Shelley Fabares is nowhere to be found

I'm getting near to the end of writing up reviews of the movies I recorded when George Raft was TCM's Star of the Month back at the beginning of 2025. This time, it's a film from the beginning of his descent into the realm of B movies: Johnny Angel. It will be on TCM tomorrow, January 13, at 11:30 AM.

Raft actually does play a character named Johnny Angel, and that seems to be the character's real name. Johnny is in the merchant marine, captaining a ship for the Gunderson Line run my George Gustafson (Marvin Miller) out of New Orleans during World War II. Johnny's boat plies the Gulf of Mexico, and as the film opens he and his crew spot another ship that appears to be adrift in the fog. Johnny boards it and finds that it was the ship that his father, also a ship's captain for the Gustafson Line, captained, except that there's nobody left on board, which is an obvious mystery.

Johnny tows his father's boat back to New Orleans, where we find that the shipping line isn't in as good shape as one might have hoped for. George is the latest in a line of Gustafsons, but he's got a wife Lilah (Claire Trevor) who seems to have married him for his money. The fact that Lilah used to be in a relationship with Johhny complicates matters. That, and a secretary Miss Drumm (Margaret Wycherly) who was George's governess back in the day and still seems to have a lot of influence. None of the three have any clue about what might have happened to Johnny's dad; worse, they don't much seem to care.

So Johnny goes back about his father's ship, which is where he finds a woman's shoe and a newspaper that looks like it was printed back in France. So with the help of cabbie Celestial (Hoagy Carmichael), Johnny goes looking for anybody who might have knowledge about a French woman who would likely be new to New Orleans. The fact that there's a war on would at least explain why such a woman would be seeking illicit passage aboard a cargo ship like the ones the Angel father and son captained.

Johnny and Celestial go to the various clubs and other spots where someone new in town might go to look for a cheap place to sleep and get a starter job, so you know they're eventually going to find a woman who might just be the one who was aboard Dad's boat. They do indeed find such a woman, Paulette (Signe Hasso), and she has a story to tell that would be incredibly improbable in real life, but par for the course in a Hollywood movie. Apparently she and her father were transporting Free French gold across the Atlantic for safekeeping, when some people who somehow learned of this come aboard the boat, killing everyone but Paulette who was able to hide or something. (Why there was no blood on the boat is a good question.) So Paulette is out to find that gold, and the people who took it. Johnny, for his part, is willing to help Paulette. But Mr. Gustafson puts a crimp in those plans. Is he in on the heist, or just stupid?

For me, the problem with Johnny Angel is that it had a plot that was too complex for its own good, especially in a B movie like this. George Raft is also not exactly the most charismatic romantic leading man out there. Still, everybody tries, and the movie is not uninteresting if at the same time not particularly great. Johnny Angel is enjoyable enough for a rainy day, but once again it's one of those movies where there are good reasons why it's not very well remembered 80 years on.

Murder, My Sweet

A few months back I did a review of the Robert Mitchum movie Farewell, My Lovely, based on the novel by Raymond Chandler about the detective Philip Marlowe. I mentioned at the time that the book had been turned into a movie 30 years earlier with the title Murder, My Sweet. That earlier version shows up on TCM tonight (Nov. 22) at 11:45 PM, so I recently sat down to watch the movie so I could do a review here.

The story is mostly the same between the two movies, although Murder, My Sweet does a bit less in part because of the Production Code. Here, it's Dick Powell playing Philip Marlowe, and as the movie opens he's blindfolded in an investigation room of a police precinct being questioned about the things that have happened to him in the last few weeks as part of cases both he and the police have been investigating. Flash back to some time ago, and "Moose" Malloy comes to Marlowe asking for information about the whereabouts of former nightclub girl Velma Valento. Moose has just done a seven-year stretch in prison and, having been released recently, wants to find the girl he loved. She apparently doesn't love him enough to have kept writing, although her old boss at the nightclub claims she's dead.

The following morning, Marlowe receives a call from a Mr. Marriott, wanting him to work as a go-between. Marriott is paying a sort of ransom to get back a jade necklace that was stolen. He doesn't want to go alone because of the danger, and he's right to be afraid. At the rendezvous, somebody hits both of them over the head, knocking Marlowe out (and giving him the sort of concussion you'd think would make his memory an issue) and killing Marriott.

