South Pacific

Tonight's lineup on TCM is a night of films dedicated to director Joshua Logan. Once again, I've got one of the movies on the schedule already on my DVR. That film is South Pacific, which kicks off the night at 8:00 PM.

This is based on the popular Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, and I have to admit that I have not seen a stage version of the musical so I don't know how much was changed between the original stage show and this movie. It's 1943 or so in the south Pacific, which of course means the middle of the Pacific theater of World War II. Japan still holds a lot of the islands, although the action is mostly on an island the the US holds. There's a battalion of Seabees, headed by Luther Billis (Ray Walston) on the island. Being flown in to the island is marine Lt. Joseph Cable (John Kerr).

The Seabees are unsurprisingly frustrated, in the sense that there aren't many women around. A lot of them have been decamped to the neighboring island of Bali Hai, which is off limits to enlisted men, at leat unless they're accompanied by an officer, which Lt. Cable just so happens to be. This will give Billis the chance to get to the island. One Polynesian woman does show up on the island a lot, that being "Bloody Mary" Juanita Hall, who's the sort of opportunist businesswoman that Jane Russell's Mamie Stover was, minus the showgirl part. There's also a group of nurses, led by Ens. Nellie Forbush (Mitzi Gaynor), although they're rather off-limits too; no fraternization and all that.

Lt. Cable's real purpose in being parachuted onto the island is because there's another island not too far away that's held by the Japanese. The Americans want to know more about what's going on on that island because of how it controls shipping in the area. The only idea they have is to get someone to go behind enemy lines and radio from there, and Lt. Cable got the job. However, he doesn't know much about the island. The one person who might be able to help him is Emile de Becque (Rossano Brazzi), a Frenchman who moved to Polynesia decades ago because he had a past in France. Since then he wound up owning a plantation. Since he's a civilian, Nellie is able to start up a relationship with him.

Meanwhile, Lt. Cable is able to get over to Bali Hai, where he's introduced to the gorgeous Liat (France Nuyen), who happens to be Bloody Mary's daughter. He immediately falls in love with her, but isn't so certain he wants to marry her, because what will his family back in the States think? Far worse is Nellie's attitude. He finds out that Emile is actually a widower: he married a local Polynesian woman, and had two kids by her, whom he is raising. When Nellie learns he's got two mixed-race children, she's horrified for no particularly good reason, or at least no reason that anyone engaging in presentism would find acceptable. The movie, however (based on a work by Michener) is trying to make the point that this sort of blind prejudice is not particularly a good thing.

In and along the way, we get a whole bunch of songs. The songs themselves are of the Rodgers and Hammerstein sort that have in somce cases become standards, so lovers of musicals will certainly enjoy them. However, the way they're presented in the movie is something that might be a problem for a lot of viewers. All of the musical numbers are tinted much the way that old silent movies had scenes tinted in various colors. This is something that to me came across as stilted and artificial and didn't really work.

On the plus side, the movie was done if not quite on location at least in Hawaii, which isn't the south Pacific but close enough to substitute adequately as well as be physically beautiful, especially in wide-screen. I can only imagine how it would have looked back in 1958 on the big screen. Fans of musicals will probably like South Pacific; non-fans (and I'd include myself here) I think will at least not actively dislike it.

The Keyhole

George Brent was TCM's Star of the Month last month, and one of the movies that they ran is showing up on TCM again, although this time it's as part of a night of movies starring Brent's co-star in tonight's movie, that star being Kay Francis. The movie in question is The Keyhole, which comes up overnight tonight, or in the wee hours of tomorrow, at 3:15 AM.

Kay Francis plays Anne Brooks, née Vallee. As the movie opens up, she's reading a note from a man named Maurice (Monroe Owsley) that is a suicide letter. Anne is married to a wealthy man, so she has her chauffeur drive her over to the apartment where Maurice is staying. It turns out that Maurice and Anne danced together in Europe as one of those Vernon and Irene Castle-like couples who demonstrated new dances in the ballrooms of nightspots where the wealthy gathered. Anne was young and naïve, stupid enough to marry Maurice, and when she learned what a jerk he really was, she left for America leaving Maurice to complete the no-fault divorce proceedings since he was intending to marry another woman. However, Maurice never married that other woman and never got the divorce. Anne married her second husband Schuyler Brooks (Henry Kolker) thinking it was a valid marriage and that she'd never need to tell Schuyler about her past. But it's not a valid marriage, and Maurice is blackmailing Anne over it because she's got money, or at least assets that theoretically can be converted to money although Schuyler is bound to start noticing at some point.

Schuyler has kinda-sorta noticed in that Anne comes home at odd hours, and doesn't seem to wear some of her jewelry any more. But the servants have no idea what's really going on. The one person who does know what's going on is Schuyler's sister Portia (Helen Ware), who is good at discreetly breaking up such unwanted relationships. She learns from Anne that Maurice is not an American citizen. So Anne should take a cruise somehwere to the Carribean, like Havana. Maurice is certain to follow her, and Portia can use her influence to get Maurice's visa cancelled. Voilà: Maurice won't be able to blackmail Anne in the US anymore, and Schuyler need not learn anything about what went on between Anne and Maurice.

However, since Schuyler knows nothing of this, he has some reason to worry that Anne might be up to no good when she suddenly declares that she'd like to go to Havana. So he goes to a detective agency to have one of their discreet, high-class private eyes get on the same boat and see if he can find out who Anne is seeing on the sly. That man is Neil Davis (George Brent), who is accompanied by a second detective, Hank (Allen Jenkins), who will be traveling under the guise of being Neil's valet.

Neil and Anne meet, and the two eventually become friends, although Neil notes that Anne seems to be a more or less perfect wife, never looking for another man and trying to get away from Maurice who, sure enough, has followed Anne on the boat. The things Neil and Anne do together are completely platonic, although eventually Neil finds himself beginning to fall in love with Anne. This presents problems when Schuyler learns the truth from his siter and goes down to Havana himself so that Anne should not find out that her husband has been spying on her.

The Keyhole is an entertaining enough movie, although I have to wonder how much bearing to reality it bears. One plus is that the conflict is set up in a good enough way that it makes Anne's reasoning for why she did the things she did believable. She was on a separate continent in the early 1930s, and expected the divorce was going to go through, so what resaon is there to tell any of this stuff to her second husband? And she's acting mysteriously enough, in part to protect her husband, so he has a logical reason to suspect something is wrong. I do have to say, on the other hand, that the resolution of the film's conflict doesn't quite work for me.

One other fun thing to mention is the subplot. Glenda Farrell is inserted into the movie as Dot, a gold-digger who is clearly looking for a rich guy to fleece. She falls for Hank, not realizing he's not what he's presenting himself as, while Hank is blowing through all the expense money to keep Dot in the lifestyle she's become accustomed to. They both handle their roles well and provide a bit of needed comic relief.

People who want a look at early 1930s values will probably enjoy The Keyhole, as will the fans of the movie's stars, although there are better films out there for all of them.

The supporting player witness

It wasn't uncommon for studios to remake their B movies back in the day. After all, since there wasn't yet television to show the movies again, the B stuff would likely have fallen out of the consciousness of most of the viewing public. So when I saw the plot synopsis for the 1939 movie The Man Who Dared, I was pretty certain -- correctly, as it turns out -- that this was a remake of a really entertaining little movie called The Star Witness. Still, I watched it anyway.

Once again, the backdrop for the movie is corruption in some unnamed medium-sized city, with newspaper headlines being a good way to have plot exposition. But fortunately, the DA has somebody who's willing to testify against the corrupt mayor. The bad news is that the mayor, being corrupt and powerful, is able to figure out who this witness is, and get some of his goons to put a bomb on the guy's car to kill him.

The dead witness lived in one of those middle class residential districts with detached garages and picket fences, and living in the next house over is the Carter family, led by patriarch Matthew (Henry O'Neill). They see the people who placed the car bomb acting furtively, and trying to escape before the bomb goes off. However, one of the bombers is dressed as a policeman, so when the Carters mention what happened to the police, the bad guys already know what happened.

