the contest rules and discovers that the $50 first prize is for the best speech by a girl. A boy gets a 20-volume set of biographies of great Americans. So Andy both sees a bunch of girls his age with the middle initial V, while trying to get them to read a speech he'll write in exchange for splitting the prize money. They, not being stupid, try to blackmail Andy by making him take them to the big July 4 shinding. When Polly returns and find this out, she's going to be none too happy.

And then things take a surprisingly dark turn for a Hardy Family movie. Mom gets off the train and returns home claiming to feel unwell. The doctor diagnoses her with pleurisy, which would certainly cause her a fair deal of pain. But the the pleurisy progresses into pneumonia, which is a much more serious illness with the rest of the family worried she might die. But then, this being a Hardy Family movie, you have to expect a happy ending.

There's surprisingly a lot going on here for a 90-minute movie. Also surprisingly, it mostly meshes well. There's nothing particularly groundbreaking about Judge Hardy and Son, but watching a movie like this you can see why the series was so popular back in the day. With the lingering effects of the Depression and the war going on in Europe, something like this was just what was needed to take audiences' minds off of their daily problems. Definitely worth a watch for MGM's rose-colored view of 1939.

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 Match King

Hollywood movies from the Depression era on business are certainly an interesting watch, as the impression given of the way big business was done back then is much different from what we'd think of today. That, and the stock market, although at least back then a very small percentage of the population was invested in the stock market and it wasn't really something one could do for oneself. One such movie, loosely based on a real person, is The Match King, which I recorded the last time it came on TCM.

Warren William stars as Paul Kroll, who as the movie starts is a Swedish immigrant in Chicago who is making a living as a sanitation worker. He's written to his family back home that he's made it in businesses, although that's a lie. The best he's been able to do is start a no-show scam that has a bunch of non-existent people on a payroll which allows Kroll to rake off a bunch of payroll.

However, word comes from his native Sweden that the old business in his home town, a match factory, is in financial difficulty. Since Paul has made it in America, at least according to his letters, the townsfolk would like to know if he could come back and help save the match factory. Of course Paul isn't really in a position to do this. So he engages in another lie. He's been cheating on his best friend by having a relationship with Babe (Glenda Farrell in a brief performance), so he decides now is the time to tell Babe they should run off together. Except that he runs off with Babe's money, which he uses to get over to Sweden.

Paul, of course, doesn't know how to run a match factory or how to save it from its financial difficulties, so he has to continue resorting to confidence schemes. He's able to convince Swedish banks to extend him credit to keep the current match factory open as well as to acquire another in an attempt to corner the market on safety matches. The one person who has any inkling things might not be on the up and up is assistant Erik Borg (Hardie Albright).

Unfortunately, Paul's scheme turn out to have some of the qualities of a pyramid scheme in the sense that he has to keep going because, once the merry-go-round stops, the whole thing is going to come crashing down. So he turns to foreign countries, like Germany, where he finds a girlfriend Ilse (Claire Dodd) and then the one love of his life, actress Marta Molnar (Lili Damita). He keeps pursuing her, to the point that he puts off all sorts of important match-factory business. It's not that the feeling isn't mutual, although what Marta really likes is a violinist named Trino. So Marta decides to run off from Berlin to Salzburg, with Paul eventually figuring out where she's gone and following her.

But there's still that pesky match factory, and all sorts of notes are going to come due. There's also a man who's invented a match you can strike over and over, which would seem to violate the laws of physics. In any case, Paul has to resort to increasing ruthless things to keep his schemes going and the creditors at bay. As you might guess, there's only so far all of this is going to be able to go before the walls come crashing down.

The Match King is an interesting if not great movie. One problem for me is that Warren William's character is rutless to the point that it's fairly unsympathetic. He has one man committed to an insane asylum and lets another man die. That's certainly shocking enough to make the movie worth watching, but damn if you don't want to beat the crap out of William. One other issue is that, despite the number of interesting character actors and actresses in the movie, most of them only get a few scenes because of the way the movie is plotted. Still, the plusses of The Match King outweigh the minuses.

Notes on the early July schedule

TCM got the rights to the Looney Tunes (or maybe the Warner Bros. cartoons more generally; I'm not certain) shorts some months back, which is why they did a "Star of the Month" simulation for Bugs Bunny in the short month before 31 Days of Oscar began. Tonight sees a lineup of shorts where they recycle songs from earlier Warner Bros. movies, a practice that was not uncommon as other studios did it often enough too. The night also features the movies from which the songs are apparently taken, although I can't confirm the accuracy of this as I haven't seen the shorts in question. It was only about four months back that I posted on Going Places, which is on tonight's lineup at 10:00 PM for the song "Jeepers Creepers".

