Dated "edgy" 1960s comedy #95258672804678437580276

When Ted Turner bought the rights to the films that became the so-called "Turner Library" that formed the backbone of the programming in the early days of TCM, I think the Warner Bros. movies only went through about 1950; in any case the 1950s and 1960s Warner Bros. stuff always seemed to show up rather less frequently. That's been changing in recent years, giving me the chance to catch a lot of new-to-me stuff. One such movie was the 1966 sex comedy Any Wednesday.

Jane Fonda stars as Ellen Gordon, who lives in a Lower East Side ground floor apartment with a couple of friends. She works at an art gallery, in charge of some rented artworks at a swanky party. There, she's impressed into service by John Cleves (Jason Robards). He's just called his wife, and for reasons that will soon become obvious needs to make it sound as though he's calling from out of town, which is why Ellen has to play the part of the long-distance operator. (Nowadays, of course, John would just call his wife on the cell phone and caller ID would identify the number regardless of where in America John was calling from.)

As it turns out, John is stepping out on his wife Dorothy (Rosemary Clooney), claiming to be on business trips while he really stays in New York every Wednesday evening for his assignations. He immediately falls for Ellen, who is smart enough to say hell no to John's ideas. But circumstances change for her as she gets appendicitis, while both of her roommates move out because the apartment building is turning to co-ops and none of them can afford the price of the new co-op.

This gives John his in. He'll buy the co-op for Ellen, or at least have the conglomerate he runs buy it so that he can claim it's an "executive suite" and get a tax write-off. Ellen can live there, and John can visit every Wednesday evening for those assignations with nobody being any the wiser. Except, of course, that this arrangement is going to be found out eventually, or else we wouldn't have much of a movie.

That discovery is courtesy of John's secretary Miss Linsley (Ann Prentiss long before she screwed up her life). A man with whom John is doing a business deal, Cass Henderson (Dean Jones), is coming in to town and can't get a hotel room. So Miss Linsley helpfully offers Cass the executive suite, since logically it should be used for things like this. But we all know that there's a woman there, and boy isn't everybody going to be surprised when Cass shows up and finds Ellen. He gets the not-quite-right idea about what Ellen is, since he has no way of knowing that Ellen lived there before John turned the place into the executive suite.

And, as you can also guess, Dorothy is going to find out about the suite and walk in on Cass, Ellen, and John. So Cass and Ellen have to play the part of a married couple to keep the ruse going. Dorothy, meanwhile, hears Ellen's voice and knows she can recognize it from somewhere, although not yet from the fake telephone operator. All sorts of complications are going to ensue before the film reaches an ending that may or may not be happy for each of the characters.

Any Wednesday is based on a Broadway play, and it's again the sort of material that I can kind of see being popular with the self-styled urbane theater-goers of the mid-1960s. On the big screen, however, it's fairly stagey, and 60 years on it's decidedly dated. It also doesn't help that Jason Robards is playing a sort of character I don't much care for, that being the man who lies his way through everything, with the lies having to get bigger and bigger to maintain the ruse.

People who like this sort of look at New York City as it was in the 1960s may enjoy Any Wednesday, but I was glad to see the end of it.

Hawaii

The latest in the series of movies that I had sitting on my DVR and is getting another airing on TCM: Hawaii, based on part of the sprawling novel of the same title by James Michener. Hawaii will be on TCM early tomorrow morning, or overnight tonight depending on your time zone, TCM feed, and perspective, at 2:00 AM.

I mentioned above that Hawaii was based on part of Michener's novel; as you may recall, a few years later there was another movie titled The Hawaiians that was based on a later section of the novel. Now here, I need to point out that I got something wrong in my synopsis of The Hawaiians, which was the suggestion that the Hoxworths were the main characters of the movie. They may have been the main characters of the novel, which I'll admit I haven't read, but in this movie the main character is Rev. Abner Hale (Max von Sydow). He's a very proper New England Protestant minister fresh out of Yale's divinity school.

As Hale starts off on his career in the pulpit, it's around 1820, so a few generations after Capt. Cook became the first European to discover those islands that make up Hawaii, and the fact that there are Polynesians living there. For both economic and religious reasons, a lot of people had interest in the land, and Hale's superiors in the missionary society want to convert the native Hawaiians to Christianity. However, they also have a rule that the men of the cloth they're sending out to heathen lands have to be married already, which Abner isn't, so they have to find him a wife.