The Carters are a pretty big family, with the parents (Mom being played by Elisabeth Risdon); adult daughter Madge (Jane Russell); three sons including football-playing Bill (Dickie Jones); and their grandfather, Ulysses (Charley Grapewin), who fought in the Spanish-American War. (The original had Grandpa as a Civil War veteran, but by now that would put Grandpa close to 90.) So there are a lot of people to testify. Except that the bad guys start threatening the Carters, and suddenly they clam up, suddenly doubting whether they really saw what they saw. Meanwhile, the poor family are pretty much prisoners in their own home what with the police protection they're getting

And just to drive the point home, the bad guys take Dad someplace where they can beat the crap out of him before bringing him back home, simply because they can and it will encourage the Carters to keep their mouths shut. Grandpa, as the old fart and war veteran, is the one person who doesn't seem to care what happens to him since he's going to be dead soon anyway. But his intransigence only results in little Bill getting kidnapped on the way to a football game. It's up to Grandpa to save him and, by extension, save the whole city from corruption....

The Man Who Dared is a competently made B movie, although it's still decidedly a B movie. I'd also say that it's not quite as good as The Star Witness, in part because it feels a bit more rushed, and in part because The Star Witness has a bit better of a crew: Walter Huston is the DA, Grant Mitchell the father, and William Wellman is the director.

Portrait in Black

A genre that's often fun even if the movies aren't necessarily very good is the potboiler of the 1950s and 1960s. Recently, I had the opportunity to see another of those movies: Portrait in Black.

Lana Turner is the star here, and she plays Sheila Cabot, the second wife of shipping magnate Matthew Cabot (Lloyd Nolan). Matthew is an extremely tough businessman, and that toughness is driving him to an early grave as he seems to need a series of injections from his doctor, Dr. David Rivera (Anthony Quinn). However, Matthew is tough in his personal life as well as his business life; as one example he seems quite ticked that Sheila has decided to get a learner's permit to be able to drive for herself. This, after, would mean she'd no longer be forced to use the chauffeur Cobb (Ray Walston) to go anywhere.

And goodness knows she's got places to go. She's secretly carrying on an affair with Dr. Rivera! Both of them have had the thought that they could hasten Matthew's death through an air-bubble induced embolism, although that would of course be unethical malpractice, and there's a reasonable chance somebody might figure things out since there are signs that Sheila is less than fully honest about where she's taking the car. Cathy (Sandra Dee), Matthew's adult daughter from his first marriage, notices that Sheila often goes "shopping" but comes home having bought nothing.

Of course, Cathy's relationship with her dad isn't much better. Cathy's boyfriend is Blake Richards (John Saxon), who runs one of the tugboat concessions in the San Francisco harbor. But, thanks in part to Dad, as well as Dad's second-in-commmand Howard Mason (Richard Basehart), Blake's dad was driven out of business, giving Blake good reason to hate Mr. Cabot. Worse, Mr. Cabot and Mason screw Blake over in awarding the new contract to deal with the Cabot Line.

And then Matthew dies suddenly, although it's not because of any untoward doings on anybody's part. However, a few days letter Sheila receives an hand-printed letter with no return address but a postmark from Carmel congratulating her on doing away with her husband! Sheila and David are convinced that somebody knows about their affair and is going to try to blackmail them. Suspicion eventually falls on Howard Mason's shoulders, and Dr. Rivera comes up with a ridiculous plan to bump off Howard in a shooting that could easily be blamed on a disgruntled longshoreman since there a labor dispute brewing. Except that the killing doesn't quite go to plan. Oh, Howard gets killed all right, but it takes two attempts and then Cathy starts trying to put two and two together....

Portrait in Black got scathing reviews at the time of its release in 1960, and it's not hard to see why. However, 65-plus years on, it's easier to sit back and have fun at how delightfully overwrought and bad this one is. It goes from one ridiculously over-the-top scene to the next, leading up the a climax where you know Anthony Quinn's character is going to get it if only because the Production Code was still in effect and demanded it. But the movie generally swims in a sea of hatred that's brewing just under the surface, with all the characters delivering bad dialogue.

Portrait in Black is definitely recommended, but not for the reasons the filmmakers at the time would have wanted you to see it.

Mike's Murder

I've mentioned on several occasions how there are quite a few 1980s movies that I had heard about growing up, but didn't get the chance to see when they came out because of my being too young. And then there are movies I never even heard about because they didn't get much of a release. A good example from that latter category is Mike's Murder. Since the synopsis sounded interesting, I recorded it when it showed up on TCM and once again eventually got around to watching it and doing this post on the movie.

Debra Winger is the star here, although she clearly doesn't play Mike. Instead, she's Betty Parrish, a bank teller in Los Angeles who likes to play tennis, taking lessons from Mike (Mark Keyloun). They're also flirtatious, with some embraces that lead to the two of them going up to Betty's apartment and making sweet, sweet love.

On another night some time later, Mike meets up at a lower-class hash joint with his friend Pete (Darrell Larson). This scene is filmed in a way that gives one the distinct impression that something untoward is going on. That impression turns out to be right, as when Mike and Pete leave the place, they're intercepted by a couple of guys who are clearly higher up in the world of 1980s drug distributon, and that Mike and Pete shouldn't be trying to horn in on other people's territory. Worse, they say they know where Mike lives, forcing him to seek refuge with Sam (Robert Crosson), a photographer he knows.

Not long after that, Betty is driving along when whom should she meet but Mike! He wants to get in the car and have Betty drive him somewhere. It's clear again from his demeanor that something's wrong. We the viewers already know this, but Betty picks up on it too, with Mike finally explaining what's going on before having Betty drop him off at the driveway of one of those Sunset Blvd. style mansions. Not that Mike is moving in with Norma Desmond or getting the swimming pool he always wanted, the dope.

Mike and Betty play phone tag while Mike lays low. When he finally thinks the heat is off, he and Pete start getting involved with drug deals again. But Pete is stupid enough to try to skim some of other people's drugs off the top, and surely the bigwigs are going to discover this. They do, and kill Mike for the trouble. Of course, with a title like Mike's Murder, you knew this was going to happen.

Betty gets the phone call that Mike was killed, and she's distraught. She starts poking around herself, even showing up when the crime scene technicians are going through the murder, with blood still on the walls and all that. (This seems like a plot hole, since you'd think there would be police tape and that Betty wouldn't have learned of the murder until after the detectives got done with the crime scene.) Betty goes to the house where she dropped Mike off, finding out that it's owned by a gay sugar daddy Philip (Paul Winfield) who let Mike stay there basically in exchange for favors, although Mike was only at most gay for pay. She also begins to learn what a nasty character Pete is, although it's not as though he's got any of the power in the drug world.

Having seen Mike's Murder, I can see why it's one of those movies that I'd never heard of. Apparently it was butchered by the studio before release, changing the story structure significantly. That having been said, it's really not that bad of a movie despite some of the plot holes. It's slow going for the first two thirds of the movie, but the finale is pretty darn suspenseful. If you're willing to put up with that sort of structure, Mike's Murder is definitely worth a watch.

The Hanging Tree

I didn't expect to do reviews of a couple of movies directed by Delmer Daves in rapid succession, but I'm far enough ahead in my scheduling of reviews that I don't get to see everything that's coming up and is on my DVR until after I've already scheduled other stuff. That, and I don't quite pay as close attention to who directs the movies that I post about, more the genres and stars. With that in mind, the Delmer Daves movie in question is The Hanging Tree, which is getting that TCM airing tomorrow, April 18, at 6:00 PM.

It's the Montana Territory in 1873, and coming into town, or not so much a town as the few buildings that serve a mining camp in gold rush country, is doctor Joseph Frail (Gary Cooper). He comes across a small cabin on a hill overlooking the buidlings and the river that the prospectors are panning, and makes a deal with the man who lives there to buy the place since it's for sale. Meanwhile, down at the river, a young man named Rune (Ben Piazza) tries to pilfer some of the gold dust from the sluice-box. He's spotted by Frenchy (Karl Malden), who tries to shoot at Rune and gets a posse of miners to go after Rune, although nobody gets a clear enough view of Rune's face to be able to identify him.

Rune, for his part gets away, but only as far as Dr. Frail's cabin. Frail extracts the bullet, which he knows is incriminating evidence although he throws it away without telling Rune. Rune can't pay for the medical services, so Frail blackmails Rune and make him serve as Frail's manservant. Unsurprisingly, Rune chafes at this, but it's basically this or the titular hanging tree since gold pilfering is seen as a capital offense around here. Frail and Rune go into town, where a bit of Frail's back-story is learned in a poker game where he wins a gold claim. Apparently, his wife and brother back east had an affair and killed themselves, so Frail burned down the house and headed west. But it shows his violent nature and gives him a reason to be a bit secretive.