Charles Laughton gets a birthday salute a day late tomorrow, which includes a couple of excellent lesser-seen movies. Payment Deferred kicks off the day at 6:00 AM, while the afternoon ends with This Land Is Mine at 4:00 PM and Hobson's Choice at 6:00 PM.

The "Summer of Darkness" noir series continues on Friday evening with some very good 1940s noir where I thought I'd already blogged about all of them. A search of the blog claims I haven't done a post on Thieves' Highway (Jul. 4, 12:45 AM; still the evening of July 3 in more westerly time zones) before, although I've definitely seen it on the old iteration of the Fox Movie Channel. So I suppose it's time to record that one. I was thinking of the "Summer of Darkness", however, more for some of the neo-noir that shows up, such as this week's TCM premiere of Against All Odds (July 4, 2:30 AM). People of my age will remember not the movie -- we would have been too young once again to see the original theatrical release -- but the Phil Collins title song.

Sophie's Place

TCM ran a double feature of films with Telly Savalas some months back; not having seen either of the movies I decided to record both of them. The first of them was Crooks and Coronets.

The opening credits and plot synopsis made this one sound like it was made in England with Savalas one of those Hollywood stars sojourning in the UK. As the movie opens, there's a "state penitentiary" that seems just far enough off. Herbie Haseler (Telly Savalas) is a convict being released from prison, picked up by his friend Marty Miller (Warren Oates) who got out of prison himself a few months back and is supposedly going straight. However, it's quickly revealed that Marty stole the car he used to pick up Herbie from prison.

While confined in prison, Herbie has been reading up on the great manor houses of England, and he's become convinced that he's got a great idea for a heist that would solve all his financial problems. The Fitzmore mansion is owned by some people on hardish times, and they've got a lot of artwork that could easily be stolen and sold off in the States. But Herbie is going to need some money to fund the scheme, and the only person he knows is his old crime boss Nick Marco (Cesar Romero). The thing is, Nick already laid out money for the last scheme, the one that got Herbie and Marty in prison, and Nick has been calculating interest on that money for the entire time the two were in prison. So Nick is reluctant at first to fund Herbie, and certainly not going to accept any failure.

But Herbie and Marty make it over to merrye olde England, and eventually get to the gates of the Fitzmore place, although getting in to case the joint is not without some comic difficulties. The Fitzmores, Lady Sophie (Edith Evans) and her son Lord Freddie (Nicky Henson) are in bad enough straits that they're giving tours of the house for a price. The two crooks take one of the tours, and find somebody trying to fish one of the statues off a table, stopping the heist. That would-be robber is in fact Lady Sophie, under the ruse of trying to test the security arrangements. Herbie and Marty stop it, which gets them in good with Sophie, who being an eccentric old lady also decides to offer the two of them a place to stay, which is just the stroke of luck they needed.

Lady Sophie is so charming that, as Herbie and Marty plan the heist, they start to wonder whether they should go through with it at all, although that's a big problem too since Nick back in the States is beginning to wonder why it's taking Herbie and Marty so long to carry out the robbery. And eventually he's had enough, coming over to the UK himself to take over the heist so that he can make sure it goes according to plan. But by the time Nick comes over Herbie and Marty are thinking up ways to foil Nick in the comedic climax to the movie.

Crooks and Coronets was released in 1969. It's in a genre that had been successful over the years, although by 1969 this sort of view of British society was getting dated. Crooks and Coronets isn't exactly a bad movie, although it's one of those that feels like it doesn't have all that much that's original to it. Had it come out in 1959 it might have worked better, but by now the whole premis is beginning to feel tired. Still, it's also another of those movies where you can understand why the people involved, espcially Savalas and Oates going over the Britain, would have read the screenplay and decided they wanted to make the movie. Crooks and Coronets is modestly entertaining, but nothing spectacular.

Desert Hearts

Another of the movies that I recorded from the September 2025 TCM salute to the UCLA Film and Television Archive was Desert Hearts. It's got a showing tonight (June 29) at 11:15 PM as part of TCM's "Pride" movie day, so I figured now would be a good time to schedule this post that had been lying in my drafts in conjunction with the TCM showing.

It's 1959, and getting off a train in Reno, NV, is Vivian Bell (Helen Shaver). Reno in those days of course meant the place the people go to when they're looking to get a divorce since the divorce laws in other states still hadn't been liberalized. Vivian is an English professor at a college in New York, in a marriage with a man who was more or less just a friend at the time they got married, with no real plans to have children or anything. The two have basically just drifted apart, so a divorce is apparently the best thing. (We never see Vivian's husband.) She has come out to Reno for the requisite several weeks of residency and will be spending them at a ranch-type place that's been converted to tourism and partly to accommodate the sort of woman who is looking to fulfill the residency requirement for that divorce.