A good choice would be Jerusha Bromley (Julie Andrews). She comes from reasonably good New England stock too, and had/has a boyfriend in a whaling captain, Rafer Hoxworth (Richard Harris). Marriage to a whaling captain might not be the best thing, and besides, he's been away for a long time to the extent that who knows when he's coming back? (Obviously, we know that he will show up later in the movie.) So getting Jerusha married off to Abner and sending her to Hawaii seems like a good idea for the rest of the family.

After a suitably arudous journey, since there was no Panama Canal in the 1820s and no roads all the way across the US to the Pacific, the Hales arrive on Maui to find a bunch of Polynesians who seem reasonably happy with their way of life under the queen (Ali'i Nui), Malama Kanakoa (Jocelyne LaGarde). But their way of life shocks Rev. Hale, notably the way that the royal family has to resort to incest to keep unwanted influence out of the royal bloodline considering the relatively small population. Couldn't they get someone from another island? After all, they were well aware of the existence of the rest of the islands in the archipelago.

Rev. Hale wants the locals to ban incest for well-intentioned reasons, since it was clear to Europeans that inbred royalty produced health issues even if they too were still decades away from understanding genetics. The native Hawaiians are realtively OK living alongside these white people, and do develop some sympathy for Hale because, despite his rigid Christianity, he and especially Jerusha are attempting to be kind.

But all sorts of problems afflict the people of Maui thanks especially to less-enlightend whites encroaching on them from the other islands. Hoxworth shows up again, none too pleased to find Jerusha married to another man. The Hales, and Malama, are also displeased with the sailors taking a liking to the native women; this wasn't all that long after the Bounty mutiny, after all. So the natives and Hales form an alliance resulting in a deathbed conversion of convenience from Malama, but all of this only leads to more disaster.

Eventually, the missionary society and other whites decide that just as important as conversion is the economic gains the bounty of the islands could bring them. Since they see Abner as too enlightened, they want to get him off the island by making him take up a position at a church back in New England. Hale isn't so sure.

One of the reviews I read of the movie version of Hawaii is that it's the sort of material that probably would have worked better as a TV miniseries, and I have to say I can't disagree with that. The print that TCM ran runs 161 minutes, and feels every bit of that as it's exceedingly slow at times, not that there was much to change the rhythm of the islands before the white man showed up. The cinematography, mostly on location, is unsurprisingly gorgeous; the acting is adequate; but, the story is the weak point here.

Stolen Holiday

I think I mentioned a while back having a string of Kay Francis movies that I hadn't seen before on my DVR, and writing up posts on them and leaving them in draft to space out when the posts show up here. The next of the Kay Francis movies is from her later years at Warner Bros. after Bette Davis started taking over the role of queen of the Warner Bros. lot: Stolen Holiday.

Francis stars as Nicole Picot, an American model who has made her way over to Paris in 1931, and is successful showing off the clothes others pay her to wear, although she'd really rather own her own business, confiding in her friend Suzanne (Alison Skipworth). One day at work, Nicole is approached by Russian émigré Stefan Orloff (Claude Rains), who is willing to put up Nicole at a fashionable mansion for a night in exchange for posing as his wife. Nicole agrees for the money, and although she quickly discovers the ruse, she remains friends with Orloff.

The thing is, Stefan needed to look fashionable because he's running a chain of pawn shops with some of his friends, on the grounds that France is the only country where one can issue bonds on the assets of what's been pawned. Stefan is the head of this scheme, although it's not quite honest, and it's his partners who seem to be taking more of a risk as their names are the ones on the documentation. But Nicole doesn't know any of this. She gets the money she needs to open the Maison Picot, which eventually becomes successfull.

When it looks like Orloff might be in trouble and it's suggested Picot get out of town until the thing blows over -- after all, Orloff doesn't really want to hurt Picot -- she goes to Geneva, which is where she meets Anthony Wayne (Ian Hunter). Wayne is a British diplomat who can travel wherever on his diplomatic passport. He immediately falls in love with Nicole, and the two become platonic friends much in the same way that Picot is friends with Orloff. In fact, it's that friendship with Orloff that leads Picot to decide she's not going to marry Wayne.