Meanwhile, there's a stagecoach coming, except that it's intercepted, robbed, and the horses set free so that the coach goes careening off by itself and down a steep embankment, leaving only one possibled survivor. That survivor, the Swiss immigrant Elizabeth (Maria Schell), is found barely alive, and is taken eventually to Frail's cabin to recover. She's got serious burns and is temporarily blinded from exposure and the burns, although she does regain her vision. Elizabeth loves Frail although he doesn't reciprocate, while Frenchy has already made advances toward Elizabeth that pissed Frail off.

Frenchy and Elizabeth both want to make their own way in the world, and the best way to do so is to buy into that gold claim that Frail won in the poker game, bringing Rune along because they need more than one man to work it. They do eventually find gold, and this leeds to a drunken celebration that sets up the final conflict of the movie which also involves "Doctor" Grubb (George C. Scott). Grubb claims to be a doctor, but he's one of those phony preachers who uses the power of the Bible to treat people and tell their fortunes. He didn't like a real doctor showing up, and this is his chance to get rid of Frail once and for all.

The Hanging Tree is another of those competently made westerns that tells a reasonably good story and tells it well, although it doesn't feel like it's breaking any new ground. It's helped by a higher budget that enabled having a bunch of good actors, and a lot of location shooting. There's nothing terribly new here, but there definitely is a good deal of entertainment to be had.

Better than only being inhuman

There was a movie I saw many years ago that involved a particular plot point and, if memory served, starred Jane Wyatt. Not too long ago, the movie We're Only Human showed up on TCM, and the plot synopsis and presence of Jane Wyatt made it sound familiar. Sure enough, I had seen it an age ago and never blogged about it. So now that I've watched it again and it's fresh in my mind, I can give you a post on it.

Jane Wyatt plays lady reporter Sally Rogers, who would not go on to work on the Alan Brady Show, but that's another story. Rogers shows up outside a joint where policeman Pete McCaffrey (Preston Foster) is casing the joint across the street. A hearse shows up and carries up a wicker body bag, but McCaffrey knows this is a ruse, so when they come back out, he confronts them, finding out that Lefty Berger is in the not-a-coffin. Burger is a wanted gangster, so McCaffrey thinks he's done a great job. Sally is naïve, so she thinks Pete has done a great job, too, writing a glowing story about what she saw and even falling in love with Pete.

However, Pete's boss is ticked off, because the rest of the gang is going to be spooked, and the police department was doing a bigger investigation that was hopefully going to bring down the whole gang. Worse, Pete is the sort of police detective who insists on doing things his own way, because he just knows the rules as they currently stand aren't always right and need to be broken. Worse for him, however, is when he is given the assignment to take Lefty up to prison on the train, Lefty escapes! That, and Lefty starts taunting McCaffrey about his inability to bring Lefty back to justice.

Things get even worse for McCaffrey when his regular detective partner and housemate, Det. Walsh (James Gleason), radios for backup outside a bank. A subplot involves the fact that McCaffrey lives with Walsh and his wife (Jane Darwell), and Mrs. Walsh keeps trying to see that McCaffrey gets a suitable wife. Anyhow, when McCaffrey winds up at the bank, he and Walsh go in to try to catch the gangsters who go in, only for Walsh to be fatally shot. It's getting harder and harder to find Lefty.

Meanwhile, there's a lawyer inside Lefty's organization, Martin (Arthur Hohl), who is terribly displeased with the fact that Lefty has been escaped, the reasoning being that Lefty has to know somebody tipped off the police to the fact he was going to be in that coffin escorted out by the fake funeral workers. Martin not illogically expects that Berger will conclude it was he who fed information to the cops, and will want revenge. Sure enough, Martin gets shot in a drive-by shooting. But then, and this is the plot point I remember because of how unbelievably stupid it was, Sally is with McCaffrey at the shooting and, in getting the story, prints the address of a couple of eyewitnesses along with their picture.

So, of course, the eyewitnesses get harassed by Berger's men, and McCaffrey seems to be back to square one with Berger arrogantly taunting him. But, since this is a Code-era movie, you know that Berger is going to be caught, and that the cop and reporter are going to live happily ever after, more or less.

The big problem with We're Only Human is that the plot has the main characters be inordinately stupid, climaxing in that scene where Sally interviews the eyewitnesses. Indeed, none of this bears much resemblance to reality. To be fair, however, the movie was only intended to be a B movie, and another of those films where probably nobody expected viewers 90 years later to be watching and giving their critique. So sit back and watch just to see where all the faults are. And thankfully, it'll all be over fairly quickly.

Lovely views of Italy

A movie that I'd seen show up on TCM several times in the past but had never watched was The Battle of the Villa Fiorita. So as with a bunch of other movies, the last time it showed up on TCM, I decided I'd record it in order to be able to watch it and finally get it off my list of movies I hadn't seen before.

Maureen O'Hara stars as Moira, an upper-class British woman married to Darrell (Richard Todd) and with two youngish children Debbie and Michael who can afford to go to boarding school and even have a horse! But life for Moira is boring since Darrell isn't the most exciting person. So when the two go to a concert and Moira is introduced to to pianist Lorenzo (Rossanno Brazzi), she immediately falls for him and the two start an affair that results in Darrell basically kicking Moira out of the house and sending her to live with Lorenzo at his palatial estate near Lake Garda in northern Italy.

The two kids get back from school and find out that Mom has left them, and they're not very happy about it. So, like any good kids, the decide that they'd like to see Mom and convince her to come back home. Of course, there's the difficulty of just getting there, since this is the mid-1960s and they're young enough that independent international travel is a big deal, never mind the expense that results in them selling Debbie's horse which becomes a plot point later in the story.

But, the two kids are able to run away from home and somehow Dad never really seems to worry where they are since the trip is an overnight one. But in any case, the two kids are able to find the Villa Fiorita and see their mother again. Mom and her paramour put the kids up since it's not as if they can do anything else, at least not until they can contact Darrell who might be able to come and get the kids. In the meantime, the two British kids get to meet Lorenzo's daughter Donna (a young Olivia Hussey), and the kids all become friends of a sort.

Meanwhile, the kids have a plan to bring Debbie and Michael's parents back together, which basically involves going on a hunger strike, or at least not eating this newfangled Italian food that's totally alien to the two British kids. Debbie is too young to realize that this isn't a complete hunger strike in that the kids are supposed to be sneaking food in from elsewhere, and rather stupidly gets pissed when she catches Michael and Donna eating. Oh, and kissing, too. Debbie does get a local priest involved in things, though, even though the family is Protestant (a bit humorous, I found, considering Maureen O'Hara was fairly prominently Irish).

Things continue to escalate until Michael and Donna decide to run off and get in a small sailboat on Lake Garda just as a storm is about to come up. Michael may have learned the basics of sailing, but he's not that good a sailor.

For some reason, I went into The Battle of the Villa Fiorita expecting something like one of those light comedies of the 1930s where the kids of a widow(er) or divorced parent find another person who would make just the right partner for their parent, and work to bring the two leads together in the final reel. The only difference being that in this case the two right partners are supposed to be the original mother and father. However, The Battle of the Villa Fiorita is a straight-up drama, with some melodramatic elements in it. That drama doesn't really work for me, and the kids aren't all that appealing. Italy is lovely, however, even though the print TCM ran doesn't do it justice.

But maybe The Battle of the Villa Fiorita will work better for some of you than it did for me.

King and Country

Another of the people who was honored in the 2025 edition of Summer Under the Stars is British actor Tom Courtenay. A couple of British movies that I hadn't seen before got airings, giving me a good chance to record some new-to-me stuff. One of those movies is King and Country.

The movie opens with Courtenay, as Pvt. Arthur Hamp, lying on a bed playing his harmonica, with a man just outside the room. The scene switches to reveal all of this is taking place in one of the World War I trenches, which are a profoundly brutal and uncomfortable place to be stuck: there's no place for the water to drain, and there are rats and lice everywhere. Then we see a Captain Hargreaves (Dirk Bogarde) talking to another officer about Hamp. Apparently he's on trial for his life, and at the court-martial it's going to be Hargreaves defending him.