The place is run by Frances Parker (Audra Lindley), who is a widow with an adult son Walter and stepdaughter Cay (Patricia Charbonneau). Walter works solely for Mom, while Cay has a job on the outside, making change for the sort of pathetic people who go to one of the lesser casinos to play the slot machines, a job she shares with her best friend Silver (Andra Akers). Silver is planning on geting married to Art, while Cay is being pursued romantically by her boss Darrell (Dean Butler). They're advances that Cay has decided she really doesn't want.

That's because Cay is a lesbian, and is relatively open about it for 1959 and a place like Reno. This is going to cause some serious issues with her stepmom later in the film. Cay is also in some ways very much a product of the west at a time when there were much greater cultural differences between the various regions of the United States. So the sudden presence of an urbane New Yorker like Vivian is bound to shake things up.

Cay is one of those way too extroverted people who immediately starts to befriend Vivian who, for various reasons, is a bit repressed. After all, she is there for a divorce, and starting a relationshp with anybody could theoretically be seen as giving her husband grounds to make the divorce settlement less in her favor. Never mind that this being 1959, she probably hasn't had any openly lesbian friends before.

But Cay makes Vivian realize that she might in fact be lesbian or at least bi, which would also explain the fairly loveless marriage, even though she's also rather reluctant to consummate the relationship. Cay's pursuit of Vivian also makes Frances extremely uncomfortable. And there's also the fact that Vivian is going to have to return to New York eventually since she does have that job waiting for her next semester.

Desert Hearts isn't a bad movie by any stretch of the imaginaton. But I can't help but think that, had the story been about some sort of heterosexual relationship -- say, the woman going out to Reno and finding a nice man who falls in love with her on the rebound -- it would be the sort of movie that would have gone in an out of theaters, largely forgotten because it doesn't do anything anyone could consider groundbreaking. Part of that, though is down to the low budget; I have a feeling that it the director had wanted to do a more mainstream heterosexual relationship film funding would have been easier to come by. Still, as long as you're OK with the fact that it has a fairly explicit sex scene, Desert Hearts is one that's worth one watch at least.

Secrets with nice socks

In September 2025, TCM ran a night of films dedicated to the UCLA Film and Television Archive, which gave me the opportunity to record several lesser known films, a fact I mentioned with Wanda not too long ago. Another movie that aired as part of the salute was The Argyle Secrets. As is my wont, not having heard of it, I recorded it to watch and write up this review.

William Gargan stars as Harry Mitchell, a journalist who, as the movie opens, tells us he's still surprised that everything he's about to tell us about happened in the space of just 24 hours. That's an obvious sign that we're about to get Yet Another Flashback, although in this case it's not that much of a flashback, as it's basically just the previous 24 hours.

Mitchell has a colleague named Allen Pierce, a columnist who covers the Washington scene and has been writing a lot about something called the Argyle Album that will, if published, create a giant scandal. However, Pierce is known to have heart issues and is in hospital as a result, with Mitchell and a photographer visiting to cover the story. Pierce tells Mitchell to finish his work on the Argyle Album if anything should happen to him, at which point Pierce develops an acute issue and dies in his hospital bed. Mitchell is no dummy and figures out a way to keep the other reporters out of the room while he phones in his story. Except that by the time Mitchell gets back, Pierce's body is revealed to have a scalpel in it, while the photographer is missing at first before also being found very much dead.

Mitchell is an obvious suspect even though we know from what's shown that he's not guilty, never mind the opening narration. So he has to figure out a way to get out of the hospital so that he can find the rest of the Argyle Album, since Pierce only gave him a photostat of the cover. The first place to go is Pierce's secretary, Elizabeth Court (Barbara Billingsley), who doesn't have the album and doesn't want to help. It's also quickly revealed that Mitchell isn't the only person looking for the album, which should be obvious considering how we've been told that the publication of the album could lead to major scandals. One such person shows up, a man in a panama hat who gets the obvious nickname of Panama, who's rather violent in his desire to get that album.

So Mitchell has to escape again, going to the apartment of a friend who's out of town. Of course, he's been followed, only not by the police. Instead, a woman calling herself Marla (Marjorie Lord) shows up, offering Mitchell a substantial sum of money if only he'll give her the album, which she doesn't know that he doesn't yet have the album. Marla, for her part, has a bunch of nasty friends who also want the album, which is eventually revealed to have the names of people who were profiteers or collaborators during the recently-concluded World War II, which would explain why so many people so badly want this album.

Mitchell's search takes him all over the city, although at least at some point the police are able to figure out that he in fact did not commit the murder. Granted, he's still a material witness so shouldn't be trying to evade the police either. But then we wouldn't have much of a movie, would we?