Also interested in the neckless is the Grayle family: elderly father Leuwen (Miles Mander), trophy second wife Helen (Claire Trevor), and Leuwen's adult daughter from his first marriage Ann (Ann Shirley). Ann shows up at Marlowe's plays with a phony identity trying to get information; in fact the necklace belonged to Ann's stepmother. Ann and Helen at various points in the story each want to hire Marlowe, so he's naturally unsure of which of the two to trust, or even if either of the two he can trust. And there are other shady figures here. Somebody's putting words into Moose's ear that Marlowe knows where Velma really is, and then someone who may or may not be the same person as the previous someone basically kidnaps Marlowe and drugs him up for three days.

Eventually, Marlowe is able to put everything together, although as with that other Philip Marlowe story The Big Sleep, how well everything winds up fitting together is an open issue.

Obviously, as this wasn't the first version of the story I watched, I found myself thinking about the Robert Mitchum Farewell, My Lovely as I was watching Murder, My Sweet. I think each of the films has its advantages and disadvantages. In the case of Farewell, My Lovely, having been made in the 70s works in that there's more that can be discussed, such as Velma's nightclub now serving a predominantly black clientele. There are also a few other subplots. But what works better for Murder, My Sweet is that it has a contemporary setting during World War II. Farewell, My Lovely is done as a flashback to the summer of 1941 and a lot of the time the movie has the look of something that's too Hollywood clean for a simulation of the 1940s as they really were.

Mitchum was a natural as Philip Marlowe; Dick Powell wanted the role (well, really he wanted Walter Neff in Double Indemnity) precisely because everybody thought he wasn't a natural to play a hard-boiled private detective. Powell pulls it off well, and it changed his career; for the rest of his career he was able to get meaty dramatic roles.

Both versions of Raymond Chandler's story are worth watching, and tonight's your chance to catch the Dick Powell version.

The Velvet Touch

Some months back, TCM aired a couple of Rosalind Russell movies in quick succession. I'd heard about Mourning Becomes Electra before, but don't think I've ever watched it, so I'm hoping to get around to doing that at some point. The other film was a new to me movie called The Velvet Touch. Not having heard of it, I decided to watch that one first.

The movie opens with one of those panning shots of New York City from above which, as is so often the case, winds up focusing on midtown Manhattan. Also unsurprising is that the focus goes to the Great White Way, because studio-era Hollywood loved itself movies about the theater. The theater is the Dunning Theater, where producer Gordon Dunning (Leon Ames) has been putting on the latest in a series of comedies starring Valerie Stanton (Rosalind Russell).

After the performance, Valerie goes upstairs to Gordon's office to have a serious talk with him. Comedies have made Stanton a star, but she wants to prove that she can really act, and so is looking to do a drama like a revival of Hedda Gabler. So when the newspaper reports have come out saying that she's going to do another comedy, reports fed to the papers by Gordon, she's pissed. Not only that, but Valerie has fallen in love with one Michael Morrell (Leo Genn) and is planning to marry him. It turns out that Valerie and Gordon previously had a romantic relationship of their own, and that Gordon is extremely jealous over the idea of Valerie's breaking that off. So jealous, in fact, that he says he'll tell Michael all sorts of nasty gossip that will make Michael never want to see Valerie again. When she tries to leave and Gordon tries to restrain her, she picks up a statuette and hits Gordon over the head with it. He falls to the floor, very much dead.

Now, this is where The Velvet Touch has a big problem. The Production Code is out there, and this isn't one of those cases where there's a struggle for a gun and the victim shoots himself. Valerie could try to claim self-defense, but good luck getting a jury to believe that. More likely is a manslaughter conviction ruining her career, and the Production Code says the killer must be punished. Plus, we're only a couple of minutes into the film. But in any case, Valerie is able to get out of the theater undetected and get home. It's up to Valerie's estranged costar in the play, Marian Webster (Claire Trevor), to find the body.

The papers have the reports of Dunning's death the next morning, and even though Valerie already knows about it, she acts hysterically (well, she is an actress) and has a flashback about everything that led up to the killing. And that's the second problem with the movie, that the flashback is an overused device and in this case only runs about a third of the movie before we catch up to the present.

