Spotlight No. 2, and other shorts

About a year ago, I mentioned that TCM was running a short rather cryptically titled Spotlight No. 3. It's a Canadian short showing a couple of quick vignettes about Canada. As you can tell from the title, there are multiple shorts in the series. Overnight, or early tomorrow morning at 4:17 AM (following The Last Sunset), TCM is running Spotlight No. 2. IMDb's page does list the vignettes in this one, but that seems to be the only information, as this one doesn't have any IMDb reviews.

Back in October, I mentioned the 1935 short Crew Racing, which as I said back then sounds like it might be a Pete Smith short but in fact isn't; it's part of a different MGM series, the "Sports Parade". This one will be on again at 10:20 AM this morning, following Go Into Your Dance. Pete Smith fans, I think, don't get another short until Thursday, when The Fall Guy, the final entry in the series, shows up on TCM.

And there's yet one more chance to catch Crashing the Water Barrier, tonight at 9:42 PM after The Far Country. This is an interesting one made even more interesting if you read up on what happened to the short's protagonist afterwards.

Lizzie

I DVRed Lizzie when TCM ran it at the end of March. It's going to be on TCM again tonight at 8:00 PM, so I made it a point to watch the movie last night so I could do a full-length post on the movie today.

Elizabeth Richmond (Eleanor Parker) is a young woman who works at a museum by day and goes home to live with her aunt Morgan (Joan Blondell) at night. Elizabeth is a mousy little thing, having only one friend, in the form of coworker Ruth (Marion Ross). And home life isn't so good either, as Morgan spends most of her time drinking bourbon, the only thing that's worth drinking apparently. Add to all that that Elizabeth is constantly fatigued and receives death threats from somebody calling herself "Lizzie", and you've got a young woman with serious problems.

Ah, but that's just the beginning. One night, as Elizabeth is going up the stairs to her bedroom, she calls aunt Morgan a drunken slut, and claims to have no memory of having done so. We then see her putting on garish makeup and going out to a dive bar that has as the only thing going for it the presence of Johnny Mathis at the piano. This is Lizzie, and Lizzie is a polar opposite from Elizabeth. At the bar, Lizzie meets one of the co-workers from the museum, who obviously recognizes that there's something going on.

As for aunt Morgan, she doesn't recognize it until one morning when the bottle of bourbon is empty. Elizabeth claims to hate bourbon, and Morgan knows she didn't drink it all. So she talks with her neighbor Walter (Hugo Haas, who also directed) about it, and Walter suggests Elizabeth seek professional health. And Walter knows just the man for the job, psychologists Dr. Wright (Richard Boone).

Elizabeth does go to see Wright, who puts her under hypnosis revealing that Elizabeth has another personality in Lizzie. Actually, she's also got a third personality in Beth, who is probably the original personality that was suppressed under the extremely shy Elizabeth and the extremely vicious Lizzie because Beth had to survive some chidhood trauma. But what is that trauma, and how could it mess Beth up that much?

Lizzie is very reminiscent of The Three Faces of Eve, and both came out in the same year. Lizzie isn't remembered as much, probably because it didn't have studio backing -- it was produced by Kirk Douglas' independent production company. It's really not a bad movie, but it's one that's hampered by its subject material. It's so easy to wind up over the top when you've got as your story a person who plays three wildly different people, and then add pyschiatric counseling to all that. Lizzie, unfortunately, falls into that trap at times, with the result that you'll probably find yourself laughing at points that aren't supposed to be funny. Some would point out, however, that this makes it even more of a reason to watch Lizzie.

Lizzie has received a DVD release courtesy of the Warner Archive collection (the movie was distributed by MGM; I don't know the rights status of other films produced by Kirk Douglas' company). It probably ought to be on one of those four-movie box sets than a standalone.

Music in My Heart

Since it's the weekend and I've got time to watch somemovies to do full-length posts on, I pulled out my Mill Creek set of Columbia romances and watched Music in My Heart. (Look up the title on the TCM Shop and you'll find the Mill Creek set for something like $5.99.)

Tony Martin plays Robert Gregory, an understudy to the lead in a Broadway show who just wants to get his chance. However, he's got other problems besides the star's never getting sick. Apparently he was born abroad and immigrated as an infant with his parents who have since died, because he's about to be deported and no good explanation is given, save something about his parents screwing up the citizenship papers. Anyhow the lead gives him his one chance to do the show, after which he's put on a taxi to the next boat over to Europe.

Along the way, his speeding taxi careens into another taxi, which has as its passenger Patricia (Rita Hayworth). It turns out that she's on her way to the same boat, where she's going to meet wealthy Charles Gardner (Alan Mowbray) and go to Europe with him to get married. Obviously she's doing it for his millions, and it's clear to Robert that she doesn't really love him. Anyhow, the taxi collision means that the two miss the boat, and have to go back to Patricia's Lower East Side (I think; I'm not certain of my New York City geography) digs, which are in the same building as a restaurant mananged by her "uncle" Luigi and run by Rusian émigré Sascha (George Tobias).

