Thursday Movie Picks #261: Muses

This being Thursday, it's time for another edition of Thursday Movie Picks, the blogathon run by Wandering Through the Shelves. This week's theme is "Muses", which I have to admit was a rather difficult theme for me. My first thought was the Rita Hayworth movie Down to Earth, but it turns out I used that one about a year ago. After some thought, I decided to bend the rules to come up with three movies:

Xanadu (1980). OK, this one isn't really cheating. Olivia Newton-John plays an ancient Greek muse (or is she?) who comes down to earth to help Michael Beck fulfill his dream, which is to build a roller disco. Too bad disco was dying by this point. Beck's friend and mentor is an aging Gene Kelly. The movie has become a cult classic, and deservedly so. Music is provided by Newton-John and ELO.

Please Don't Eat the Daisies (1960). David Niven plays a theater critic married to Doris Day; the couple and their four kids move from New York City to Connecticut. While Doris struggles with suburban life, Niven's job keeps him in Manhattan enough that it puts a strain on the marriage. This one barely fits in with the theme because the production company was Euterpe, named after the Greek muse of music and lyric poetry.

Red Hot Tires (1935). OK, I'm really stretching it here. Lyle Talbot plays a race car driver who gets wrongly imprisoned when a rival dies during a race; his friend Roscoe Karns breaks him out and takes him to South America, where he becomes a racing star again. No, Karns isn't playing Talbot's muse. Instead, once Talbot goes off to prison Karns drives a truck servicing the prison, and in one of the scenes actor Clarence Muse (aha!) plays Karns' sidekick in the passenger seat.

Now to see what everybody else has picked.