Back on the morning after the killing, police detective Danbury (Sydney Greenstreet) shows up at the theater to interview everybody. In a group, not separately, which I'd think is a big mistake because this lets the suspects conspire to prevent Danbury from finding out the truth if that's what the suspects want to do. The only person who doesn't show up is Marian, and that's because she's gone into hysterics herself and has been hospitalized. She's also the obvious suspect to Danbury, but we know what really happened. The one bright spot here, I suppose, is that at the theater Danbury is given a very small wooden folding chair to sit in, and the joke is whether or not it's going to support his rather ample weight.

The Velvet Touch is another of those movies where you can see why the people involved in making it would have wanted to be involved, as the story has so much potential. But unfortunately, it winds up being a lot less than the sum of its parts.

Gallant Lucy

TCM had a spotlight some months back on working women. One of the movies they picked that was new to me in spite of the big-name cast was Lucy Gallant. Since the cast sounded interesting, I decided to record the movie and recently got around to watching it.

The movie, which was released in 1955, opens up after the opening credits with a title card reading "Texas, 1941". Now, you might guess that this means the US is about to be pushed into World War II with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and that this is important for the plot of the movie. You'll be half right. War does come and a main male character does fight, but the movie isn't really a war movie, which you also might have guessed considering the movie was on TCM for a "women at work" spotlight.

Specifically, the movie takes place in a place called White Sage Junction, TX, the sort of place that in a western would be a cattle town. And it was at one time. But showing up at the whistle-stop train station is cattleman Casey Cole (Charlton Heston). He's there mostly to complain to the stationmaster (Jay Adler in a bit part) about how oil has been discovered and that with this, everybody else has switched from ranching to drilling for oil or otherwise servicing the people who drill for oil. They are, however, interrupted by an emergency dispatch over the telegraph informing the stationmaster that the bridge ahead is out due to a rainstorm.

Of course, there's a train coming that has to stop suddenly. On that train is the titular Lucy Gallant (Jane Wyman). She was on her way to Mexico after her wedding was called off, and she's got her entire trousseau with her. Casey helps her off the train, and eventually takes her to a house in town where Casey stays from time to time, owned by his friend Mrs. Basserman (Thelma Ritter). It doesn't take much to figure out the two are going to fall in love.

Meanwhile, Lucy being a jilted bride (there's a back story about her dad's financial issues leading to his suicide and her unseen fiancé not wanting any part of Lucy thereafter) from New York, she's got a lot of fancy clothes with her. And when she wears them in town, all the wives of the men who have suddenly gotten money hitting oil wish they could wear something like what Lucy is wearing. So she gets the brilliant idea to stay in town and open a couturier selling the finest of big-city fashion to the other women. She's going to need capital however, so she takes out a loan from banker Charles Madden (William Demarest), and runs the store out of the building that used to house the house of ill repute, run by a Lady MacBeth (Claire Trevor).

The store becomes a success, but Casey wants to marry Lucy and raise a family, and being nine months pregnant isn't really going to do for a businesswoman. So in Casey's mind, Lucy should sell up shop. Fortunately, however, World War II intervenes. Casey goes off to fight, and after the war gives up cattle for the oil business himself. But the store is still there, and despite Casey's having been engaged during the war, you know that the two still carry torches for one another. Casey just might be able to come to the rescue when Lucy's business winds up in danger....

Lucy Gallant is one of those competently-made movies the studio system churned out one after another back in the day, but to be honest it's not exactly a great movie. I think part of that is that despite having been released in 1955, it really feels stuck in the 1930s with a very antiquated attitude toward married women working. And Casey is a bit of a jerk toward Lucy. Plus, romance isn't exactly Charlton Heston's strong point. There's also the odd presence of an ex-governor of Texas playing himself. On the bright side, Lucy hosts a fashion show and present at that show is Edith Head, playing herself as the host of the show.

So Lucy Gallant is an interesting movie, even if it is a bit of a misfire.

Kiss Me Goodbye

I mentioned recently that there were a couple of movies in the FXM rotation that I hadn't blogged about before, so I'd record them and watch for the next time they showed up. One of those movies is Kiss Me Goodbye. Needless to say, this being FXM, the movies in the rotation get repeated a lot until they're removed from the rotation, so it isn't taking long for it to show up again. That next airing comes tomorrow (April 28) at 1:15 PM.

Sally Field plays Kay Villano, who is walking back to her Manhattan townhouse as the movie begins. Except, when she gets in the house, all the furniture is covered. Apparently she hasn't lived in the house for some time (you wonder how she could afford the taxes on it to leave it empty for five years), while her mother Charlotte (Claire Trevor at the end of her career) isn't so certain it's a good thing for Kay to be moving back in.