Hargreaves is in these trenches in order to meet Hamp and talk to him, in the hopes of getting evidence to mitigate the sentence if it's not possible to get Hamp declared not guilty. This is also an excellent chance to provide some exposition and the back story to Hamp's character. Before enlisting for the war, he didn't have much of a home life, either growing up, or then once he got married. His wife having left him, that might be part of the reason Hamp enlisted. But all of the men Hamp first met at the same time he enlisted and whom fhe first served with are all long since killed in action in the war.

So maybe that's why Hamp just got up one day and started walking, possibly with the hope of getting back to London to see his mother. But it's also fairly obvious to anybody higher up that you can't just having the enlisted men doing this willy-nilly of their own volition. That's no way to run an army, especially not during a time of war. The higher brass understandably see this as desertion, and the penalty for desertion has to be death in order to discourage everybody else from trying to pursue the same course Hamp is stands accused of having done.

Hargreaves is defending Hamp, but a lot of the other enlisted men rather cynically believe that the point of a man like Hargreaves is less to give Hamp the best defense possible, but more to make everything look like it's all been done legitimately and on the up-and-up, even though in their minds the verdict and sentence have already been decided.

Eventually the court-martial itself begins, and it's clear that Hargreaves is going to go for a defense of shell shock. But the doctor, Capt. O'Sullivan (Leo McKern), does his best to dispute that, while there's a question of whether Pvt. Hamp even cares any more whether he lives or dies. The trial leads to the inevitable verdict....

King and Country is based on a novel turned into a stage play and looks a lot like it's based on a play. To be fair, however, it's not like the material needs to be opened up beyond the confines of a stage play. One thing director Joseph Losey does, however, is to use scene transitions that are photographs of the actual carnage from the Great War. This is very effective. But what is even more effective is the outstanding acting performances. This is some of Courtenay's best work, up there with The Dresser.

I'm glad I saw this one, even as brutal as it is. If you get the chance to see it, make it a point to do so.

The Straight Story

Director David Lynch died last year, and TCM eventually got around to doing a tribute him with a handful of his films. One that I hadn't seen before was The Straight Story, so I recorded it with a view to watching it eventually. Having finally seen it, I can now do the review for you and put it up here.

The Straight Story is based on a real story, although I'm not quite certain how much the real story was changed for the movie. If you're old enough you might remember the real story making the news, since it's one of those human interest stories that would have been ripe for turning into a movie. In Laurens, Iowa, a town in the northwest part of the state, Alvin Straight (Richard Farnsworth) lives with his adult daughter Rose (Sissy Spacek), who seems to have some sort of intellectual disability: she talks a bit strangely, and mentions later in the movie that she lost custody of her children because she was declared unfit. Alvin is getting up in years and has diabetes and poor eyesight, to the point that his doctor wants him to change his lifestyle or else he'll have to use a walker after he falls and can't get up.

One day, the phone rings. Apparently, Alvin has a brother Lyle (Harry Dean Stanton, who only gets one scene at the end of the movie), who lives several hundred miles away in the town of Mount Zion, Wisconsin. Alvin and Lyle haven't spoken to each other in years, for reasons that aren't quite fully explained. But with Lyle possibly dying, Alvin feels that he needs to see Lyle for what might possibly be the last time. There's a catch, however. Alvin doesn't have a driver's license due to his medical issues. Rose doesn't have one either, most likely due to those intellectual issues. And with the two of them living on disability, it's not like they have much money to get a bus ticket. (If you think about it, they do considering what Alvin is able to spend money on later in the movie, but at the same time getting a bus direct from Laurens to Mount Zion is thoroughly unlikely.)

What Alvin does have, however, is a riding lawn mower. So he decides that the only thing he can do is to get on that mower and start heading for Mount Zion, even though the mower probably isn't street legal. Alvin sets out on the sort of road trip reminiscent of a movie like Harry and Tonto, in which he's going to meet interesting people along with suffering all sorts of setbacks as he tries to get to Wisconsin to see his brother. Now, since we know that there's an actor playing his brother, we know that the brother survived the stroke (in fact, Lyle was several years older than Alvin but outlived Alvin) and that the two will meet in the end.

The Straight Story is one of those movies where there's not exactly a whole lot of plot to discuss beyond a man's desire to get from point A to point B. It's also one of the more easily accessible movies from David Lynch. And thanks to the performance of Richard Farnsworth, it's definitely worth the watch.

I bambini ci guardano

I've mentioned on several occasions over the past few years how I keeping winding up with a ton of foreign films that are just about to expire from the YouTube TV DVR that I need to watch before they expire. The latest example of that was The Children Are Watching Us.

Now, the first interesting thing is that this movie was made in Italy in 1943 which, as you may know, was the height of World War II. But there aren't any references to the war, which may be because it's based on a book that was released in the 1920s, never mind the political situation that might have prevented filmmakers from setting a story like this against the backdrop of the war.

Pricò is a boy of about 5 living in a fashionable part of a fashionable city, with a father rich enough that they have a maid as well as living in a co-op in a building where the big issue is the elevator being too subject to needing repairs. Pricò and his mother go to the park one afternoon and watch a puppet show, although the trip is really an excuse for Mom (Isa Pola) to go see her lover Roberto, not realizing that Pricò sees what's going on. Mom has reached the point where she can't take it any more, so that night she packs her bags to run off with Roberto.

Dad, now a single father, doesn't know what to do, so he sends Pricò off to live with a series of relatives. None of them have much of an idea what to do with such a mischievous little boy, or don't really have the space to put him up for an extended period of time. In any case, Mom returns home after a short period of time claiming that she's gotten Roberto out of her system for good, and would like to return and try to start anew. You wonder how the family is going to be able to put itself back together, but it's not as if there's a whole lot Dad or the boy can do, so Mom gets to live with them again. Besides, it might not be bad to have a boy's mom living with him.

It's the summer, so Dad also decides that a good thing to do would be to get Mom out of the city and to one of those resorts that also populated Hollywood films of the era. The family can spend some quality time together, and Roberto won't be around. And the vacation seems to go well. Except that Dad, being a working man, eventually has to go back to his office job in the city. He tells Mom to stay at the resort for a few more days with Pricò as it will be good for the boy. But wouldn't you know it, Roberto shows up at the resort. Apparently there weren't that many places people in that Italian social class could go back in those days. Sure enough, Mom and Roberto start up their relationship again, although this time the results are much worse.

The Children Are Watching Us was directed by Vittorio De Sica, who would go on after the war to make several famous neo-realist movies. The Children Are Watching Us shows some foreshadowing of that style, but as a whole the movie is much closer to the sort of conventional Hollywood movie you might see from that era. I mean that, however, in a good way, as The Children Are Watching Us is very well made and the sort of foreign film that would be more easily accessible to people who think of foreign films from that era as the sort of arthouse stuff that was disproportionately what wound up in America. It's absolutely worth watching if you get the chance.

Twilight glory

Christopher Plummer was honored last year in TCM's Summer Under the Stars, with several of his pictures that I hadn't seen before. One of those was Stage Struck, which came early in Plummer's career.

Plummer isn't really the star here; that honor goes to Susan Strasberg, also early in her career. She plays Eva Lovelace, a young woman originally from Vermont who goes to New York City because she just knows she can make it on the stage. Indeed, she basically shows up unannounced at the office of theatrical producer Lewis Easton (Henry Fonda). Why not start out at the top, after all? Also waiting to see Easton are an actor on the glide path to the end of his career, Robert Hedges (Herbert Marshall), and an up-and-coming playwright, Joe Sheridan (Christopher Plummer). Nice people to meet if you're trying to make it on Broadway, I suppose.

Eva is so obnoxiously pushy that Easton, just to get her out of his hair, has Joe tell her to come for an audition for a suppoting role in Joe's new play where an aging diva of an actress is starring. Eva has her own ideas about how the role should be played which conflct with what the producer and playwright want, so of course the audition goes badly. Eva's pushiness causes even more problems when she runs into Joe outside the premiere of that new play and gets him to invite her to the afterparty at Easton's swanky apartment. She has too much to drink and, when she's stonking drunk, starts doing impromptu Shakespeare readings in front of the embarrassed guests!

