This being Thursday, it's time for another edition of Thursday Movie Picks, the blogathon run by Wandering Through the Shelves. For this second Thursday in July, the theme is female athletes, which isn't too difficult, especially if you watch more recent movies. As for me, however, being a blogger of old movies I came up with a bunch of movies that are all over 40 years old:
Pat and Mike (1952). Katharine Hepburn plays Pat, a golfer and tennis player who hires promoter Mike (Spencer Tracy) to help her get over the hump. Along the way, they fall in love despite the fact that Pat is already engaged to another man. Quite a few famous athletes of the day have cameos, and a young Charles Bronson plays another of Mike's clients.
Hard, Fast, and Beautiful (1951). Directed by Ida Lupino, this movie tells the story of a young tennis player (Sally Forrest) who's quite good but wants to settle down and marry, while her mother (Claire Trevor) keeps pushing her to the top. Of course, this was the days when tournaments like Wimbledon were strictly amateur, so continuing to play would be quite a financial sacrifice for the daughter who has a well-to-do boyfriend.
Ice Castles (1978). Lynn-Holly Johnson plays a girl from Iowa who's gotten quite good at figure skating; indeed, she's good enough to try to qualify for the Olympics. But instead of an interesting look at amateur sports and the way the athletes are exploited, we get a mawkish tragedy when Johnson crashes while skating for pleasure, losing most of her eyesight in the accident. Still she tries a comeback at the insistence of her washed-up hockey player boyfriend Robby Benson. Colleen Dewhurst plays the small-town coach who knows she can take her student only so far. Apparently it was remade about a decade ago, but this version is the disaster to watch.
4 comments:
I've only heard of Ice Castles though I haven't seen it yet :(
Ice Castles is so terrible!! It practically made my teeth hurt it was so gooey. Colleen Dewhurst did what she could with her part but it's not enough to make the movie tolerable.
We have two matches! Pat and Mike is a good vehicle for Tracy & Hepburn but not one of my favorites of their films together. I should give it another look though it's been years.
All of Ida Lupino directed films are interesting but I wish she had found a more magnetic leading lady than Sally Forrest for Hard, Fast and Beautiful. Claire Trevor blows her off the screen whenever she is in a scene.
Other than our two matches I picked a programmer that I tracked down because a starting out Rita Hayworth has a significant role and a TV movie that came to mind because of Pat & Mike.
Girls Can Play (1937)-Ambitious cub reporter Jimmy Jones (Charles Quigley) covering the sports beat meets Ann Casey (Julie Bishop) player on an all-girl softball team sponsored by local drugstore owner Foy Harris (John Gallaudet). Jones thinking he smells a story about women in competitive sports pursues Ann, there’s a story alright but it’s not the one he thinks. Using the team as a mask of respectability Harris runs a bootleg operation from the back of his store. With the girls out on the pitch and Jones digging for dirt team catcher Sue Collins (Rita Hayworth) learns too much and pays the price. Lower case Columbia B has a shadow of the future A League of Their Own, but nothing is done with the idea. It does provide a glimpse of future star Hayworth, still a brunette, working her way up before the studio transformed her into one of the premiere love goddesses of the Golden Era.
Hard, Fast and Beautiful (1951)-When teenager Florence Farley’s (Sally Forrest) skill as a tennis player begins to attract attention, her manipulative mother Milly (Claire Trevor-easily stealing the picture), pressures her to join the competitive women’s tennis circuit over the objections of Florence’s father Will (Kenneth Patterson). Florence’s fame and success grow and so do her mother’s ambition and chicanery. Look at the mid-century women’s sports world was both written (Martha Wilkerson) and directed (Ida Lupino) by a woman…the ONLY film directed by a woman in all 1951!
Pat and Mike (1952)-College athletic director Pat Pemberton (Katharine Hepburn) decides to enter some professional women’s golf matches to see how she’ll do. She excels until her domineering fiancé, Collier Weld (William Ching), turns up and distracts her. But before that happens sports manager Mike Conovan (Spencer Tracy) sees her talent and offers to train her, and she turns pro. After realizing that Pat stops trying when Collier is around, Mike works to keep them apart especially when he takes a shine to her himself. Written specifically for Hepburn by Garson Kanin and Ruth Gordon because of the star’s athletic skill the film also features many of the top women athletes of the day including top golfers Betty Hicks, Helen Dettweiler and Babe Didrikson Zaharias.
Babe (1975)-Speaking of Zaharias, considered one of the greatest athletes of all time, this TV biopic follows her life (enacted by Susan Clark) from just before she won two gold medals in the 1932 track and field Olympics through her dabbling and excelling in baseball and basketball, her courtship and marriage to professional wrestler George Zaharias (football star Alex Karras), her decision to pursue golf, her ascension to the top of that game and finally being felled by cancer at age 45. Susan Clark (who won an Emmy for her performance) and Karras fell in love and married after the film remaining together until Karras’s death in 2012.
We match with Pat & Mike! It is the go to film for us die hards:) I have not seen your 2nd choice but would love to as for Ice Castles....ughh. I actually saw this in the theatre and my teeth hurt from the syrup and the bad acting of Ms Lynn Holly Johnson. I almost chose this flick.
Pat and Mike was popular this week. I'll have to add that to my watchlist.
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