Youngblood Hawke

I've always enjoyed the potboilers of the 1950s and 1960s. Even if they weren't particularly good, they're interesting, and some of them can be fun. One that's a fairly minor entry in the cycle is Youngblood Hawke.

James Franciscus stars as Arthur Youngblood Hawke, who as the movie opens is driving a coal truck in his home town in Kentucky and convinced that somebody is trespassing on the family land. He gets home and tells his mother Sarah (Mildred Dunnock) about this, and she's even more ticked about it. It seems that some years earlier, before Dad died, Dad's brothers dishonestly got the mineral rights on Dad's land, which is why they're rich and she and Youngblood isn't. She could use a good lawyer, and Youngblood could have been one, except that he decided to go to college to study creative writing in hopes of starting a writing career.

And then Youngblood gets a letter in the mail telling him that a publishing house in New York liked his manuscript and is thinking about publishing it, even though he submitted it unsolicited without an agent, which seems like a very bad idea. But in any case Youngblood goes to New York and gets treated like royalty by the publisher Jason Prince (Lee Bowman), who read the book along with his wife Fannie (Eva Gabor). If Youngblood signs the contract, he'll be working with editor Jeanne Green (Suzanne Pleshette). Youngblood wants more than the "standard" advance for a first-time writer, since he's been busy working on his second novel. A compromise is reached where that extra money is to be paid out in several monthly installments. Jeanne gets Youngblood a place one floor above her in her apartment building, and she proceeds to fall in love with him.

It's the first love in an exceedingly complicated life for Youngblood. At a Christmas party, he's introduecd to wealthy Frieda Winter (Geneviève Page), who loves studly young Youngblood albeit with the catch that she got her wealth by marrying a wealthy man (Kent Smith). She does things like secure Youngblood the use of a clients swanky Manhattan apartment while the client goes out to Hollywood to make a movie, something that ticks off Jeanne. Jeanne, for her part, has been thinking about going to another publishing company.

Where Youngblood's first book was at most a modest success, his second book is a big hit, and starts to give him a swollen head. Youngblood is approached by aging actress Irene Perry (Mary Astor) who wants him to adapt the first novel into a stage play with her as the lead actress. He also gets the idea of "investing" his money in various ways, including building out on Long Island along with starting his own publishing company. But this gets him into debt, and those debts are eventually going to be called in.

Youngblood is told, much like Fyodor Dostoevsky when he wrote The Gambler, that he has to deliver his next book by a certain time or else contractual clauses are going to leave him in a very bad state. Youngblood works himself into a very parlous state, while all his romantic relationships resolve themselves to varying degrees of satisfaction.

I called Youngblood Hawke a minor entry in the potboiler cycle largely because it's both not particularly good and not memorably bad. It's just there, as it were, and lingers on for over 130 minutes. Everybody does well enough with the material they're given; it's more that it's not very good material. Poor Suzanne Pleshette is used, and the whole mining rights subplot is never really examined as much as it should be.

House by the River

Another movie that I saw pop up on one of the FAST services that sounded interesting was the Fritz Lang movie House by the River. Because it sounded interesting, I decided to watch it and, having done so, can now do a post on it here.

The movie is set around 1900, although that's not made explicity clear at the beginning. In a house by one of thos dangerous-looking rivers in that it has a faster-than normal current and all sort of stuff floating in it lives the writer Stephen Byrne (Louis Hayward). Apparently he makes enough money to have a maid, young Emily (Dorothy Patrick in a small role). One day while Stephen's wife Marjorie (Jane Wyatt) goes out to town for the day, Emily uses the bath since nobody else is there to use it. She comes down the stairs, where Stephen is at the foot of the stairs attracted to her as she's underdressed and he's had a bit to drink. Stephen starts putting the moves on Emily, who clearly doesn't want the moves put on her and tries to get Stephen to stop. She starts screaming for help, and in trying to get her not to scream, accidentally strangles poor Emily to death!

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Now, Stephen has a dead body in the house, and that presents a big problem of how to get rid of the body since nobody will believe that Stephen is only guilty of manslaughter and not murder. But Stephen has a brother, John (Lee Bowman), with whom he has some sort of dysfunctional relationship. Stephen claims that Emily fell down the stairs, which we all know to be a complete lie, and that nobody would believe this, which makes sense since there's no broken bones or even bruising. But one would have to guess, even though it's not well explained, that Stephen has some sort of blackmail he can hold over John's head, as John eventually agrees to go through with helping Stephen dispose of the body.