Worse, she passes out drunk in the guest room and tells Lewis she loves him. Now, if all of this sounds familiar, that's because it's a remake of Morning Glory from 25 years earlier, in which Katharine Hepburn played the aspiring young actress. So you may know where the story is going. Eva has to suffer for her art before triumphing on the stage. Lewis is of two minds about her as she's really not right for such an older man. So he has his secretaries lie to her about his being out of town, and tries to get Joe to send her away from New York. But events conspire to bring us to the final act where Eva gets the leading role and makes a success of it.

I'm not the biggest fan of Katharine Hepburn, so Morning Glory isn't exactly a favorite of mine. Amazingly, Susan Strasberg takes the role and runs with it in what feels like a desperate attempt to be even more obnoxious than Katharine Hepburn ever was. Stage Struck feels artificial, like somebody who knows nothing about the Broadway stage writing about it, and Strasberg is so unlikeable here that it makes the rest of the movie hard to watch. Everybody else tries and is professional in their roles, so I suppose it's a good thing that this didn't sink Christopher Plummer. The movie does have some nice period photography, in color, of the way Broadway was in the late 1950s, but that's about the only thing good about this movie.

The Magic Box

I've mentioned having a glut of foreign films to get through on my DVR before they expire, as well as, I think, a glut of westerns. I also happen to have quite a few British movies on my DVR and again I'm not so certain I'm going to wind up watching all of them before YouTube TV expires them. Another of those British movies is The Magic Box.

The film opens by identifying several people who are part of the invention of cinema in one way or another, before winding up on the name William Friese-Greene (played by Robert Donat). Now, since the movie gives his dates of birth and death, we know he's going to die, although that's not really the point of the movie. In London, someone shows up looking for William's second wife Edith (Margaret Johnston). There's a conference of film distributors in London which William is hoping to attend, although he's not a distributor and has been largely forgotten in the film world.

In the first flashback, we learn why William is little known. William had always been interested in photography, and he thought it would be great if pictures could be in the same living color as real life is. To that end he's become one of those tinkerers that are trying to come up with a great invention without the benefit of much formal training. William is living with Edith and their four sons in a rented house in Brighton, always trying to stay one step ahead of his creditors. Needless to say, they're not always successful. Ultimately, three of the sons decide they're going to enlist in the military even though they're not really old enough to do so, just to help out the father they love.

Meanwhile, back at the conference, William is listening to a bunch of people arguing over whether importing non-British movies is a good thing, or whether they're taking up too much of the market. At this point, William starts thinking about how he got involved in the film industry, although it wasn't really an industry at this point since nobody had even really inveted moving pictures, William being one of the early pioneers.

In the late 1870s, William was an apprentice to another photographer, Maurice Guttenberg, who ran a photography studio in a time when this was the only way to get pictures in a time-consuming and expensive process. William has ideas of his own, but he's not the boss. One of the customers is Helena (Maria Schell), whom William winds up marrying, remaining married until her death. They're successful in business, at least until William starts thinking about making pictures move, which is the first of the things that leads him to spending money and neglecting his business.

Real life tells us that William Friese-Greene did in fact die at that film conference after being asked to speak and suffering a massive heart attack after concluding his speech, so that portion of the movie is apparently accurate. He also apparently did spend all his wealth trying to come up with those inventions, dying in poverty. Unsurprisingly, Donat's portray is a very good acting performance. As for the film as a whole, it wasn't a big hit at the time, and I think having watched it, it feels a bit old-fashioned in the sense of it being rather too heroic in a movie biography sense. The movie winds up feeling a bit sterile as a result. That's a bit of a shame thanks to what should be interesting subject material and that acting performance from Donat.

Run of the Arrow

In addition to foreign films, I feel like I've got a somewhat disproportionate number of westerns sitting on my DVR waiting for me to watch and review them before they expire. One of those movies that I hadn't heard of before the last time it showed up on TCM was Run of the Arrow.

The movie opens with something that's a looming theme in quite a few Hollywood westerns, the US Civil War. Specifically, the movie informs us it's the last day of the war. Virginian O'Meara (Rod Steiger) shoots Union Army lieutenant Driscoll (Ralph Meeker), although Driscoll survives. O'Meara takes Driscoll to where General Lee is, although he learns that Lee is in the process of surrendering, thereby ending the war. O'Meara had been a farmer on one of those hardscrabble farms, so on returning home to his mother, there's not much of a life for such a defeated Confederate soldier to return home to. There's that frontier out west, of course, where a man can start life fresh, so O'Meara decides he's going to do just that.

Some time later, in a part of the west that still has more natives than Americans, O'Meara meets one of the natives, an elderly and dying Sioux, Walking Coyote (Jay C. Flippen, yes, playing a native American). The two, however, meet a band from a different sub-tribe of the Sioux, who threaten to kill the two men. Walking Coyote, being Sioux, knows the "Run of the Arrow", which involves running a gauntlet of men trying to shoot arrows at you. If you survive the gauntlet, you're basically free, or some such.

O'Meara survives and winds up with yet another sub-tribe of the Sioux, the Lakota, headed by Blue Buffalo (Charles Bronson). O'Meara falls in love with one of the women who tends to the wounds, and decides he wants to become a member of the tribe, largely because the Lakota also understand that the Americans are moving west and destroying another people's way of life much the same way that O'Meara thinks the northerners destroyed the southern way of life in the recently ended civil war.

Soon enough, the Americans do come, in the form of Capt. Clark (Brian Keith) and his cavalry who have been given the task of finding a suitable location to build their new fort. The Sioux have negotiated that it be built on land that's going to interfere less with their traditional hunting grounds, and give O'Meara the job of playing scout to the cavalry since he's got such a good command of English. And wouldn't you know it, but serving under Capt. Clark is... Lt. Driscoll!

O'Meara sees all of this as his chance to get back at the Americans for what they did to Virginia, while there are also a lot of US Army men who don't care for the Indians. As is usually the case in these movies, the treaty gets violated, and there's a decisive battle between the US Army and the Indians.

Run of the Arrow was made at RKO near the end of the studio's existence, so it has the feel of a movie that doesn't really have the budget it should have had. (At least the print TCM ran is much better looking than the one they run for Glory which is from a similar point in RKO's death throes.) The movie has an interesting premise, although it feels to me like it suffers from quite a bit of implausibility. Then again, it was directed by Sam Fuller, so one should expect it to rebel against the traditional constraints of Hollywood's view of what America should become: the idea of O'Meara's redemption feels like it's a metaphor for the post-Red Scare era of the 1950s.

Ultimately, while I find Run of the Arrow a bit uneven, I think it's got more pluses than minuses.

Sing and Like It

Some time back TCM ran a morning with several of the films of 1930s comic actress Pert Kelton. Another one that I hadn't heard of was Sing and Like It. Since the synopsis sounded interesting enough, I as always decided to record it so I could eventually watch it and put up this post on the movie.

ZaSu Pitts plays Annie Snodgrass, a housewife married to Oswald (John Qualen, credited including his middle initial although it's unmistakeably his voice) who has a thing for amateur theater. And I definitely mean amateur, as these people are definitely not ready for the big time. Annie sings one of those sappy songs of the era about being thankful for your mother, and it's not just the insipid lyrics, but Annie's lousy vocal stylings that make the song truly a disaster.

However, passing by the theater where they're practicing, and hearing the voice, is Fenny Sylvester (Nat Pendleton). He's a gangster, meaning that he's got a fair amount of money, along with a lack of scruples about threatening violence to get his way. He hears the song, and for whatever odd reason -- the movie is a comedy, after all -- decides that he loves this song. Never mind that everybody around him like his second-in-command Toots McGuire (Ned Sparks) thinks Annie is terrible. Fenny is the boss, so he gets his way. And having heard Annie, he wants to do his good duty by putting her in a show.

Nothing less than the best will do for Fenny, and he's able to use those threats to get people like theater producer Frink (Edward Everett Horton) to help mount the stage show, despite Frink's obvious horror at hearing Annie's voice. There's also Fenny's girlfriend Ruby (that's Pert Kelton), who gets tasked with making Annie come across as a higher-class stage lady. But there's not all that much they can do to make this nice but thoroughly untalented woman a success.

So it's decided that the thing to do to give the show some oomph is to stage a publicity campaign involving Annie going missing, except that she won't really go missing because everybody who matters will know exactly where she is until she shows up in time for the big premiere. The only thing is, Annie gets kidnapped for real.

