Fox anthology movies

20th Century-Fox made some interesting movies in the 1940s and 1950s which are little more than a series of short stories, all tied together by a common thread. I've already mentioned Tales of Manhattan; another one is airing on the Fox Movie Channel at 2:00 PM ET on May 1: A Letter to Three Wives.

In A Letter to Three Wives, the scene is set with the three title wives at a picnic in a typical small American city. The three receive a special delivery letter from a fourth woman, Addie Ross. In this letter, she tells them that she's going to be running off with one of their husbands -- but doesn't tell them which one is about to lose her husband! Naturally, all three women have reason to worry that Addie is going to run off with her man (otherwise, we wouldn't have much of a movie). Most of the rest of the movie is devoted to three episodes, in which it's explained why each woman has been having trouble with her marriage.

In the first (and probably weakest segment), Jeanne Crain plays a woman who fell in love with a wealthier man (Jeffrey Lynn), and worries that she won't be good enough for his high-class friends. The second segment has underrated Ann Sothern as an ambitious writer for a radio program, married to a schoolteacher played by Kirk Douglas, back in the days when he was still only on the cusp of being a big star (A Letter to Three Wives came out a few months before Champion, the film generally credited with making Douglas the star he became). And finally, we have lovely Linda Darnell, married to slightly oafish Paul Douglas, a very good Fox stalwart who doesn't get the recognition he deserves today. They don't love each other all that much any more, but theirs is a marriage of convenience like many others: he still needs her beauty, and she needs his money. As I said before, each segment gives the viewer perfectly good reason that this is the woman who is going to be Addie's victim. Indeed, we don't actually find out Addie's beloved until the very end of the movie (and no, I'm not going to give it away).

In addition to the three couples, there's also Paul Douglas' fellow Fox contract player Thelma Ritter and, as Addie, Celeste Holm. Interestingly, we only see Addie from behind; we never see her face (although we do hear her voice). The direction was handled by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, who won the Oscar for it. A Letter to Three Wives is quite good, although when push comes to shove I personally prefer a few segments from some of Fox's other anthologies, notably the Charles Laughton and Edward G. Robinson scenes in the aforementioned Tales of Manhattan, and another movie on the schedule for next week.... Still, don't let that take anything away from A Letter to Three Wives. If you miss tomorrow's showing on FMC, don't worry: it's available on DVD.

TCM Repeats

TCM only has so many movies they can show, so it's not uncommon for them to repeat themes. This seems to happen quite a bit with birthdays; TCM will drag out the same few surviving movies of pioneering black director Oscar Micheaux on his birthday in January.

But, it's also true with regular holidays and observances. I mentioned Eve Arden on her birthday last year, and was somewhat surprised that TCM weren't showing Mildred Pierce in honor of her birthday. Today is again the anniversary of her birth, and TCM are showing Mildred Pierce at 12:30 PM ET. However, one of the reasons they didn't show it last year is that they were saving it to show on Mother's Day, as part of a salute to mothers on film. Wouldn't you know: TCM are showing Mildred Pierce again this Mother's Day; at 11:00 AM ET on May 10.

That having been said, I do enjoy the movie, and don't mind recommending it again.

A less-wholesome family movie

I linked yesterday to my obituary post of Van Johnson, which includes a photo of him in the movie Yours, Mine, and Ours. A very different movie with a blended family aired today on the Fox Movie Channel, Six Pack.

Kenny Rogers stars as a down on his luck stock car driver going from town to town in small-time races in the South. He stops off in one such town and, while eating a cheap lunch, sees his racecar being dismantled for parts out the window. Naturally, he gets in the motorhome he's been using to tow his car, and chases down the culprits -- and what he finds shocks him. The thieves are six orphaned siblings, who have been more or less forced into stealing cars by the corrupt local sheriff, who has threatened to break up the family if they won't do his bidding. Rogers has some sympathy for these urchins, offering to take them to where they think they've got an aunt who might be able to help them. Along the way, however, he finds that their mechanical skills, and other forms of ingenuity, could actually help him as a racecar driver.