Kay is engaged to Rupert (Jeff Bridges), an Egyptologist at one of the Manhattan museums. Kay, one presumes, hopes that Rupert will move in to the townhouse after the wedding; after all, it's big enough for both of them to have working space. But at the same time, Kay seems to be having flashbacks about the house and the reason why she hasn't lived there in five years. She and her first husband, Broadway director Jolly (James Caan) were giving a party for Broadway types at the townhouse, when Jolly tripped and fell down the stairs, killing him! It's a tragic memory, and now it's understandable why everyone around Kay asks her whether she really wants to live here again.

If those memories aren't bad enough, things are about to get a whole lot worse. One day while she's showing Rupert the place, she's up in the second floor bedroom while Rupert is in a different portion of the house. And what does she see but Jolly. But wait, he's supposed to be dead. And since he's been dead for five years and everybody saw it happen, we know that is is really most sincerely dead. So Jolly very kindly informs Kay that he is what humans would generally think of as a ghost, although in this version of the ghost story ghosts don't do things like creak and moan to try to scare people off.

But while Jolly is able to carry on a conversation with Kay, nobody else is able to see or hear Jolly. Rupert comes back into the room, and hears Kay carrying on a conversation with empty space as far as he's concerned. Now, the logical thing to do would be for Kay to ask the people around her if they believe in ghosts because she's getting the feeling the ghost of Jolly is inhabiting the townhouse. And to be fair, she does eventually tell Rupert the ghost of Jolly is around. But for the most part the doesn't ignore Jolly so that when she talks to him everybody else wonders what the hell is wrong with Kay.

Rupert eventually goes along with the delusion, in part because Jolly proves his existence because of the one power these ghosts to have, which is to get inside people's heads and learn things that someone like Rupert has never told Kay, and then have Kay bring these things up with Rupert. But Rupert can't get Kay to stop thinking about Jolly and start thinking about him, especially when the three of them go on a trip to the country where a bed and breakfast owner (Mildred Natwick) and a married couple are.

How is the romantic conflict going to get resolved? Well, you're just going to have to watch the movie for yourself to find out. From what I've read, James Caan had extremely bad things to say about the movie. I think he's being unfair. Kiss Me Goodbye isn't the greatest movie ever made, and it's a bit tough to be truly original with this sort of ghost story. But it's nowhere near as bad as Caan seemed to be implying. It's watchable enough, and enjoyable to see everybody in it, especially the elder Trevor and Natwick. So give Kiss Me Goobye a chance.

Best of the Badmen

Robert Ryan was another of the people honored in Summer Under the Stars this past August. That gave me the opportunity to DVR several of his movies that I hadn't seen before. One of these is Best of the Badmen, so recently I finally got around to watching it in order to do a review on it here.

The movie opens with title cards telling us about a forgotten chapter of American history. After the Civil War ended in April 1865, there were still some isolated areas where things didn't become peaceful right away, such as in southwestern Missouri thanks to the presence of Quantrill's Raiders. Now, if you've read my reviews over the years, you'll recall that there are a couple of movies that deal with famous outlaw Jesse James (played here by Lawrence Tierney) and how he and the males in his extended family were part of the Raiders. Walter Brennan plays a character named Doc and gives voiceover narration about the remaining stragglers in the Raiders.

Into all of this rides Maj. Jeff Clanton (that's Robert Ryan, if you couldn't tell). He served with the Union Army, and has terms regarding the late President Lincoln's proclamation. If people like Quantrill's Raiders who served in uniform for the Confederacy will sign an oath of allegiance to the Union, the Army and federal government will grant them parole, which means a chance to start over. They're not certain, largely because they have good reason to believe that the carpetbaggers that came in from other places and are now in high government positions won't give men like Quantrill's raiders a fair chance.

One such man is Matthew Fowler (Robert Preston), who ostensibly runs a detective agency but is hated by Maj. Clanton because he knows how dishonest Fowler is. Indeed, Fowler is well aware that there's reward money out there for unpardoned confederates, and he'd like to get him some of that sweet, sweet money. He'd very much like it if those raiders don't get pardoned. Fowler is even willing to use violence to keep the oath from being administered, having a deputy shoot Bob Younger. Clanton shoots back, which is the right thing as long as he's in the army. But once he's out, Fowler is going to use his bought and paid for sheriff to try to prosecute Clanton, eventually obtaining a guilty verdict and death sentence.