Sing and Like It was, I think, not conceived as anything more than a B movie. But considering the cast of very good supporting actors, they all take the material and run with it for all it's worth, making it surprisingly funny. Then again, considering the cast, it shouldn't be surprising that they're all adept at this sort of comedy. They'd all played the sorts of roles they've got here enough.

Tragic Russ Columbo

One of the shorts that I had on my DVR waiting for me to post on a day when I had another post for something else to write up. This time, the short is musical two-reeler called That Goes Double.

The short opens up at an office where a young man and woman are both big fans of a radio singer named Russ Columbo, who is in the running to become the King of Radioland. There's an older-looking bookkeper in the office, however, who hates Columbo, because he looks a lot like Columbo and gets stopped by people and asked about it. This character is of course also played by Russ Columbo, who was about 25 at the time the short was made although the bookkeeper looks older.

For some reason this bookkeeper goes to the event where the King of Radioland is going to be named, which you don't think he'd do considering he doesn't like Columbo. There's enough of a crowd that the real Columbo can't make it through to get to the stage, at which point one of the hosts recognizes the lookalike bookeeper and brings him up on stage, thinking it's the real Columbo. The real Columbo shows up and proves who he is by singing one of his songs.

But the real Columbo realizes that having a lookalike can prove useful. There are a lot of PR appearances a celebrity has to make, but doesn't necessarily want to. The real Russ offers to triple the lookalike's salary in exchange for doing some of those appearances. Of course, there's bound to be an issue that the lookalike isn't much of a singer.

Soon enough, a socialite named Gloria, who is an admirer of Russ', wants to host a party with Russ singing one of his songs. This second half of the short is an excuse for a couple of talent agents to bring in various novelty acts, such as ukulele player Roy Smeck, or a trio of dancing roller skaters. The lookalike shows up on the night of the party, but the ruse is found out. There's more to the ruse than meets the eye, however....

That Goes Double is the sort of short that shows a good variety of what Hollywood studios were putting into their musical shorts to try to bring audiences into the theaters. At this time, of course, there was no television to showcase these talents, who are interesting albeit of varying talent levels. Some people may like Columbo's vocal stylings more than other people do.

Warner Bros. was presumably trying to groom Columbo for stardom as an actor, the way crooners at various studios started acting such as Bing Crosby over at Paramount or Dick Powell in a movie like 42nd. Street the same year as this one. Sadly, a freak accident on set a year later saw Columbo get shot by a prop gun but the projectile entered his head with enough force to kill him instantly, or at least that's how the story goes.

Briefs for April 7-9, 2026

TCM likes to advertise the wine club that puports to pair various wines with classic movies, in part because it's become a thing for famous people to lend their name to a winery, I'm guessing for tax purposes. On a similar vein, Leonard Maltin and his daughter Jessie have co-written a book Family Movie Night Menus which is the subject of tonight's TCM lineup. It's only a one night thing, and not every Tuesday in April as there are already spotlights on Texas and on Roger Corman. Of tonight's movies, I happen to have Meet Me in St. Louis (10:15 PM) and Seven Brides for Seven Brothers on my DVR, but of course I've already blogged about both of them.

A lesser-seen movie that's on my DVR and I've already blogged about, is Blonde Ice, which if memory serves was part of a Noir Alley presentation. It's getting another airing tomorrow, April 8, at 10:45 AM on TCM, and since it's one of those more obscure movies that doesn't show up so often, it's definitely worth mentioning compared to some other movies.

As for FXM, there's not much that I haven't seen before. But the Tyrone Power version of Nightmare Alley is on the schedule tomorrow, April 8, at 6:00 AM. Carmen Jones, meanwhile, will be on FXM at 8:50 AM on April 9.

Today is James Garner's birthday, as I mentioned yesterday in my post on How Sweet It Is!. Tomorrow marks the birth anniversary of Mary Pickford, not that TCM is honoring it. It's also the birth anniversary of songwriter E.Y. "Yip" Harburg, who wrote a whole bunch of stuff used in MGM movies, notably "Over the Rainbow" in The Wizard of Oz. He also wrote Finian's Rainbow, which is one of the rare movies I gave up on largely because I found it such a phony musical and the characters unappealing. Maybe I'll finally get through it some time, but I don't know.

For some values of sweet

I didn't intend to do posts on two of what I refer to as the 1960s "generation gap" movies in fairly close succession, after last week's post on Don't Make Waves. I also didn't intend to do posts on two Debbie Reynolds movies a few weeks apart, after I Love Melvin. But it turns out there's a movie on my DVR that's showing up on TCM tomorrow, April 7, that relates to both of those films. That movie is How Sweet It Is! at 8:00 AM as part of a birthdy salute to actor James Garner.

After wannabe groovy opening titles and one of those awful 1960s MOR songs, the action shifts to a bedroom in an upper-middle-class suburban house in New Rochelle, NY, where a man and a woman are in bed together making mad passionate love -- or least as mad and passionate as you could get on screen in 1968 -- in the middle of the day. The woman, Jenny Henderson (Debbie Reynolds), is worried about Davey (Donald Losby) returning home from work and catching the two in bed together. Davey does show up, but in a twist it turns out that Davey is Jenny's teenaged son, and the man in bed is Grif Henderson (James Garner), who is Jenny's wife and Davey's father.

Grif is a photojournalist, and the magazine he works for sends him on foreign assignments often enough that he doesn't get to see Jenny so often. Worse is that he doesn't get to see Davey, which worries Mom since she knows Davey needs a father figure. So when Grif goes to have a father/son chat, he learns that Davey is dating Bootsie (Hilary Thompson), the daughter of Grif's boss at the magazine. Bootsie is going to be spending the summer on one of those guided student tours of Europe, and Davey wants to use the money from his job to go over to Europe and follow Bootsie around. Dad kind of likes the idea -- it's a good way to learn about girls -- but Mom isn't so certain.

So what Jenny's Mom does is get Bootsie's mom to put pressure on Bootsie's dad. He, as the editor of the magazine, is planning to send a photographer along to document the trip for the magazine -- American student life on the European grand tour or some such. Perhaps it can be arranged so that Grif is the photographer, and Davey his assistant, so Dad can watch to see that Davey doesn't get into too much hijinks. Jenny, for her part, will rent a house on the Riviera for the family to stay in after the tour.

Except that Jenny is a bit naïve and gets taken in by an obvious con artist (Terry-Thomas in a brief role) and the transatlantic voyage offers no prospects of rekindling the romance. When everybody gets to France, Jenny goes south to the house they've rented for the summer, only to find out that the owner, Philippe Maspere (Maurice Ronet), a prominent lawyer, is living there as his summer house. But since there's no place else for Jenny to go and he's obviously attracted to her, he lets her rent the place for the second half of what she was going to pay the agent.

The standard love triangle hijinks ensue, with Philippe kinda-sorta pursuing Jenny, who for her part seems flattered although she really does love Grif. Grif, meanwhile, is being pursued by the guide Nancy, who is thrilled to have an adult male with her after having to spend so much time with teenagers. One coincidence leads to another, and the movie climaxes with Grif and Jenny getting arrested; Jenny getting bailed out by a bordello owner (she's in a holding pen with the owner's stable of prostitutes); and Grif and Davey showing up at the bordello.

From what I've read, James Garner hated How Sweet It Is!, although he enjoyed the people he worked with on the movie. I can't say I disagree with him. The premise, beyond a middle-aged couple still having a sex drive but mostly unable by circumstance to act upon it, is forced, and the budget doesn't even allow for the sort of establishing shots or location shooting other "Hollywood goes to Europe" movies of the era had. Worse, a lot of the movie feels like it's trying to appeal to a younger crowd but failing badly. The movie also has any number of plot holes. The ocean voyage wouldn't give a husband and wife a cabin together? The teenagers' given ages are also much too young.

If you want to watch another example of Hollywood's difficulty in adjusting to changing social values in the 1960s, How Sweet It Is! fits the bill. But it's not a particuarly good movie.

TCM Star of the Month Apirl 2026: Sophia Loren

Sophia Loren in Two Women (Apr. 6, 9:15 PM)

Now that we're into the first full week of a new month and past the Easter holiday, it's time for some of the traditional programming features to show up again on TCM. Most notably, this means the Star of the Month goes from three nights of George Brent to four nights of Sophia Loren, whose movies will be appearing every Monday night in April in prime time. The salute actually kicks of at 8:00 PM tonight not with a movie, but with an interview she did at the TCM Film Festival a decade or so ago. Tonight includes her Oscar-winning performance in Two Women at 9:15 PM, followed at 11:00 PM by Legend of the Lost, a title that I saw showing up in the on-demand section of one or another of the free streaming services only to discover that it was an aggregator for the paid portion. So I'm recording that one tonight.