Six Pack isn't a terrible movie, but it's certainly nothing truly classic, either. The plot is somewhat trite, and despite having children in the cast, it's not quite as good to show your children as something like Yours, Mine, and Ours. Indeed, one of the kids has a toilet mouth that would make a sailor (albeit not one in a Studio Era movie) blush; although it should be pointed out that Rogers is horrified by this. There's also the compulsory love interest (Erin Gray) and the predictable ending. Kenny Rogers wasn't a particularly talented actor, although this is the sort of role that comes closest to suiting his limited abilities. Watch also for a young Diane Lane as the oldest of the six orphans.

Six Pack has been released to DVD.

Stick to directing

As part of TCM's birthday salute to Lionel Barrymore, they showed several of his appearances in the Dr. Gillespie movie series. One of them, Dr. Gillespie's New Assistant, is interesting for a few reasons. First, it's one of the earliest movie appearances for Van Johnson, who played one of the three men vying to become Dr. Gillespie's assistant. Second, another of the candidates was played by Richard Quine. If the name sounds familiar, it's not for his acting work. He played relatively small parts up until 1950, when he became a director, making such films as Pushover and Paris -- When it Sizzles.

A lot of people have made the move from acting to directing. In many cases, it seems to have more to do with vanity or reasons of control: big stars either think they can do a better job than the people who are directing them, or else want more control over the movies they make. God knows people like Orson Welles were obsessed with how their movies ended up. On the other hand, I wonder how much of Gene Kelly's directing was directing, and how much of it was just choreography -- he certainly had firm opinions about dancing.

There are also those who got into directing almost as a necessity, and then found out that they liked it. Ida Lupino, for example, had to fill in on one of the movies in which she was a star (On Dangerous Ground, if memory serves), and found out that she actually enjoyed the challenge of directing. Robert Montgomery took a similar path, being forced to do some of the directing on They Were Expendable, and enjoying it.

And then there are the people, like Richard Quine, for whom it was probably a wise choice to go into directing. Sydney Pollack does a good job as Dustin Hoffman's agent in Tootsie, but it's really as a director that he shines. And if you get the chance to rent Blues In the Night (available on DVD), watch for the band member who really wants to be a lawyer. That's future director Elia Kazan.

George Sanders, Craig's List killer?

TCM is showing Lucille Ball in a noir this evening; The Dark Corner, at 10:00 PM ET. You might find it surprising to think of Ball doing mystery or noir, but The Dark Corner isn't the only one she did. In fact, when I first saw The Dark Corner on the schedule, I confused it with another of her movies, Lured.

In Lured, Ball plays Sandra Carpenter, a woman working at the British equivalent of a dime-a-dance joint in a lower-class part of London. She's trying to get a job as a chorus girl with producer Robert Fleming (George Sanders), only to have the plans be waylaid by real life: her best friend goes missing after answering an ad in the personals column, and the police have good reason to fear that this is the latest in a series of killings by a man who seeks out his victims by placing personal ads. When Sandra goes to police inspector Harley Temple (Charles Coburn), he is taken by Sandra's beauty and hatches the perfect plan: use her as a decoy to find the personal ad killer.

Well, wouldn't you know it, Ball meets a bunch of people who obviously aren't the killer, and then through a most amazing coincidence, just happens to meet Fleming. She falls in love with him, and finds that there's a lot of intrigue going on at his place -- including all the evidence pointing to Fleming's being the killer.

Lucille Ball is a better actress than she's normally given credit for. She did a lot of zany comedy, and because she became so well known to today's Americans for starring in I Love Lucy after most of her movie career, that performance is how she's remembered today. I suppose the constant TV reruns helped; it wasn't until the advent of TCM that a lot of her pre-I Love Lucy movies got to be re-examined. (I recall seeing later stuff like Yours, Mine, and Ours showing up on TV, but none of the pre-TV movies.) Having said that, she does a creditable job in Lured. George Sanders is excellent as always; playing a person of questionable character is something he did quite a bit in his career and eventually won an Oscar for when he made All About Eve. Coburn is his usual fine supporting self, even if he doesn't really come across as British. He's not as bad as, say, Joseph Cotten in Gaslight, but he's also clearly not a Brit. Lured is also suitably full of twists and turns, including a really fun one involving a brief appearance from Boris Karloff.