Meanwhile, the walls are beginning to close in on Orloff again, so he asks Picot to marry him! He's got ulterior motives. If he can invite all the people he's scamming to the wedding, who are basically the highest of high society, they won't be able to turn on him for fear of the public scandal they'll have to face when the fiscal chicanery comes to light. Or at least that's the theory. One of Orloff's business partners is taken away from the wedding by the police for questioning, which really begins to put the heat on Orloff and lead to the finale.

Stolen Holiday is little more than a programmer from Warner Bros., although unsurprisingly they do a good job making it look like a million bucks. The plot, however, is a bit of a mess. Then again, this is the sort of material where everything looks so glossy that you won't really notice how little the plot resembles any sort of reality. Claude Rains is as pleasant to listen too as always; Kay Francis looks good in all those fashions; and everybody should have listened to Alison Skipworth's advice.

Briefs for June 14

Today is my birthday, a fact I think I've mentioned here in the past. It's also the birth anniversary of a couple of noteworthy Hollywood stars, which was also the subject of one of my brief post back in 2012: Oscar-winner Burl Ives was born on this day in 1909, while Dorothy McGuire was born in 1916. Marla Gibbs, who is remembered for her TV work, is still alive at 95; while Boy George, who sang the theme song to The Crying Game, is 65.

As for obituaries, I should mention the passing of Gene Shalit, 2½ months past his 100th birthday. Shalit was the long time movie critic on the Today show here in the States, which I think is how most people in America would remember him. Well, that and the moustache.

I've also stated a few times over the past couple of months that it seems as though, since the start of 2026, FXM's Retro block has has more movies in it, although of course most of them are things I've blogged about before. I think it's been a while since I've mentioned Two for the Road, which comes up tomorrow at 10:00 AM.

A sign of the times, for me at least, is how much of the time any more when Jeopardy! has a movie-related category, everything is way too recent because nobody cares much about the past. On Thursday, for example, there was a "Movie Musicals" category, and the earliest movie in the category -- and the only one from the 20th century -- was Grease.

On the other hand, on Friday, one of the contestants mentioned doing a weekly movie night that's run to several hundred movies now. When Ken Jennings asked him to recommend something we'd be likely not to know, he selected Don't Think I've Forgotten. I'd agree with the guy that the movie is definitely obscure, although surprisingly enough it's one that I've blogged about despite how relatively recent it is.

It Happened in Brooklyn

I didn't expect to do posts on multiple Peter Lawford pictures in brief succession, but it turned out that two of them were on my DVR as well as being on the TCM schedule. The second of them is It Happened in Brooklyn, which TCM is running again tomorrow, June 15, at 9:30 AM.

Peter Lawford is technically in a secondary role to Frank Sinatra. Sinatra plays Danny Miller, a Brooklyn-born man who as the movie starts is in England just after the end of World War II waiting to be demobbed and sent back to America along with a bunch of other soldiers. A conceit of the movie is that Brooklyn is full of very outgoing people but, in England, Danny just doesn't want to associate with anybody other than a pretty nurse (Gloria Grahame) tending to him. He's at a party for the soldiers about to go home, and is ordered to mingle. It's there that he meets Jamie Shellgrove (Peter Lawford), who might be even more timid than Danny but who happens to be the grandson of a duke. Danny suggests that Jamie come over to Brooklyn.

Danny gets demobbed, just in time for a housing crisis in Brooklyn, which basically forces him to room with an old friend, school custodian Nick Lombardi (Jimmy Durante) who has an apartment attached to the school where he works. Teaching at the school is music teacher Anne Fielding (Kathryn Grayson). Anne had wanted to be an opera singer, but she didn't get to study which is why she's in a backwater like this. One of the students is a piano prodigy, but he comes from a poor family, and he can't apply for the big music scholarship because he's a couple of months too young, which is going to be one of the plot points later in the movie.

Danny, having returned from the war, has the right to his old job back, reminiscent of Dana Andrews in The Best Years of Our Lives, but he naturally dreams of something better. He was working as a shipping clerk for a music store, when what he really dreams of doing is putting over the songs by singing them, the sort of job that seems more out of the 1910s than the 1940s, but whatever. He's actually able to get that job thanks to a little help from Nick that teaches Danny to be not quite so shy. Also, by this point, you expect Danny and Anne to wind up together in the final reel.