But in jail, a strange woman named Lily (Claire Trevor) shows up, claiming to be Jeff's lover. She springs Clanton from prison, and we eventually learn that she's Lily Fowler, the estranged wife of Matt Fowler. The two of them flee before eventually running into some of Quantrill's Raiders, who also had to flee because the pardon proclamation never got finished. Eventually everybody winds up in what is now the Oklahoma panhandle, looking for a way to gain revenge against Fowler and right historical wrongs.

Best of the Badmen is the sort of western programmer that was big in the 1940s, but within a few years would be much less common thanks to episodic TV as well as more psychological westerns like the ones Randolph Scott made with Budd Boetticher. It's not the greatest movie ever made, but it's not bad, and entertaining enough.

The Desperadoes

Randolph Scott made enough westerns in his career that it's easy for a company to put out multiple box sets of his westerns. I got through all of the films on one of the Scott box sets I had, and some time back bought a second. I recently got around to watching one of the movies off that box set, The Desperadoes.

The first thing that surprised me is that the movie is in Technicolor, something I wouldn't have expected from Columbia producing what is really little more than a programmer during the height of World War II. But since Natalie Kalmus' name is on the credits, we know this isn't a colorized movie. Also mildly surprising is the cast, since two of the players were about to go on to bigger things.

Anyhow, as for the plot, it involves the town of Red Valley, Utah, during the Civil War. The local bank gets robbed, causing the settler depositors to question their confidence in the bank. Have no fear, says proprietor Clanton (Porter Hall); he's getting a better safe -- and indeed, there is a scene of the new safe arriving. But we also see in a brief scene where he's talking to livery stable owner Willie McLeod (Edgar Buchanan), this robbery is really an inside job by the two of them and an outlaw gang.

Randolph Scott is not, in fact, a member of that gang. Instead, he's the local sheriff, Steve Upton. He wasn't in town for the robbery because he was trying to catch some wanted criminals. To make matters worse, Steve was waylaid out in the wilderness by Cheyenne Rogers (Glenn Ford). Cheyenne was supposed to be one of the gunmen in the robbery, imported from well away so that nobody would recognize him, but he got delayed by the loss of his horse, and had to steal Steve's instead.

So when Rogers gets to town, using an obviously phony name like Bob or Bill Smith or somesuch, Willie's niece Allison (Evelyn Keyes) immediately figures something is amiss. That's because she recognizes the sheriff's horse, wondering why somebody else would be riding it. Worse for Cheyenne is that the lady who is in charge of the gambling at the saloon, calling herself the Countess (Claire Trever, future Oscar winner) knows Cheynne and knows of his criminal past.

Still, Cheyenne stays in town, in part because the Countess thinks she caused Cheyenne to go bad back in Wyoming. And then there's the Sheriff, who knows Cheyenne and either doesn't know about Cheyenne's past, or doesn't care about it now that Cheynne is trying to get on the right side of the Production Code again. Complicating matters is that the Countess is also in love with Cheyenne, although he and Allison fall in love along the way. And then one of the gang members who actually robbed the bank outs Cheyenne, which puts him and the sheriff in danger.

As I said at the beginning, I was kind of surprised to see The Desperadoes in Technicolor, since for a 1940s western it's little more than standard stuff. At least when they got past 1953 and the introduction of Cinemascope, you can understand the programmer westerns wanting to use color to show off those wide vistas and compete with television, largely in black and white at the time. Although The Desperadoes is fairly standard, that doesn't mean it's a bad movie by any means. In fact, it's quite competently made, and will definitely entertain any fan of the western genre. It's not quite as good as the darker and more psychological westerns of the 1950s, or the A westerns, but it holds its own as a movie to watch on a rainy day or if you want something shorter.

My Man and I

I've commented in the past that I think the MGM programmers of the early 1950s are often just as interesting as the prestige movies (usually Freed Unit musicals) the studio was releasing. One with potential that turns out to be a misfire is My Man and I.

Ricardo Montalbán plays Chu Chu Ramirez, a Mexican-born man who has worked itinerant labor in California's agricultural sector together with his Mexican friends, rooming with them now somewhere in the northern half of the state. Chu Chu has become an American citizen and believes so much in the American dream that he wrote a letter to the White House on becoming a citizen and got a very nice form reply, something he insists on telling everybody around him. He's also bought a used set of encyclopedias to try to educate himself and advance his lot in life.