Thankfully, Lured is available on DVD.

Another star is born

TCM is airing the 1935 movie Captain Blood at 9:45 AM ET on April 27. The film is best known as the movie that made Errol Flynn a star, but it's quite good in its own right.

Flynn stars as Peter Blood, a doctor in England. There's a group of rebels going around England, and when one of them is wounded and Blood is the only doctor available, he considers it his duty under the Hippocratic Oath to treat the man, even though he is a rebel. For this, Blood is arrested and sent to prison along with several of the rebels. They're supposed to be executed, but get a "reprieve", in the form of forced labor in the Caribbean colony of Jamaica, which was not the vacation resort, or the place for high-quality ganja, that it is today.

Simply having the men be forced laborers wouldn't make for much of a movie, so you know they're eventually going to escape. In order to make an escape, though, Blood has to win the confidence of his captors, which he does by healing the colonial governor's (Lionel Atwill) foot. Meeting the colonial governor is good for the doctor, but even better is meeting the governor's daughter, played by the lovely Olivia de Havilland. Naturally, the doctor and the girl are going to fall in love: despite the overall high quality of the movie, it does hew to some of Hollywood's more predictable plot lines. After escaping, Blood and his men become pirates, leading to a confrontation with French ship captain Basil Rathbone, and the eventual final confrotation including Flynn's swordfighting that made him the new Hollywood swashbuckler.

Flynn is charismatic in his first big role. It's not his first movie; he had previously played a murder victim with a very brief appearance in the Perry Mason movie The Case of the Curious Bride. But because he hadn't done anything important before, even in supporting roles, Warner Brothers took a big risk in casting him; one that paid off. De Havilland is fine as the love interest, and she and Flynn would go on to make eight more movies together. Still, she's not the most important part of the movie, which still would have been good even without a love angle. There's a supporting cast with some well-known names, including Guy Kibbee as one of Flynn's men, and Donald Meek and J. Carrol Naish. Fortunately, Captain Blood is also available on DVD.

I Married a Monster from Outer Space!

More nice weather means more brief posting. However, TCM are airing the fun 1950s B-scifi movie I Married a Monster From Outer Space at 5:00 PM ET today. The title is actually accurate: a woman (Gloria Talbott) gets married to a man (Tom Tryon) and then finds that her new husband is acting much more strangely than when he was her fiancé. One night, she follows him, and discovers that he's walking to an alien spaceship hidden away in the woods outside of town! Apparently, he, and several other of the town's men, have been taken over by space aliens.

If that's not bad enough, it gets more fun: the aliens are from a dying world that has lost all its women, so the men are looking for a new species whom they can make fertile. The only thing is, they haven't been able to work out a way to impregnate human females yet. So, the men end up sexless (another reason Talbott suspects something is wrong with her husband) and generally unpleasant to be around. But, God knows the men are working on solving the problem, and that if they do, there will be dire consequences for the people of Earth! Worse, Talbott isn't quite sure whom she can trust. After all, the aliens have taken over human bodies and, like Invasion of the Body Snatchers, look indistinguishable from humans on the outside.

This sort of story mandates that human ingenuity wins out in the end, but I won't give away the ending by mentioning exactly how it happens. Suffice it to say that I Married a Monster From Outer Space is one of those movies that's so lousy it's a lot of fun. The acting is uniformly wooden, and the plot ludicrous. But so what? It's still highly entertaining, as long as you're not expecting any masterpiece. I Married a Monster From Outer Space was released on DVD several years ago, but is listed as being out of print.

Lazy birthday post

The weather is so nice here in New York today that I'm only going to write up a brief birthday post. Actually, I wouldn't have minded doing a post on Rage in Heaven, which TCM aired this morning, comparing it to Leave Her to Heaven, only with the gender roles reversed. However, Rage In Heaven hasn't been released to DVD, which is somewhat surprising, since Ingrid Bergman is the female lead, with reasonably well-known Robert Montgomery and George Sanders playing the two male leads.