But then Jamie shows up from England since the Duke really wants Danny to help Jamie become successful enough that he'll overcome his timidness and be able to make it back in England. Jamie falls for Anne, and as it turns out she really likes him too, thanks in part to Danny's playing a bit of matchmaker. But Jamie is just too damn shy to tell Anne how he really feels, which is going to cause all sorts of conflict in the final act of the movie. This last act also involves the main characters teaming up to get a piano concert for that young prodigy in the hopes that they can get someone important to attend the concert and give the kid that scholarship.

It Happened in Brooklyn is one of those movies that doesn't really have any bad guys in it, although there is some conflict along the way. However, that's one of the things that doesn't quite work in the movie's favor here. Indeed, it feels like It Happened in Brooklyn is a bit of a mish-mash of plots that might have been lying around the MGM studio offices. (It's not related, but the characters pass movie theaters on a couple of occasions and there are a lot of MGM movies from the era being advertised on posters.) It's also a musical with a plot that doesn't really lend itself to being a musical even with two of the main characters working in music. Kathryn Grayson has an operatic number from Leo Delibes' Lakmé toward the end of the film that brings things to a screeching halt.

Somewhat surprisingly, even though I'm not a fan of Peter Lawford, he isn't the sort of weak link here that he was in some of his other movies. I think that's because the screenplay plays to his limitations as an actor by having him play a totally uncharismatic character. You wonder how much actual acting he had to do.

I suppose I could save this for June 13, 2027

Next up on the list of movies that are currently on my DVR and getting another airing on TCM is Same Time, Next Year. This one will show up on TCM tomorrow, June 14, at 2:00 PM.

The movie opens up in early 1951. George (Alan Alda) is dining alone in what looks like one of those restaurants attached to an inn. Also there dining alone is young housewife Doris (Ellen Burstyn). They, seeming to be the only two people in the place apart from the help, start talking to each other, and the next thing you know, it's the following morning. The two are in bed together, with George clearly naked since the camera strategically pans to show him putting on his boxer shorts, implying that the two had sex.

Now, in theory, that's not the biggest deal, as people do have one night stands. Except that in this case the two are married... but to other people. (The script doesn't really explain why either of the two is here alone, although later in the movie Doris talks about going on retreats. This would at least explain later events in the film but not the opening act.) In any case, neither of the two has any real interest in getting a divorce, so the two decide that they'll both make arrangements to come back in a year's time.

Maybe they did come back the following year, but the film uses a montage of current-events photos to show what was going on between that visit in 1951, and the next one shown on screen, which is in 1956. The film shows four further visits, in 1961, 1966, 1972, and 1977. Along the way, each of the two goes through the various ups and downs of life, while at the same time being swept up in the various current events going on around them. George goes into analysis, while the Vietnam War clearly has a bigger effect on both of them. There's even the possibility of one or another of the spouses (never actually seen) finding out that something's going on.

Beyond that, there's not a lot of plot to Same Time, Next Year as it's pretty much a two-character play turned into a movie, with a lot of talk and not very much action. Whether or not you're going to like this one depends a lot on the two stars. Ellen Burstyn does a good job, while I personally think that Alan Alda is clearly the weaker partner here. There's also the issue that there's really nothing that can be done to open this one up from its stage origins, since part of the point of the meetings is that they meet in a secluded place so as not to be seen together.

As I watched Same Time, Next Year, I found myself thinking of the film 84 Charing Cross Road which is much better precisely because it doesn't have to deal with the limitations that Same Time, Next Year does. It can introduce all the other people in the two main characters' lives, as well as opening up the action, which takes place in two cities anyway. Same Time, Next Year isn't bad, but it's also another of those films which clearly isn't going to be for everyone.

Cry For Happy

Another of the stars who was honored in the 2025 Summer Under the Stars was Donald O'Connor, as it was his 100th anniversary of his birth. Once again, I recorded several of his movies that I hadn't seen before, one of which was the service comedy Cry for Happy.