Patricia's kid sister, like everybody else in the movie, recognizes that Robert is the right man for Patricia, even though there's the problem of his looming deportation, or even imprisonment for fleeing the immigration agents. Meanwhile, jilted Charles realizes he's still in love with Patricia, and his butler Griggs (perpetual Hollywood butler Eric Blore) decides he's going to do something to make Patricia come back to Charles....

The story in Music in My Heart isn't a bad one, if nothing terribly original. Unfortunately, the movie stars Tony Martin. He's got all the charisma of a bassoon, and sings in that horrendous operetta style. In fact, he sings multiple songs in that manner, and the film (which is only 70 minutes to begin with) comes to a screeching halt on the occasions they have him sing. Thankfully, one of those occasions is the finale, so that doesn't brin the film to quite as much of a halt.

I mentioned that I got Music in My Heart as part of an eight-film box set. The box set is more than worth it for the price. Music in My Heart wouldn't be worth it on its own. Unless you like that style of music.

Just a reminder about The Essentials

I mentioned some weeks back that The Essentials was coming back to TCM, and tonight is the premiere. Alec Baldwin will be the host, and his first guest host is David Letterman. Tonight's Essential, at 8:00 PM, will be The Bad and the Beautiful, one of the great Hollywood-on-Hollywood movies. It's also the opening for a night (well, half a night, since there's TCM Underground overnight) of Kirk Douglas movies, including the first airing in a long while of Champion, which follows The Bad and the Beautiful at 10:15 PM. The last of the Douglas films is Lust for Life, at 12:15 AM.

And for an OT note: Google screwing over the preview until you click to dismiss the "warning" about including a photo not hosted by Blogger is really obnoxious.

Alice Faye, 1915-1998

Alice Faye and Tyrone Power in a publicity still for Alexander's Ragtime Band (1938)

It's been a while since I've done a birthday post, but with work piling up and no features I can think of to blog about right now, now would be a good time for another post. Today marks the birth anniversary of Fox star Alice Faye, who was born on this day in 1915. Faye made about 30 films for Fox over a 10-year period, before her career came to an abrupt halt with Fallen Angel. Of course, Faye was a musical star, and her career at Fox was being overshadowed by the rise of Betty Grable.

But in those 10 years, Faye made quite a few movies that are worth a match. Alexander's Ragtime Band, a musical about a musician (Tyrone Power) who rises, losing his girlfriend (Faye) along the way, might be the best. Of course, that's in part because of all the Irving Berlin songs; the story is well-done but nothing new.

In Old Chicago, another love triangle set against the backdrop of the Chicago fire of 1871, might be better known, but I prefer Alexander's Ragtime Band.

For sheer fun and nuttiness, however, there's The Gang's All Here, which has Busby Berkeley at perhaps his most bizarre.

Thursday Movie Picks #147: Clones and Doppelgänger

This being Thursday, it's time for another edition of "Thursday Movie Picks", the blogathon run by Wandering Through the Shelves. This weeks theme is Clones and/or Doppelgänger, and as always I've picked three older movies.

A Stolen Life (1946). Bette Davis plays Kate and Patricia, a pair of sisters who both meet Bill (Glenn Ford) and fall in love with him. Patricia marries him much to Kate's chagrin, but when they both go out on their boat, the boat capsizes killing Patricia. Kate is found unconscious, and when she recovers, she decides to take Patricia's place so she can have Bill. It's reasoably well-made, but not nearly as entertaining as Davis' later:

Dead Ringer (1964). Davis plays Edith and Margaret, both of whom loved the same wealthy man. Margaret married him and Edith became a poor, debt-laden spinster, but when the man dies, Edith gets the brilliant idea to kill Margaret, make it look like it was Edith who died, and take Margaret's place in a life of luxury. There's only one small catch. It turns out that Margaret no longer loved her late husband, and was having an affair with playboy Tony (Peter Lawford), who obviously figures out something is going on.

The Day Mars Invaded Earth (1963). Kent Taylor plays Dr. Fielding, heading up an unmanned space probe mission to Mars. Something goes wrong upon landing, and it turns out that incorporeal Martians have decided they don't like having space probes show up on their planet. So they use the radio link back to Earth to travel over it, and take the place of Dr. Fielding and his family. Well, first they have to clone the Fieldings, and so there's a lot of the real Fieldings not realizing they've been cloned, and having the bejeezus scared out of them when they encounter their clones. This is one of those ultra-low-budget movies Maury Dexter was making for Fox to distribute while the Cleopatra production was hemmorhaging money (at least that's how I see it), and it's probably the best of them.

Creature features, but....

