Thursday, March 19, 2020

Thursday Movie Picks #297: Bad Boys





This being Thursday, it's normally time for another edition of Thursday Movie Picks, the blogathon run by Wandering Through the Shelves. This week's theme is "Bad Boys"; by an odd coincendence, it looks as though tomorrow's (March 20) TCM daytime schedule is chock full of movies that fit the theme. And I happened to pick one of those before looking at the upcoming TCM schedule. I'm also admitting to using a movie that I used three years ago, because I thought of using it here and then decided to look up whether I'd used it before.

Bad Boy (1949). Audie Murphy has his first starring role as a delinquent who winds up at a Texas ranch for troubled boys. Lloyd Nolan has another of his solid moral center roles as the head of the ranch who tries to reach Audie and figure out why he went wrong to end up at the ranch. Not that Murphy is going to make it easy for Nolan, continuing to cause trouble. (Spoiler: Nolan does figure it out, and Murphy becomes a good young man. But you probably could have guessed that.)

Breathless (1960). Jean-Paul Belmondo plays the bad boy here, falling in love with American journalism student in Paris Jean Seberg and then inviting her to accompany him on what becomes a crime spree. This is the sort of movie that epitomizes why I'm not a big fan of the French New Wave, as it's talky (especially toward the end) and felt to me like a lot of nothing going on. But lots of other people love this stuff.

Night Nurse (1931). Barbara Stanwyck plays a nurse who tends to a gunshot wound for bad boy Ben Lyon, before getting a job in a private home caring for two young girls. There, she learns that another bad boy, chauffeur Clark Gable, is having the girls starved so they'll die and he can get at the trust fund, meanwhile keeping the girls' mother drunk so she doesn't know what's going on. A bad-boy highlight is when a maid suggests an old wives' tale of giving the surviving girl a milk bath as her pores will soak up the nutrients in the milk or some such nonsense. Stanwyck of course doesn't have the money to buy the milk, and when she tells Lyon, the movie cuts to a scene of him doing a smash-and-grab at a delicatessen and getting the milk his girlfriend needs! The whole movie is chock full of such pre-Code goodness.

6 comments:

joel65913 said...

I like your picks and I took a peek at TCM's schedule and you're right it's chock a block with bad boys tomorrow.

Breathless is one I haven't seen in years but it a stylistic marker and an excellent watch.

Night Nurse is one of those pre-codes that is a real eye opener for anyone who thinks all older films are chaste toothless candy.

We match and I have to say I am frankly amazed we do. The Audie film is so obscure I was shocked when I ran across it. I watched though mostly for Lloyd Nolan, his early work is so different from his latter grumpy but with a heart of gold roles. Both are good just such a change.

I used the theme title as my connection for all three of mine:

Bad Boy (1935)-Pool shark Eddie Nolan (James Dunn) would like nothing better than to spend his time shaking down suckers and shooting the breeze with the other sharks. But he loves Sally Larkin (Dorothy Wilson) whose parents think him a bad boy wastrel and refuse until he has a reputable job. Eddie tries the straight and narrow but is unable to find a place. Driven to despair he contemplates whether he has anything to live for. Fast paced programmer, under an hour, definitely foreshadows Capra’s “It’s a Wonderful Life”.

Bad Boy (1949)-Bad boy delinquent Danny (Audie Murphy) has a raft of charges against him but the judge decides to give him one more chance and sends to the reform school Variety Ranch run by caring Marshall & Maud Brown (Lloyd Nolan & Jane Wyatt) to see if he is capable of redemption. With an enormous chip on his shoulder tough nut Danny may prove to be more than even the Browns can handle.

Bad Boys (1983)-Bad boy delinquent Mick O'Brien (Sean Penn) is sent to juvenile hall after accidentally killing rival gang leader, Paco Moreno’s (Esai Morales) young brother when a con he’s running goes wrong. In the brutal prison Mick finds himself instant adversaries with the vicious Viking (Clancy Brown) and Tweety (Robert Lee Rush). While Mick fights for survival inside Paco plans to take revenge on those close to Mick, including his girlfriend J.C. (Ally Sheedy).

Ted S. (Just a Cineast) said...

Yes, I'm very surprised that somebody else heard of the Nolan/Murphy Bad Boy let alone picked it.

And Nolan's early work as Michael Shayne is certainly different from the later stuff. But he elevates everything he was in, even something terrible like An American Dream

Debbie D. said...

Great choices! I don't remember Bad Boy, but I did see Breathless many years ago and had similar thoughts about it. Barbara Stanwyck is a favourite, so I was surprised I hadn't heard of Night Nurse. Pre-code movies are much more interesting! Must look for it online. Thanks.

My entry @ The Doglady's Den

Brittani Burnham said...

I'm 0 for 3 with your picks this week, but seeing Bad Boy 35 picked for a second time, I really need to look that film up.

Ted S. (Just a Cineast) said...

Actually I picked the 1949 Bad Boy, a completely different movie.

For some reason I thought I'd seen the 1935 movie before on FXM, but now I'm not certain.

Birgit said...

I haven’t seen any of these! I always wanted to see Night Nurse and now I really want to see it. Breathless is one Godard film I have wanted to see even though I am not a Goddard fan at all.