The two put Emily's dead body in a sack and dump it in the river, with the hope that either the body will decompose or that the sack will make it all the way to the ocean, the opening shots of the river making it look like some sort of delta area close enough to the sea to make this a possibilty. Or course, none of that happens since this is the era of the Production Code and there's no way Stephen is going to get away with what he's done. So as you might guess, the body is eventually found.

But, in a stroke of good luck for Stephen, the sack in which he and John put Emily's body contains markings that implicate John and not Stephen in having killed poor Emily. Not that John is actually sent to prison as that would be too conventional a move. This also makes Stephen notorious enough that it draws interest in his novels, which become best sellers. But Stephen, being too arrogant for his own good, sets out to write another novel. This one is a thinly-veiled account of the murder of Emily, and written by Stephen in such a way that somebody who has inside information could put two and two together and recognize that it was Stephen and not John who killed Emily. John obviously knows all this but can't say anything since he's an accessory after the fact. Marjorie, however, is able to figure it all out and realize that Stephen is the real killer.

There are more twists and turns, but as I said in previous paragraphs there's also the Production Code, which requires the guily to expiate their since, which will result in an ending that involves Stephen getting what's coming to him.

It's the Production Code requirements that make House by the River another of those movies that could probably be really good if the writers weren't constrained in how they could end the movie. That, and the fact that House by the River was made at Republic, which gives it more the feel of a B movie. Still, even in spite of all those issues, House by the River is not a bad movie and is certainly entertaining enough. It just could have been better.

Heart of a City

I recorded a couple of Rita Hayworth movies in relative proximity several months back. One of them was One Touch of Venus, as part of the spring run of Two for One and which I blogged abou when Two for One was re-run during the autumn. The other one was Tonight and Every Night, and recently, I finally watched it.

The movie opens up with an establishing shot of London, presumably in 1944 (the movie was released in January 1945 and based on a 1942 play). A photographer from Life magazine shows up at the Music Box theatre, having heard that it's the one theater that never shut down during the bombings of the Blitz and that this would make a good story. Theatre owner May Tolliver (Florence Bates) lets the reporter take photographs, while one of the stage hands informs him that there's a really good back story to all of this. As you can guess, this means we get the inevitable flashback....

Tolliver is preparing a new stage show, which will be an ensemble affair and which includes a couple of American chorus girls, Rosalind Bruce (Rita Hayworth) and her friend Judy Kane (Janet Blair). Walking into the theater is Tommy Lawson (Marc Platt), an improvisational dancer who is clearly talented, but who Tolliver feels wouldn't be appropriate for the show since he only dances how he feels instead of sticking to choreographed steps. However, he's so determined to dance that he learns the routines from Rosalind and Judy and gets a spot in the show. He also develops felings for Rosalind, although as he's not the top-billed man in the movie, he's not going to wind up with Rosalind.

The top-billed actor is Lee Bowman, playing RAF pilot Paul Lundy. Paul shows up at one of the shows at the Music Box, and obviously likes Rosalind too. After all, who wouldn't? But how to meet her? Well, luck in a way intervenes in the form of a German bombing raid. The air-raid sirens go off, forcing everyone into the basement bomb shelter, with Paul and Rosalind winding up in close proximity. Paul wants a further relationshp with Rosalind, but makes the mistake of coming up with a lie about an American soldier from her hometown being at his apartment and using that as an excuse to get Rosalind there to try to put the moves on her. Needless to say, Rosalind is put off.

We're less than halfway through the movie, and when a notice is put up at Paul's RAF base of a Shakespeare company coming through to do a benefit prformance for the soldiers, Paul gets his CO to ask the Music Box company to do a performance. Paul is able to convince Rosalind of his love for her, and the start the relationship anew.

Of course, Paul being a pilot, he often gets called away, and it's not always for just one night, something that Rosalind probably should have expected. But she doesn't, and other misunderstandings also threaten to blow up the relationship. With the movie having been released while World War II was still going, however, you can expect that there's going to be a happy ending of sorts.

Tonight and Every Night is an interesting idea for a World War II-era musical, and unsurprisingly Rita Hayworth does quite well. However, the movie probably could have used her better. She had already danced with Fred Astaire and showed herself to be a very adept dancer. Yet the movie doesn't really give her one big dance of her own, prefering to stick more to ensemble numbers and songs (with Hayworth's singing voice dubbed). The military romance is also a plot that's not particularly original.

So, I think there are reasons why Tonight and Every Night is not an all-time classic. But it's certainly something that none of the people involved in making it would have had anything to be ashamed of. It also succeeds in being an entertaining morale-booster for the audiences on the homefront, so it's definitely worth a watch.