O'Connor is the second lead here, behind Glenn Ford. Ford plays CPO Andy Cyphers, who as the movie beings is in US-occupied Japan in 1952. Cyphers officially works for the Navy's publicity office, developing the photographs and film reels that will be distributed to press outlets back in the States. It's not glamorous work, and with the housing situation in Japan Cyphers works out of a disused bank vault. He also engages in other unauthorized work, such as leasing cameras to a Japanese producer Endo in exchange for other services.

One day Cyphers gets new staff in the form of junior officers Murray Prince (Donald O'Connor), Suzuki (James Shigeta), and Lank (Chet Douglas). They get an assignment to go over to Korea, which is something they really want since the movie is set while the Korean War is still a hot war, and cover the military's propaganda of having low-ranked servicemen speak to the people back home about why they're fighting. Somehow, the military press liaisons not only didn't include any members of the Navy to talk to, but the people who do talk actively make fun of the military. To counter this, Cyphers wants to talk about why the navy is fighting, and makes up a story about them helping out an orphanage back in Japan. Cyphers is, of course, enough of a grifter that this is a completely made up story. So to keep everyone from putting too much of a spotlight on them, he doesn't reveal the location of the fake orphanage and says they've wanted to do it with no publicity.

Now, this is where Endo comes back in. He has a way of doing favors for Cyphers in exchange for getting those movie cameras he needs to make the movie he wants (which turns out to be a Hollywood-style western only with an all-Japanese cast). So now Cyphers needs an orphanage and his staff need a place to stay. Endo finds a place where one of his cousins is living that's a geisha house, with four geishas still paying off their apprenticeships. It might be a good place to turn into a pretend orphanage, if only they had children. There's also the fact that there are four women there and of course the Navy men begin to fall in love with the geishas, notably Murray with Chiyoko (Miyoshi Umeki, who had portrayed a similar character in Sayonara).

Worse for Cyphers is that the orphanage becomes such a story that there's no way they can keep things under wraps. Besides, folks back in the States were so touched by the story that they've been donating money without even being hectored by Sally Stuthers. But this is the sort of romantic service comedy that really has to have a happy ending, so the question is how the story gets to that requisite happy ending.

I didn't particularly care for Cry for Happy, and if you've read this blog long enough you can probably guess some of the reasons why. The big one is CPO Cyphers. He's the sort of con artist whom I tend not to find a very sympathetic character. Worse, it's the sort of thing I've called a "comedy of lies" before, where the Cyphers character starts off with one lie, and then has to make up bigger and bigger lies to keep the original lie going. It's the sort of thing that's supposed to be funny, but that I've always just found grating. I have a feeling that viewers 65 years on will probably also have some issues with the portrayal of Japan here. There's quite a fair bit of what Americans would have thought the Japan of the era was like, with probably little of what the actual Japan was like. The cultural difference is supposed to be funny but once again feels more uncomfortable and a bit degrading than funny.

Nine years on

Another of the movies that was sitting on my DVR for quite some time and nearly about to expire before I finally watched it was 2010: The Year We Make Contact. It's another one of those movies where I'm old enough to remember it having come out in theaters, but not old enough to have actually seen it in the theater. So when it showed up on TCM again I made a point of recording it to be able to do this review.

I'm assuming most people will be aware that this is a sequel to 2001: A Space Odyssey, along with knowing what 2001 is about. As the sequel opens, Dr. Heywood Floyd (Roy Scheider) is a college administrator working in radioastronomy and tending to one of those radio telescope arrays. He's approached by a Soviet scientist who informs him that the Soviets have been preparing a mission to Jupiter to find out what happened to the Discovery, the ship that Dave Bowman (Keir Dullea) and crew were on when the HAL 9000 computer (voiced again by Douglas Rain) malfunctioned, dooming the mission. The Soviets are going to get there first, but don't have the expertise to deal with the American computer systems. The Americans, of course, aren't going to get there first, so the scientist, knowing that Floyd was the Earth-bound commander of the failed Discovery mission, wants Floyd and the Americans to cooperate on the Soviet mission to Jupiter.