As we're in the first week of a new month, it's again time for a new feature on TCM, this one being the monthly TCM Spotlight. It's Creature Features, or those fun (if not always particularly good) monster movies mostly from the 1950s and 1960s. This week sees, among others Mothra overnight at 1:15 AM; I think it's the subtitled version since TCM's brief page on the subject mentions the English-language version of Rodan coming up later in the month. The night ends with Reptilicus, a co-production filmed in Denmark and with different versions for Denmark and the US; again, the website mentions that we're getting the American version (more unsurprisingly here).

However, the TCM page on the spotlight is in general quite brief. As with last month, there's no mention made of who's going to be the host of the spotlight. Since there was a guest host last month, I'd guess there's one this month too. In general the TCM pages seem to be less informative than in the past. Apparently to find out things like guest hosts you have to do the social media thing now.

James Whitmore night on TCM

TCM is taking the time to show some of James Whitmore's movies tonight on TCM. Whitmore was one of those actors who showed up in a lot of stuff from the 1950s on, but never became a big star; and, with the advent of television, didn't get to do quite the meaty film work that earlier stars got to do. He was also at MGM, which means some of those B programmers the studio was churning out in order to subsidize the big budgets for the Freed Unit musicals. I'd like to mention a couple of the movies on tonight that I don't think I've mentioned in these parts before. Unfortunately, my Internet connection is a bit wonky right now so I've only got the time for brief one-paragraph synopses rather than full-length posts.

Mrs. O'Malley and Mr. Malone, at 11:30 PM. Marjorie Main plays Mrs. O'Malley, a feisty woman from Montana ranching country who, for reasons I don't quite recall and which I don't think really matter for the point of the plot, is taking the train east to New York. (It's probably been since the last TCM showing some years back that I watched this one.) Whitmore plays Malone if memory serves. He's a lawyer trying to get paid by his previous client (Ann Dvorak). O'Malley is convinced she's seen a murder committed on the train, and dammit, she's going to prove it and prove who did it. You can imagine trying to deal with Marjorie Main, detective.

Shadow in the Sky, at 3:00 AM tomorrow. Whitmore plays a World War II veteran living with his wife (Nancy Davis before she became Reagan) and two young children trying to move into the middle class like a lot of returning veterans. However, his wife's brother (Ralph Meeker) suffered shell-shock in the war (as they called it then; now it would be PTSD) and has spent his time since the war in a military hospital trying to recover. They've determined that he can live outside the hospital, but it's going to take the support of somebody like his sister and her husband to help him recover fully. And the poor soldier still has a terrible fear of thunderstorms. You can probably guess where all this is heading. It's actually a pretty good little movie for one of those early 1950s MGM B movies, even if it does get a bit heavy-handed at times.

TCM Star of the Month May 2017: Clark Gable

Clark Gable (r.) and Charles Laughton in Mutiny on the Bounty (1935); tonight at 11:30 PM)

So we're in the first full week of a new month, which of course means time for a new Star of the Month on TCM. (Well, excepting February and August.) This month, that means Clark Gable. Gable did a lot of work at MGM, so it's fairly easy for TCM to get the rights to those movies.

Gable's Academy Award, however, came when MGM sent him over to Columbia to punish him for whatever reason. That movie, It Happened One Night, became a surprise hit, and is a fitting choice to kick off TCM's Star of the Month salute. As mentioned in the caption to the picture at the top, the 1935 Gable version of Mutiny on the Bounty will be on at 11:30 PM tonight.



In fact, tonight's lineup includes a bunch of Gable's early movies, with Mutiny on the Bounty being the most recent from 1935. The movie that really made him prominent, A Free Soul, comes on at 3:00 AM. He was in a supporting role as gangster Ace Wilfong -- the male leads were ostensibly played by Lionel Barrymore (who won the Oscar for it) and Leslie Howard. But watching Gable here, it's easy to see why he was noticed for this. In between Bounty and A Free Soul, at 2:00 AM, there's a documentary on Gable.

The other two movies on the lineup are No Man of Her Own at 10:00 PM, starring Gable and future wife Carole Lombard years before they'd get married; as I understand it, they didn't become an item because of this movie. It's also the only movie they made together. And then, at 5:00 AM tomorrow, Gable has a smaller role as the chauffeur keeping the lady of the house drunk in Night Nurse, while nurse Barbara Stanwyck discovers he's having the children starved so he can get at the trust fund money!

Danielle Darrieux turns 100!

Danielle Darrieux, Helen Broderick, and Mischa Auer in The Rage of Paris (1938)

Today marks the centenary of French actress Danielle Darrieux, who is in fact still with us at 100. TCM is marking the day with a night of Darrieux' movies, including The Rage of Paris at 8:00 PM. This one, a realtively typical romantic comedy of the era, has Darrieux playing a girl struggling to make a living, who winds up falling for two rich men (Louis Hawyard and Douglas Fairbanks Jr.) and then getting involved in a scheme with her friends to try to rope one of them into a romantic relationship with her.

Darrieux spent most of her career in France, making a couple of movies in Hollywood both before the war and then in the 1950s, and having the bad luck of being stuck in occupied France during World War II.