Sophia Loren and David Niven in Lady L (Apr. 14, 2:15 AM)

The second week of the salute brings another of Loren's movies that I'd never gotten around to watching before, Lady L, which is a bit of a surprise since I think this is one released in the US by MGM. I'm pretty certain I've seen the trailer show up enough. Anyhow, time to get this one on and then off the ever-growing watch list.

Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni in A Special Day (Apr. 21, 3:30 AM)

The last two Monday nights bring a rather more eclectic line-up of movies, including Man of La Mancha (another one I haven't seen) on April 27, but I'd like to mention the fine performances of A Special Day in the wee hours of April 21, since it's mostly a two-character play with fine performances from Loren and frequent Italian co-star Marcello Mastroianni. Surprisingly, I don't see Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow on the TCM schedule this month.

Warner Bros. B Urban Corruption Drama #23489567826

I've mentioned a lot how I like the Warner Bros. B movies, and this is often the case even when the plots turn out to be implausible. Another good example of this is Strange Alibi. I presume it turns up often enough on TCM, but I don't think I had noticed it until the last time it showed up several months back.

The backdrop is one that's not uncommon for B movies in the pre-World War II era: a big city where there's a crime syndicate, and they've been able to infiltrate various parts of the administration, leaving them free to act with impunity. When somebody does threaten to turn state's witness, that person is immediately shot. The police are quick to find the killer but wouldn't you know it the killer "commits suicide" by hanging.

The police chief, Sprague (Jonathan Hale), brings in a bunch of his detectives to have a long talk about the matter. The chief immediately gets into it with one of the men, Sgt. Joe Geary (a very young Arthur Kennedy), who proceeds to deal with his temporary suspension by getting into a fight with the police chief, which makes the suspension permanent. Wait until Joe's poor fiancée Alice (Joan Perry) finds out.

Except that all of this was a ruse. Sprague knows the syndicate has dirty cops working for it, although he can't figure out who. He wants Geary to figure that out, except that having Geary do it in uniform is going to present a problem for various reasons, hence the nonsense about getting Geary fired. This mission is so super-secret that only Geary and Sprague know about it. Sprague hasn't even bothered to tell anybody like the state Attorney General or governor or anyone in the feds.

So you can probably guess what happens next. Geary goes to an establishment known to be a hangout for syndicate types, run by Katie (Florence Bates), who isn't exactly law-abiding but also has a heart of gold which is going to come into play for the climax. Joe works from there, getting into the good graces of the syndicate by shooting some high-priced liquor bottles from a bar owner who's shorting the syndicate. Geary finds a guy named McKaye who can provide key evidence, only to discover too late that they're being watched. When Geary takes McKaye to Sprague's house (really, they're meeting there despite the code to communicate?), the bad guys follow along and kill Sprague in a way that clearly implicates Geary and only Geary, getting him sent up the river as it were to a nasty prison. The only way Joe is going to be able to clear his name is to find McKaye. After all, nobody else knows that Geary was working with Sprague to weed out corruption.

Geary is eventually able to escape, but has very few places to go. Worse, McKaye is found, but he's found rather dead. Still, Geary has some luck in that the governor is working on weeding out corruption and might just be able to help Geary out....

The whole plot of Strange Alibi feels like a mish-mash of tropes that had all been done before. But this being Warner Bros., they do it well even if the plot as a whole bears little resemblance to reality. They're also helped out by a fine stable of mostly supporting character-type actors. Arthur Kennedy, of course, would go on to much bigger things (and five Oscar nominations), but at this point nobody knew what they had in him. And Strange Alibi is also, like all of the good Warner B movies, breezily fast, clocking in at a sprightly 63 minutes. Definitely another one worth watching the next time it shows up on TCM.

A family friendly movie for Easter

Another of the movies that's on my DVR and getting another airing on TCM soon is the animated Watership Down. You can see it tomorrow, April 5, at 8:00 AM.

The movie opens with an origin story, about how the Sun god, named Frith and voiced by Michael Hordern, created all the animals and plants and how the animals lived harmoniously as herbivores and mostly alike. The rabbits, however do what rabbits do and multiply, eating too much of the grass. This causes Frith to turn a bunch of animals into carnivores who will be more than happy to eat rabbits, although rabbits do get the gifts of speed and cleverness.

Cut to the present day, in a bucolic part of Britain. Fiver (Richard Briers) is a rabbit living in a warren run by a chief (Ralph Richardson) and his deputy Capt. Holly (John Bennett), where everybody lives happil, eating, sleeping, and creating new little bunnies. Except one day Fiver, who is a bit timid by nature, has a vision in which the field suddenly becomes covered with blood. (It's later explained that developers turn the field into a new housing estate, severely disrupting the warren.) Fiver and his brother Hazel (John Hurt) go to the chief with the suggestion that the rabbits are going to need to move somewhere safer, although understandably a lot of the rabbits aren't so certain they agree, thus splitting the warren in two.

Fiver, Hazel, and a handful of other rabbits leave even though the chief and Capt. Holly try to stop them. The smaller group are successful in getting away, although trying to find a new place to start a new warren that's safe isn't going to be easy, since these rabbits have no idea where they're going and little idea of the big bad world that's out there. They have various misadventures in the forest and at a farm where a man breeds rabbits for food, before coming to the conclusion that they have to go someplace like the top of a hill that has a commanding view of the surrounding area in order to be safe.

They get there and live happily ever after, with one small problem. They don't have any doe rabbits. How are they going to procreate and make the new rabbits necessary to keep the warren going? Fortunately, they also save a seagull named Kehaar (Zero Mostel) who has lost his way and is somewhat injured. Kehaar offers to fly around looking for doe rabbits. They eventually learn of another warren called Efrara where the leader, General Woundwort (Harry Andrews) is such a nasty dictator with underlings who keep the regular rabbits in a state of terror that some of them would like to leave if only they could get the courage to do so. Hazel infiltrates the warren, becoming one of Woundwort's camp commandants if you will, in a move that seems like it would have been a strategic blunder. Of course Hazel leads a break to safety, and Woundwort is pissed, going after the escapees.

Watership Down is a surprisingly dark movie for something that sounds on the surface like it's going to have the trappings of a children's book. And since animation is -- and was even more so in the 1970s -- thought of as a medium for children's stories, Watership Down's open look at the violence of death is not what you might expect. Then again, Bambi many years earlier also did so. Unsurprisingly, since Disney was really the only quality animation studio in the 1970s -- compare them to the animation of a movie like Treasure Island that I reviewed not too long ago -- it stands to reason that people are going to compare Watership Down to Disney. It's a comparison that doesn't always come off well, particularly in the case of Kehaar the gull who to me is a rather obnoxious character.

The animation is better than what Hanna-Barbera or Filmways were doing on TV, but not as good as the Disney classics. The story is good, although from what I've read one might get more out of the movie if one is already more familiar with the book, which I never read. A plus however is that this, being a British production, is also rather different from what one would expect from a Hollywood movie. Definitely, Watership Down is one that's worth watching, warts and all.

Certainly not the middle

A movie that I wasn't certain whether or not I'd seen before showed up on TCM some time back, so I recorded it: The Beginning or the End. Eventually I got around to watching it, and as far as I could tell I hadn't seen it before. A search of the blog claims that I certainly hadn't blogged about it anyway, so now that it's coming up again on TCM. it's time to rectify that oversight with this post. That airing is early tomorrow, April 4, at 4:00 AM.

The movie starts off with one of the more unique framing scenes I can think of. A time capsule is being prepared, only to be opened in the year 2446 which would from the point of the movie be 500 years in the future. A spokesman on the film in the time capsule talks about the development of the atomic bomb, and that the movie the people of 2446 would be about to watch is the documentation of that effort, how it ended that war in the distant past, and the hope that the atom could be used for peaceful purposes....