Now, in the real world, we know that the Soviet Union was dissolved in 1991 and had somewhat less bad relations in the years following. Understandably, there's no way people in 1984 when this movie was made could have known all this was going to happen, so the Soviets are still portrayed as a rival to the United States. More specifically, and coloring the plot of the movie, is a story about the US trying to blockade Central American countries -- that whole Monroe Doctrine and all -- and the Soviets trying to break the blockade, which is going to have repercussions even in outer space. But Dr. Floyd agrees to go on the mission. Also on the mission for the Americans are Walter Curnow (John Lithgow), who designed the Discovery, and R. Chandra (Bob Balaban), who designed the HAL 9000.

The Soviet ship Alexei Leonov (named after the first cosmonaut to do a spacewalk) approaches Jupiter, and finds something alarming: it seems as though there might be chlorophyll on Europa, the moon of Jupiter where the monolith that was the point of the original Discovery is located. Perhaps the monolith has something to do with that. In any case, the Soviets running the Alexei Leonov, led by Tanya Kirbuk (Helen Mirren), need Dr. Floyd to help figure out what's going on. He sees this as a warning sign.

But there's still that mission to get on the Discovery and figure out what might have happened to Dave and why the HAL 9000 malfunctioned. As for the HAL, it turns out that the politicians interfered with the mission, and gave HAL direct orders to keep certain information secret from the astronauts on board the Discovery, which led to HAL becoming paranoid and going on the blink. However, things get much more alarming when Dave Bowman himself, or maybe the ghost of Dave Bowan, shows up on the Discovery, to tell Dr. Floyd that they have to leave immediately for reasons Dave can't really explain.

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This is a problem for reasons of orbital mechanics. The mission was designed with the planets being in certain positions at set times, and the fuel on the Alexei Leonov to be used at just the right time to be able to get back to earth. However, if Dave's comments are correct, the early forced departure would result in the crew going to interstellar space rather than being able to get back to earth. And political conditions back on earth are at the point where international cooperation on board the spaceship may have to be suspended.

2010 is certainly an interesting enough idea, and one that's reasonably well executed. But of course anybody who watches this is going to compare it to 2001, and probably not so favorably. For me, the big issue is that the ending is one that I think would violate a whole bunch of scientific principles, although I can't really go into detail about that without giving away the ending of the movie. Somewhat more humorously is the fact that the production design clearly took the Russian language into account -- but somewhere along the way like a game of "telephone" things got just screwed up enough to have all sorts of typos. What it's supposed to say is obvious to anybody who speaks Russian (I studied Russian in college), but is often a bit off.

More teens in trouble

I somehow wound up with a handful of disparate movies about teens who are not exactly model citizens on my DVR. I think the last of them is Bronco Bullfrog, a little-known British film.

This one was made in 1969, on location in an East London that no longer exists, something that made me think of the movie 10 Rillington Place where the row houses that made up that street were soon to be torn down as part of Notting Hill's urbn renewal. Anyhow, Del (Del Quant, although these are all non-professionals doing the acting) is a young man in this run-down part of London who is doing an apprenticeship to become a welder, which at least would pay the bills even if it's not an exciting life. He lives with his dad in a crappy block of flats, and wanders the streets half the time with his group of friends, engaging in petty crime from larceny to beating up unwanted people.

Somewhere along the way, Del meets Irene, a girl of 16 who has about a year or so more to go in school before she's expected to make some sort of decision of what she wants to do in life, which for a young woman like her is going to mean at best a secretarial job before she gets married. These are the working class people who were already being overlooked by society in favor of people who could be more "properly" educated along with a more vibrant population. Irene, for her part, lives with her mother, seemingly no father around. Neither Del's father nor Irene's mother seems all that enthusiastic about the prospect of the two dating.

Del and his friend group learn about the fate of a guy they know named Jo, nicknamed the titular Bronco Bullfrog for reasons that aren't really made clear and aren't important anyhow. He's been in "borstal", which as I understand it is a rough British equivalent to reform school. But he's finished his sentence and is about to be released despite that the fact that he hasn't reformed one bit. He's got some ideas about crimes to commit and wants to bring Del in on them. Del eventually introduces Irene to Jo, mostly because the young couple can't be alone together in either of their own flats. But this gets the two of them in trouble since Irene is underage.