TCM honored Shirley MacLaine today on her 75th birthday. I've recommended two of the movies that TCM are showing, The Trouble With Harry and The Children's Hour. They're not showing The Apartment (from which the photo at left is taken; MacLaine is in between Jack Lemmon and Edie Adams) today; it's probably MacLaine's best movie and, surprisingly, I've never done a full-length post on it.

Director William Castle would have been 95 today; he's best known for some of the gimmicks he introduced into the presentation of his movies, such as wiring seats to put out an electric shock at key points of The Tingler. It seems as though I've only recommended one of Castle's movies before: Strait-Jacket.

Born Yesterday

I gave a very brief synopsis of Born Yesterday back in January, when I mentioned that its star, Judy Holliday, beat out Bette Davis and Gloria Swaonson for the Best Actress Oscar that year. Born Yesterday is playing tonight at 8:00 PM ET on TCM, and is a hugely underrated movie that's well worth watching.

Holliday plays chorus girl Billie Dawn, who's the kept woman of industrialist Harry Brock (played by previous Oscar winner Broderick Crawford). Brock is in Washington DC to do some lobbying, and he finds that his girlfriend is something of a liability: she has no social graces. So, when Brock is approached in their hotel suite by journalist Paul Verrall (William Holden) for an interview, he gets the idea to hire Paul to teach Billie how to act like an educated lady.

This being the movies, it should be pretty obvious what's really going to happen. Billie is going to learn quite a bit more than just etiquette and high culture; she's going to learn that perhaps her boyfriend isn't all that he's been cracked up to being. Indeed, Harry Brock is trying to game the system in ways that are against the law. (I would argue that this is natural: if you give a government more and more power to muck up people's lives, it's to be expected that people are going to try to influence the government to make certain that it's mucking up somebody else's life. Hollywood, though, takes the more common view that this is just another case of eternally corrupt businessmen trying to pollute our otherwise virtuous government. But politics should be a discussion for another place.) Secondly, you just know that Billie and Paul are going to fall in love. Still, despite these predictable plot elements, the story is quite good. Judy Holliday is outstanding, and was more than worthy of winning an Oscar, despite the fact that a lot of people would argue the award that year should have gone to either the aforementioned Bette Davis or Gloria Swanson. (In fact, all three gave Oscar-worthy performances.)

The two men are quite good too. Broderick Crawford seems almost as though he's reprising his role as Willie Stark from All the King's Men, but Harry is supposed to be loud, obnoxious, and used to getting his own way. Holden is also good as the reporter, although having done Sunset Blvd., you'd think that Holden would get something a bit more substantial than this, as he's really playing a foil to Holliday. Still, Born Yesterday is a wonderful film, and one that's also available on DVD.

Too Bad She's Bad

I mentioned the fun little comedy Too Bad She's Bad when its female lead, Sophia Loren, was TCM's Star of the Month last June. The movie is airing again at 3:15 PM ET today.

Marcello Mastroianni plays a cab driver who picks up Loren and two of her male friends, who ask him to take the three of them to the beach. It quickly transpires that they're out to steal his lovely new taxicab. The police are no help (this is Italy, after all), so Mastroianni decides to pursue matters directly with Loren's father. The only problem with that is that it turns out the father is also a thief, stealing the bags of well-off travelers at the train station. Indeed, the whole family is a gang of petty thieves! What does our poor cab driver do next? The answer should be obvious: as in Remember the Night, the way to deal with a lady crook is to fall in love with her. True, that's got a lot of complications of its own....

Too Bad She's Bad is a pretty good comedy. As a foreign comedy, it does suffer some from having to read the subtitles, especially when the movie is such a rapid-fire comedy. However, the leads are all quite enjoyable to watch -- especially a young Sophia Loren, who is not burdened by any language difficulties -- as is the cinematography of Rome as it was in the same era as Roman Holiday. It's also not a bad introduction to the Italian cinema of that era. Fortunately, it has been released to DVD, although as I've mentioned in conjunction with other foreign movies, the lesser interest makes for higher prices.