The Argyle Secrets is another of those B movies that's surprisingly effective even if the album is more of a macguffin than anything else. It's somewhat reminiscent of a low-budget version of The Maltese Falcon, with Gargan as a journalistic Sam Spade. Gargan is more than good enough here, and the rest of the cast is entertaining although this isn't a movie that's going to be remembered as anything truly classic.

Mel Brooks Centenary!

Mel Brooks (l.) in The Twelve Chairs (2:30 PM)

Today is the 100th birthday of director/screenwriter/comedian Mel Brooks, known for his parodies and often absurd comedies. TCM is celebrating with five of his movies this afternoon and evening:

2:30 PM The Twelve Chairs, in which Brooks looks for a missing chair that may be concealing a treasure;
4:15 PM The Producers, starring Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder as Broadway producers who get involved in a scam regarding their latest show;
6:00 PM Spaceballs, a parody of science-fiction movies in general and Star Wars in particular;
8:00 PM Blazing Saddles; a boundary-pushing absurd comedy western; and
10:00 PM Young Frankenstein; a comic retelling of a descendant of the original Dr. Frankenstein.

Normal programming returns with Silent Sunday Nights at midnight.

A million tanks

James Gleason was an always reliable character actor, and it was nice to see him get a day in the 2025 Summer Under the Stars on TCM. One of his movies that I hadn't seen before was the Hal Roach Streamliner Tanks a Million, so I recorded it in order to be able to do the post on it here.

A search of the blog says I haven't mentioned the Streamliners before. These were a series of movies Hal Roach produced that were longer than the shorts he had mostly been producing, but still shorter than even a lot of the B movies, clocking in mostly at a shade under an hour (this one is 50 minutes). Granted, this was still the era before TV so in later years material like this would probably have been storyboarded for episodic TV. The "star", if you will, here is William Tracy, playing Dorian "Dodo" Doubleday. As the movie opens, he's on a radio show where he's showing off his photographic memory. Dodo works at a train station information booth, but that work is coming to an end as he's just been drafted into the army. (The movie was released in September 1941, so no mention of any possible upcoming war.)

Sgt. Ames (Joe Sawyer) is the drill instructor assigned to the new recruits, but Pvt. Doubleday already knows the entire army manual and not only that, but seems to know how to actually do the stuff the manual asks of new recruits. And he's frankly obnoxious about showing off all this knowledge. Needless to say, it ticks Sgt. Ames off, but when Ames goes to his superior officers, they get the brilliant idea to promote Doubleday to sergeant, albeit with a bit of a devious catch. Doubleday is assigned to a unit that has the most inept recruits, who also have a bit of a mischievous streak in that they figure out ways to do stuff very close to sergeant's orders. If Sgt. Doubleday fails to mention every article of clothing they're supposed to wear, they'll only wear the ones he mentioned. The trick's on them, however, when they have to march barefoot.

Col. Barkley (James Gleason) is coming to the base, where he's supposed to deliver a speech that's going out on a national radio hookup. Not that he likes giving radio speeches. Sgt. Doubleday gets assigned to be Barkley's orderly. But when he gets some sort of powder on Barkley's uniform, he puts the jacket on himself to be able to clean the powder off. Unfortunately, this leads to his being mistaken for Barkley, leading to all sorts of complications. But since this is a comedy, and a short one at that, you know things are going to work out well, and quickly.

Tanks a Million is a film that's rather more episode than something that has a fully-fledged plot, although that's probably to be expected coming from Hal Roach since he'd been doing a lot more with shorts. The material is adequate for what it is, which is a throaway B movie. Nobody will consider Tanks a Million any great shakes, but back in 1941 I'd bet it entertained while it came and went, to be promptly forgotten as it was replaced by the next movie.

Ann Blyth, 1927-2026

Ann Blyth and Joan Crawford in Mildred Pierce (1945)

The death has been announced of actress Ann Blyth. Blyth, who was probably most famous for playing spoiled brat daughter Veda Pierce in the movie Mildred Pierce, was 98. I should point out that some sources listed her date of birth as 1928, but I believe Blyth talked about being 17 when she did the screen test for Mildred Pierce with Crawford, which would put her date of birth as 1927.

Blyth didn't have the longest of careers, at least not in the movies, as like a lot of actresses of her era, she aged out of roles and got married. The obituary I linked to says that her final feature film was The Helen Morgan Story, which I blogged about only a year ago.

Paul Newman and Ann Blyth in The Helen Morgan Story

As I write this, there hasn't been any tribute programmed on TCM for Blyth. She was the subject of a Summer Under the Stars day back in 2013, so TCM probably can get the rights to enough movies to do a reasonable tribute on her. I'm not certain if they'll pre-empt a night of programming in July, give her a day in Summer Under the Stars, or wait until September for a tribute.