Back in the late 1930s, Matt Cochran (Tom Drake playing one of the fictional characters in the movie) is a graduate student who with some professors is working on the idea of nuclear fission. This of course results in energy being released, along with the realization that the energy could be used to make a bomb. Several of the professors of the day, like Robert Oppenheimer (Hume Cronyn) and Enrico Fermi (Joseph Calleia) feel that President Roosevelt should be informed of this. After all, war was coming to Europe, and it was pretty obvious that if scientists in America could figure all this out, certainly scientists in Nazi Germany would figure it out too.

Research continues on a small scale until December 1941, which is of course when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, sending the Americans into the war. President Roosevelt authorizes a covert spending of some billions of dollars for Oppenheim and the other scientists to figure out a way to weaponize the splitting of the atom, which of course has to be a controlled reaction since, if it can't be stopped during development, it's the places where the research is being done that will get blown up.

The military point man for all this is Maj. Gen. Leslie Groves (Brian Donlevy), with his second in command being Lt. Col. Jeff Nixon (Robert Walker; and again as far as I'm aware another of the fictional characters). Sites are set up in Illinois where Fermi was based; in Oak Ridge, TN; and in out-of-the way Alamagordo, NM. With a war being on, Americans are portrayed as happy to move out to help the government's war effort, although they have no knowledge of what the government is trying to do.

Now, since this is all based on history, we know that that first controlled nuclear bomb is detonated at Trinity in July, 1945. Harry Truman is at the Potsdam Conference, and it's his job to make the decision to actually use the bomb against Japan in Hiroshima and then Nagaski. Cochran is one of the civilians sent out to make certain the US bombers who have been running the mission will know how to deal with this special new kind of bomb.

The Beginning or the End is of course based on real historical events. However, liberties had to be taken with the story for a bunch of reasons. One is of course security; the movie was made only about a year after the end of World War II, and there was still a large amount that was classified and couldn't be revealed. There's also the fact that apparently, real people still alive had veto power over their portrayal in movies at the time. Several of the real scientists, notably Niels Bohr, didn't want to be used, necessitating more changes. The biggest reason, however, was the dramatic one for the perceived benefit of the audience. That's why the love story between Cochran and his wife (Beverly Tyler), as well as a secondary romance between Nixon and his girlfriend (Audrey Totter), are shoehorned into the movie.

It's these sops to the moviegoing public that make the movie one that's not so well remembered today, due to their lessening the dramatic power of the movie. It was only a few years later that Above and Beyond about the Enola Gay was released, with more realistic stuff coming out as the Cold War was winding down and culminating with the movie Oppenheimer a few years back. The Beginning or the End is competently enough made, but it does have the marks of MGM and the Hollywood studio system all over it, both for good and bad.

Strange Western on TCM

TCM's lineup tomorrow (Apr. 3) morning and afternoon is a bunch of mid-1950s widescreen stuff that I think is all from Warner Bros. One of the movies is one that I hadn't blogged about before and was on my DVR from the last time TCM ran it. That movie is Strange Lady in Town, airing at 4:00 PM, so as is my way around here I watched the movie in order to be able to put up this post for the upcoming showing.

After the credits, a title card informs us that the scene is the New Mexico territory in 1880, not far from Santa Fe. A wagon is going over the landscape, only to crash, fortunately near a bunch of ranchers. The lady passenger on the wagon is Julia Garth (Greer Garson) from Boston. She's a doctor in an era when lady doctors were uncommon, and out west even less common. But one of the ranchers has some pains so she treats the guy much to their surprise.

The military adjutant coming to pick her up arrives, but the two get waylaid on the way to what's going to be Julia's new house. Several bandit types ask about the military court of inquiry being held, although the adjutant knows knowing, not having been there. The adjutant in question, Martinez-Martinez, is working for Lt. David Garth (Cameron Mitchell), who happens to be Julia's brother, and one of the reasons Julia is coming out to New Mexico. His is also one of the two main plot strands going through the movie.

The other plot strand includes the doctor currently in town, Dr. O'Brien (Dana Andrews). He's got an adolescent niece Spurs (Lois Smith) who is quite the tomboy, and who has a thing for Lt. Garth even though he isn't right for Spurs. Getting back to Dr. O'Brien, he's one of those old-fashioned people who thinks it's not proper for ladies to be doctors, which is going to be an even bigger problem considering that she knows the latest advances in medicine from back east which are going to show her to be right in a bunch of situations Dr. O'Brien wrong. But at some point along the way Dr. O'Brien is going to fall in love with Julia.

As for Lt. Garth, I mentioned that he's not quite right for Spurs, even though she doesn't get that yet. He likes to gamble and is quick-tempered, which are traits liable to get an officer in trouble. There's also that court of inquiry mentioned in the opening. Lt. Garth tells his sister that the court of inquiry is being held because somebody sold the army a bunch of cattle that turned out not to have been owned by the person doing the selling, which equates to cattle rustling and a serious crime. As you can guess, especially considering a comment when Julia mentions not being able to buy a place for her on an officer's salary, Lt. Garth might know more about the rustling than he's letting on.

Finally, for a movie set in 1880 New Mexico, the studio had to insert a couple of historial tropes: Dr. Garth meets Billy the Kid (Nick Adams) when he and another man come in because of a toothache. Later in the movie, Garth treats Civil War general, and by this time territorial governor, Lew Wallace.

Strange Lady in Town combines a lot of different plot stuff into what is in many ways a pastiche of the Old West. It's a movie that's definitely competently made, although it's also one that's rather old-fashioned, in a way that reminds me of another Garson movie Blossoms in the Dust. It's certainly not the first film I'd think to recommend regarding any of the people in the movie, but it's also one that there's not anything particularly wrong with. It just doesn't do anything new. In the days before TV, this would have been enough, but having been made later, it's easy to see why this one has become little remembered.

Teacher's Pet

Every now and then, it surprises me to come across a studio-era film with big stars that I haven't seen before. Then again, TCM doesn't have the rights to films from studios like Universal and Paramount, so some of the stuff that's A-level but not famous doesn't show up on TCM all that often. A good example of this is Teacher's Pet, a late-1950s Paramount movie with two big names leading the cast: Clark Gable and Doris Day. So I recorded it the last time TCM ran it.

Clark Gable plays James Gannon, who works at the sort of big-city newspaper that was a staple of 1930s movies, with a hard-boiled editor trying to break news, especially on things like lurid murders, and up-and-coming reporters going out there to get the stories. One would-be reporter at the paper, who is only a copy boy since he can't get a real reporter's job, is Barney Kovac (Nick Adams), whose mom would rather he go to college.

You'll note that this is an era when reporters didn't necessarily have to go to J-school, although there were already college courses for journalism. One person teaching night classes at such a school is Erica Stone (Doris Day), whose father ages ago wrote for a small-town paper. As a result of her father's experiences, Erica has decided views on what journalism should be like, which isn't quite like what Gannon does. Erica has written to Gannon to give a guest lecture about city journalism, but Gannon turns it down because he really has a thing about journalism school as well as thoughts about lady reporters.

Still, Jim's boss insists he go to the class, so Jim goes undercover, pretending to be a salesman with the name Jim Gallagher. Surprisingly, Erica doesn't recognize him. If she did, we wouldn't have a rest of the movie. But Erica is so insulting to Gannon that he decides he's going to audit the class after all, if only to be able to show Erica just how wrong she is about what real reporting is like. Unsurprisingly, since Jim is a real reporter, he's able to handle the first assignment that Erica gives the students and come up with a much better story than any other student possibly could.

This leads to Erica, still not recognizing Jim for who he really is, offering to tutor him privately outside of class hours, since he can "learn" more that way than in class. The next unsurprising thing is that Jim falls in love with Erica. This is a bit of a problem considering that Erica already has a boyfriend in Dr. Hugo Pine (Gig Young), an intellectual who is superior to Jim at all the things that you'd stereotypically expect a female college professor to want in a man. Since Clark Gable is top-billed, however, you know things are going to work out such that it's Jim who winds up with Erica at the end of the movie, despite his dishonesty about his true identity.

Teacher's Pet is one of those movies that feels like it's breaking no new ground, but what makes it worth watching is the acting ability of the two leads, who take to the material well and make a surprisingly appealing couple despite their age difference. They fit their parts like wearing a comfortable pair of shoes, making for an enjoyable watch despite there being nothing new here. They're also helped by a pretty good screenplay and good supporting performances. If you can find Teacher's Pet, watch it and be entertained for two hours.