Chu Chu's latest job is working for Ansel Ames (Wendell Corey), using Ames' tractor to clear fields for a month and make the princely sum of $90 plus room and board. Ansel has a wife (Claire Trevor) and doesn't treat her particularly well; Mrs. Ames seems to want to be anywhere but on this god-forsaken farm in the middle of nowhere, especially when the dogs attack her beloved cat. One look at shirtless Chu Chu working the tractor, and you know she's in love with him.

Chu Chu plans to save the money he makes, but one night he goes into town. At a bar there, he meets Nancy (Shelley Winters), an alcoholic who prefers those awful sweet wines. She's got a bar bill she can't pay, and just as Mrs. Ames immediately fell for Chu Chu, so he immediately falls for Nancy, the big difference being that Chu Chu doesn't get to see Nancy' sweaty and topless. Still, he's going to do everything he can to keep seeing her, even after it's clear that her alcoholism is killing her.

Back to the Ameses, Ansel gives Chu Chu a check and, when Chu Chu goes to cash it, he's told that the check is bouncing, which displeases Chu Chu. He goes to see Ansel, who gives him a line about how the check is good and Chu Chu will get his money, while we viewers know that Ansel really hates Mexicans, considers them inferior, and fully plans on stiffing Chu Chu. After Chu Chu signs the check over to one of his friends and the friend tries to cash the rubber check, Chu Chu takes Ansel to small claims court and wins.

At this point, Ansel gets really pissed, to the point that he threatens to shoot Chu Chu. After Chu Chu leaves the property, Ansel and his wife get in an argument with him smacking her around, before the gun accidentally goes off and shoots Ansel in the shoulder. At this point, the movie takes a ridiculous turn, as Ansel somehow is able to convince his wife that they should both lie and say that Chu Chu shot him. Why a wife who's just been beaten and clearly doesn't like her husband should go along with this, I don't know. But they get Chu Chu arrested and put on trial, and even though the legal system is clearly stacked against him, he still has not just faith in the system, but an unrealistically Pollyannaish faith. Of course, this being MGM and with the Production Code still in effect, we know the movie is going to have a happy ending, but still....

The plot turn for the final act is one of the reasons I have a problem with the movie. The other big problem is that the characters are little more than cardboard cut-outs of character types rather than realistically drawn and complex characters. Chu Chu is way too happy all the time; Ansel is too mean and too much of a con artist; Mrs. Ames has no good motivation to stay with her husband; and the Mexicans are given cartoonish accents even if some of them were played by actual Mexicans. (Jack Elam was definitely not Mexican.)

If you want to see how a movie of an interesting time could go wrong, then My Man and I is a good example to watch. But if you want to watch a real quality movie, I could suggest other movies from any of the man actors.

Starless man

With Kirk Douglas' death a few days ago, I went through the box sets I have looking for one of his movies that I haven't blogged about before. I wanted to so a post on Before I Forget, which is on the TCM four-movie box set, but it turns out that that box set is now out of print, so I was going to have to pick something else. With that in mind, I picked out Man Without a Star, a new-to-me western.

Douglas plays Dempsey Ray, who is riding the rails heading north from Texas to Wyoming in search of wide opwn spaces. Joining him on on the freight train is Jeff Jimson (William Campbell), a naïve young man who is conisistently in need of Dempsey's protection, as Dempsey saves him after a fight with a railroad guard and then gets him off a murder accusation.

Eventually the two wind up in Wyoming, where Dempsey meets old flame Idonee (Claire Trevor) and eventually gets a job working for Reed Bowman, who is coming from out east to run a giant spread with over 10,000 had of cattle. Wyoming is still open range, but some of the cattlemen have decided to put up barbed wire because they need to fence off some of the grass to save it for winter.

Although Dempsey doesn't like these ranchers for fening in land, they're really not bad guys because of their good reasoning for putting up the wire. It also doesn't help that Reed turns out to be a cattle queen (played by Jeanne Crain), who simply plans to bring in as many cattle as possible, before the land is no longer fit to support those cattle whereupon she'll move on to greener pastures. It's somewhere between slash-and-burn agriculture and the tragedy of the commons.

Dempsey gets named formean despite his skepticism for Reed's plans, and when Jimson gets in a scuffle with the ranchers putting up the barbed wire, there are people other than Dempsey to protect Reed's interests, those being the group of cowboys led by Steve Miles (Richard Boone) who brought another herd north.