Del has an uncle living outside of London, but the uncle informs Del that this isn't really a good place for him either, as the only work available is farm work, and Del would be better off sticking with the welding apprenticeship since that at least is rather more lucrative work. And there's still the specter of the police nicking Del because of the relationshp with an underage girl even if she's clearly consenting and nowadays this likely wouldn't be seen as statutory rape under the "Romeo and Juliet" exemptions.

Bronco Bullfrog was made on an extremely low budget, which is part of the reason why it's become nearly forgotten. To be honest, that low budget means it's not exactly a great movie as there's not a truly coherent story here. However, what it is quite good for is the look at a London that no longer exists. Like any number of other movies of the era such as the aforementioned 10 Rillington Place or the produce markets in Frenzy, there's a bit of a documentary nature in the cinematography that makes Bronco Bullfrog well worth watching.

When Bronco Bullfrog was originally released, there was what to me seems like a bit of a gimmick in treating these authentic teens as speaking an exotic accent of English that for some audiences might need subtitling. There were apparently some prints that didn't use subtitles. The one TCM ran did, although I didn't find the accent particularly impenetrable.

Wanda

Last September, TCM ran a night of movies dedicated to the UCLA Film and TV Archive. If you've watched enough TCM, you'll probably have seen the title cards before any number of the movies that show they've been restored in part by the archive, as well as the people who helped donate toward the restorations. One of the movies that TCM ran on that particular night was the independent drama Wanda. As always, not having seen it, I recorded it to be able to watch later.

Barbara Loden, who co-wrote the movie and directed it, plays Wanda, a woman living in one of those decaying Rust Belt towns. Or, should I say, just outside of town, as the ramshackle place she lives in together with her sister and her sister's family that's located next to a waste heap from a coal mine where poor people like her father pick through it to find bits of coal. Wanda has a husband and kids, but he's up and left her with the kids and filed for divorce because she's basically the sort of mother who would abandon the kids. In fact, Wanda can't get herself to court on time for the hearing and willingly grants the divorce and gives up custody.

She tries to get a job and, being pretty much out of money, goes to a bar where a man picks her up and pays for her beer pretty much in exchange for sex at one of the local motels before leaving her to who knows what. Poor Wanda has pretty much no money, with things about to get even worse for her as she gets her purse and wallet stolen in a movie theater. Can't she just go home to her sister to try to get some sort of help? Well, not yet at least. She goes to a bar looking for a place where she can use a bathroom.

What Wanda doesn't realize however, is that the man, Mr. Dennis (Michael Higgins), has just robbed the bar and killed the bartender who is lying quite dead behind the bar. Dennis takes Wanda with him to another motel, where he treates Wanda like absolute dirt first for screwing up his hamburger order by getting onions on the burger, and later by complaining that she's wearing slacks when he pays for her to get some new clothes. In any case, the two go on the road in no small part because it was seen that a couple was leaving the bar where the dead bartender was found, making them the obvious suspects.

Mr. Dennis is a no good man at all, and even his father knows this. But Dennis doesn't seem to know anything else, while Wanda doesn't have any money or any place to go so she stays with Dennis. Dennis, for his part, is planning his next crime, which is a rather bigger one, robbing a bank by kidnapping the bank president to force him to open the vault while the president's family is being held hostage. But Wanda gets pulled over on a traffic violation and doesn't have her driver's license, threatening to make the entire operation go awry....

I didn't realize at the time I watched Wanda that Barbara Loden was actually the wife of director Elia Kazan, as well as the actress playing Warren Beatty's older sister in Splendor in the Grass. So it's slightly odd that she ended up directing what was such an utterly low-budget affair her. Although, to be fair to the people who might have funded it, she wasn't that prominent an actress, and had never directed anything before. As for the direction, Loden did a very good job finding locations that show a side of society that wasn't normally shown in Hollywood movies before this time. Even a studio like Warner Bros. with its social movies of the 1930s couldn't have created an atmosphere as depressing as the locations and interiors in Wanda. (The climax was filmed in Scranton, PA.) The script to Wanda is also promising. But, unfortunately, Barbara Loden couldn't get good actors on the budget she had, so the acting is mostly amateurish at best, making the movie a bit of a tough go at times.

It's a shame that Barbara Loden never got the chance to have a bigger budget and direct again, because perhaps she might have been able to do something with a better cast. So all we have is the potential of Wanda.