I've been trying to watch the movies that TCM ran during Debbie Reynolds' turn as TCM's Star of the Month last month before they expire from YouTube TV's cloud DVR. I think I've gotten through all of the ones I've recorded, although I also think by the time I blog about them they'll have expired. I'm also pretty certain the order in which the posts on the movies show up won't be the same as the order in which I watched them, in part because at least one of the movies had similar themes to a non-Reynolds movie I wanted to blog about because it was coming up on the TCM schedule. That's more to say that there may be a few things in this or later posts that refer to posts I've already written but are only in the queue to show up on the blog at some point in the future. In any case, one of Reynolds' movies I hadn't heard about before the TCM showing was The Pleasure of His Company.
The "His" here refers to the male lead, that being the character played by Fred Astaire, although we don't see him at first. Instead, we see Reynolds, playing Jessica Poole. She's in a wedding dress at one of those high-class department stores where she's able to try on a gown with just a few attendants and her parents watching. Or, at least, her mom Katherine Dougherty (Lilli Palmer) and stepfather James Dougherty (Gary Merrill). Those two are talking to each other commenting on Katherine's father Mackenzie (Charle Ruggles) walking Jessica down the aisle and giving her away, while it really ought to be Jessica's biological father doing that. But James spent a ton of money sending telegrams all over the world trying to get in touch with bio-dad about the wedding, seemingly in vain.
Enter Fred Astaire. If you haven't figured it out yet, Astaire plays Biddeford Poole, nicknamed Pogo, and is in fact Jessica's biological father. He had some sort of wanderlust that caused him and Katherine to get divorced years ago when Jessica was still aged in single digits, and has spent the time traveling around the world like a playboy and racking up at least one more failed marriage. But he did in fact hear about his daughter's upcoming wedding, and has decided to show up for it. Not that anybody knows, so when he knocks on the door of the Dougherty house, it's there Asian butler Toy who answers the door.
Pogo immediately sets about taking over the house as though it was his all along, and you can see why he wound up divorced multiple times, and why it's a bit of a surprise that this movie is supposed to be a reasonably light comic drama. In fact, Pogo is so selfish that it's tough to see him as a sympathetic character. Surprisingly, Jessica has held a bit of a torch for Dad, if not a romantic one. She's followed his life as he's made the vintage equivalent of the gossip columns, leading her to keep a scrapbook and now be taken with him.
It's almost enough to put a crimp in the wedding plans. Jessica's fiancé Roger (Tab Hunter) is from a cattle-ranching family, and he's decided to change the honeymoon to Hawaii since there are some prize bulls there he's interested in seeing and the new couple can kill two birds with one stone to mix metaphors. But Jessica's dad shows up, and suddenly she wants to see the world with him. And Roger is pissed that Jessica and her dad can speak good French. Additionally, stepdad thinks he's about to lose his wife to her previous husband just because that previous husband is just so darn charming.
The Pleasure of His Company was based on a Broadway play, and maybe the material works well in front of a live audience on a more intimate stage. For me, the movie doesn't really work, largely because I couldn't help but find Fred Astaire's character to be such a selfish jerk, almost from the minute we see him when he moves himself into stepdad's study as if nobody's going to have a problem with this. I can't fault the acting, which is capable enough, but damn if that script isn't an irritant. The Pleasure of His Company is for me, in short, one of those movies where I couldn't really suspend disbelief.
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