Man Without a Star is a competent western, albeit one that isn't breaking any new ground. Douglas is good, of course, with the exception of his hairdo which seems all wrong. Campbell does his best despite being badly miscast; he made me think of Robert Walker Jr. for some reason. The supporting cast is good although Claire Trevor is underused.

All in all, Man Without a Star certainly isn't a bad way to spend a Saturday matinee, although I'm gladd I was able to get it in a box set. The set I picked up is now listed as being on backorder at the TCM Shop, although there's also a pricey standalone Blu-ray available.

Born to Kill

Every now and then TCM runs a movie at the end of one month and then early in the next month. Some Like it Hot was one recent example; the same is happening with Born to Kill. It was on this past Sunday as part of Noir Alley, and will be on again at 8:00 PM tonight as part of Claire Trevor's day in Summer Under the Stars.

Trevor plays Helen, a woman from San Francisco who is in Reno getting her divorce. She's been staying in the rooming house of Mrs. Kraft (Esther Howard), a woman who spends a lot of time drinking with next-door neighbor Laury. Laury is about to dump her current boyfriend for a new guy. Anyhow, Helen spends her last night in Reno gambling, where she meets Sam (Lawrence Tierney), a hard man who immediately excites her. She also runs into Laury and her current boyfriend, and Sam sees them. Helen doesn't realize that Sam is the new guy in Laury's life.

Sam, of course, knows, and he's insanely jealous. So when Laury and the old guy return home Sam is waiting in the kitchen. A scuffle ensues, and Sam winds up killing both of them! Some time later Helen returns to the boarding house, where Laury's dog is waiting to be let back into Laury's house. Helen opens the door, finding the bodies. So what does she do? Absolutely nothing. And what happens at the train station? Helen meets Sam again. She doesn't realize he's the killer, and he has no idea she's seen the bodies.

The pair get to San Francisco, where Helen is going to be married to Fred (Philip Terry). Meanwhile, Helen has a foster sister Georgia (Audrey Long) who is ridiculously wealthy, having inherited the money from Dad -- who just happens not to be Helen's biological father, which is why Georgia has the money and Helen doesn't. Sam works his way in to Georgia's life, seeing an opportunity for that money, but of course he'd still rather be with Helen.

Meanwhile, things aren't going well back in Reno. Sam's friend Marty (Elisha Cook Jr.) had sent him off to Frisco until things blew over, but in the meantime, Mrs. Kraft has hired the private investigator Arnett (Walter Slezak) to figure out what the police couldn't. Arnett shows up in San Francisco, and suspects both Sam and Helen.

Born to Kill is a surprisingly amoral movie, up until the point where the Production Code kicks in and gives us the ending we all know we're going to get. Lawrence Tierney made a living playing nasty guys like this, and he's as good as ever. Trevor, whom we most recently saw in Baby, Take a Bow, is quite different here, but she also does a great job. Audrey Long and Philip Terry are theoretically supposed to be the biggest support, but their characters pale in comparison to their love interests.

More interesting are Mrs. Kraft, Arnett, and Marty. Marty, you should probably have realized since it's another Elisha Cook role, and he seems to bring something unsettling to everything I've seen him in. Slezak is good although the way his Arnett implies he's a drunk and shiftless makes you wonder how he could ever get anything done. And Esther Howard's Mrs. Kraft is a surprise. I didn't know much about this actress, mostly because she did a lot of shorts, B movies, and bit parts. But here she gets a bigger part, and runs with it for all it's worth.

Born to Kill is an absolute treat, and if you haven't seen it before I can highly recommend it. It's also available on DVD courtesy of the Warner Archive.

Take an arrow too while you're at it

Another movie that I watched off my DVR because it's available on DVD is Baby, Take a Bow, which can be found on one or another Shirley Temple box set.

Shirley doesn't show up for a while due to the structure of the story. Kay (a very young Claire Trevor) in on her way to Niagara Falls with a stopover at Ossining. The later is the town that gave its name to the notorious Sing Sing prison, which is where Eddie (James Dunn), Kay's fiancé, is finishing up his sentence. Unfortunately, on the train up to Sing Sing Kay meets the obnoxious Welch (Alan Dinehart), an insurance investigator who is responsible for putting a lot of people behind bars. About to start a stretch in Sing Sing is Eddie's friend Larry.

Years pass. Eddie and Kay have a five-year-old daughter Shirley (that, obviously, is Shirley Temple), and Eddie has a good job as a chauffeur to a wealthy industrialist. And Larry is about to get out of Sing Sing and join his wife Jane. Eddie is planning to teach Larry the chauffeur gig so that Eddie can take an apparently better job in the industrialist's factory. I'd think the chauffeur job is better, but what do I know. At any rate, both men have kept their noses clean, despite the predictions of Welch.

There's a third convict who's about to make a mess for everybody. Trigger (Ralf Harolde) steals a necklace from the home of Eddie's boss, and when it's discovered that Eddie had a criminal past, well, there goes his job. This even though we know he's innocent. And Trigger is going to make things an even bigger mess by trying to get Eddie and Larry to fence the necklace, something they have no desire to do. When that doesn't work, Trigger finds little Shirley and gives the necklace to her.

Welch comes along looking for the necklace, absolutely certain that he's going to find it in Eddie's apartment and send Eddie and Larry back to prison, something he seems overly anxious to do. Can they keep Welch from finding the jewelry, and would anybody believe Shirley's story? Thankfully for Shirley, events overtake her and it becomes obvious that Trigger is the man behind the heist.

Baby, Take a Bow came out before Bright Eyes (indeed, it was before the merger with 20th Century, so the print FXM showed had no Fox fanfare), so Shirley doesn't get to do any singing, and only has one short dance scene as a dance student of Jane. Temple is fine and charming enough, except for a few points where the script lets her down. And to be fair, at that point the script lets everybody down. When Welch shows up looking for the necklace, everything screeches to a halt, as Eddie and Larry keep making up ridiculous lies to throw Welch off the scent. It's supposed to be funny but winds up wildly unfunny and obnoxious.

Overall, Baby, Take a Bow is something that would play well as a quality B movie of the era, but which, if it's remembered at all, is remembered for being an early Shirley Temple vehicle. That's a bit unfair because the movie is better than that. And for the price of the Temple box sets I saw, you can't really go wrong if you do pick it up.

No, not the Madonna song

Some months back, or maybe it was a year or two or more, I had the chance to watch a TCM airing of Borderline. The fact that I don't even have a vague idea of how far ago it was probably says something not so good about the quality of the movie (and it will certainly say something bout the quality of this post). But, the movie is on again tomorrow morning at 7:00 AM, so you've got a chance to see it and judge for yourself.

Claire Trevor plays Madeleine, a lady police officer in the LAPD. She's been tapped for special duty, which is to go undercover to help bring down a drug smuggler. However, that smuggler's operations go into Mexico, which is why this is special duty. Madeleine is being asked to play a nightclub girl in one of those little Mexican joints to try to get better acquainted with Richie (Raymond Burr), who runs the whole shebang. So she heads to Mexico and, while she can't quite get close to Richie at first, she gets to one of his underlings, which is a good place to start. At least until Richie breaks in on her snooping around the underling's room. That might look bad for her, but suddenly, there's a complication: in barges Johnny (Fred MacMurray). He's working for another drug smuggling operation, and gets Madeleine away from Richie.

This is where the story really begins to get complicated. Johnny is actually not working for that other smuggler. He, too, has gone undercover, but he's a federal narcotics officer. And the wonderfully competent government has totally failed to co-ordinate operations among various police departments, to the point that when Johnny takes Madeleine away from Richie's place, he has no idea that she's really working with the police. Madeleine, for her part, understandably has no idea that Johnny is working for the feds, not having been told by her superior officers. And it's also completely understandable that neither of them should tell each other of their true identities, since each of them has perfectly good reason to believe the other one is part of the criminal organization.

It's a good premise, but one that never lives up to its promise. I'm not quite certain why. There are some dark elements to the movie as well as some opportunity for humor, and Fred MacMurray was good at playing in both genres. Claire Trevor could also certainly play hard-boiled dames, which is something she's good at doing, too. Raymond Burr was also in his element here, as he played a whole bunch of heavies before taking on the role of Perry Mason on TV. And yet, the whole movie comes across as not quite sure what it's trying to do, being a bit of a slog at times, rather than a simply entertaining ride. Borderline isn't terrible, mind you; it's just not nearly as good as it could be. See it once, and then probably forget it.

Borderline has apparently received several releases to DVD, at least according to Amazon. I'm not certain whether any of them are still in print, though.