Juke Girl

Ann Sheridan was TCM's Star of the Month back in June, and I recorded several of her movies that I hadn't blogged about before. I finally got around to watching the last of them, Juke Girl.

Sheridan is nominally the star here, and certainly the title refers to her, but she's really not the star, as that honor goes to Ronald Reagan. Reagan plays Steve Talbot, a Kansas-born farmer who for the last several years has been doing the seasonal labor thing together with his buddy Danny Frazier (Richard Whorf). As the movie opens, they're walking toward the town of Cat-Tail, FL, which is the farming capital of Florida considering how many thousands of seasonal workers show up.

As for Sheridan, she plays Lola Mears, who works as a singer/"entertainer" at one of the "juke joint" bars that pop up in town to service all those migrant workers. Lola, like Steve and Danny, is itinerant, and the juke girl life is all she seems to know, except that at least she'll be able to get a similar job no matter where she goes.

Cat-Tail is one of those towns run by a company, in this case the Madden Packing company. Henry Madden (Gene Lockhart) owns the one packing place in town, and uses this to offer all of the farmers lousy prices on their crops, which really ticks off people like Nick Garcos (George Tobias). He's planning on taking his tomatoes up to Atlanta himself, but the truck he has is lousy and there's no way the tires are going to make it all the way to Atlanta, as Steve tells him. This forms an alliance between Steve and Nick.

Danny, meanwhile, has decided that working for Madden is the best way for him to get ahead, never mind the fact that Madden isn't just a hard-nosed businessman, but one who has no compunction about bending the law to get his way, considering the way his henchmen destroy Nick's tomatoes. Danny seems more ready to settle down and compromise, unlike the more idealistic Steve.

Nick has a crop of beans ready to be harvested, and is determined to get them picked and to Atlanta, even though Madden is clearly willing to resort to violence. So Nick and Steve have to use a subterfuge just to get on the road, and then even when they get to Atlanta the buyers have already heard from Madden and are extremely reluctant to buy.

But Nick is able to sell, and is then stupid enough to, upon his return to Cat-Tail, start waving around all the money he made selling those beans and getting obnoxiously drunk. Drunk enough, in fact, that I would have been happy to see somebody smack him, as he had become even more of the stereotypical lovable immigrant than he was when we first met him. Steve puts drunk Nick to bed, but Nick escapes and confronts Madden, who kills Nick in self-defense even though Madden realizes nobody will believe him. So Madden dumps Nick's body and pins the murder on Steve and Lola!

Juke Girl is an interesting movie, at least until it takes that ridiculous plot turn with not even 20 minutes to go, so it really wraps up way too quickly. Reagan and Sheridan do reasonably well with the material they're given; Whorf is actually the best; and Tobias and Lockhart are both given sub-par material. Tobias is a stereotype, and Lockhart has to overact shamelessly for his climactic scene. And the local law enforcement is expected to act out of character in the climax.

So there are certainly some flaws in Juke Girl, but it's still an interesting movie of its time. It's on DVD courtesy of the Warner Archive.

Three Cornered Moon

Some months back, I bought a box set of Claudette Colbert movies. Recently, I got around to watching one of the movies, Three Cornered Moon.

The movie starts off with one of those montages introducing the cast by face, informing us that this movie deals mostly with the Rumplegar family, who live in a big house in Brooklyn. Matriarch Nellie (Mary Boland) is a bit ditzy, having trouble with the family maid Jenny (Lyda Roberti) who surprisingly still doesn't know much English despite having been working for the family for years. She also seems to be a few cents short on the grocery bill, and can't get her self-absorbed children to come up with the spare change.

Those children include Kenneth (Wallace Ford), a paralegal who is studying for the bar exam; Douglas (William Bakewell), who wants to become a stage actor; college student Eddie (Tom Brown); and daughter Elizabeth (Claudette Colbert). She's got a boyfriend in struggling author Ronald (Hardie Albright); indeed, when Ronald can't pay his rent, she goes over and settles the account before bringing him home to live in one of the spare bedrooms. Along they way they stop at the clinic of Dr. Alan Stevens (Richard Arlen), whom you feel might have tried pursuing Elizabeth himself if it weren't for the fact that she already has a boyfriend.

As you can also see from Elizabeth's paying off her boyfriend's debts, the rest of the family is slightly extravagant. To be fair, that's because Dad died and left the family with a substantial sum of money. But there's a depression on, and Mom made the mistake of investing in a shady mine on margin (the "Three Cornered Moon" of the title). The brokers are looking to call in their investment, and Mom doesn't have the money. In effect, the family is flat broke, except what Kenneth has from his job, which isn't much, although if he can pass the bar exam that will bring in a bit more money.

To be fair to the family, however, like Joan Crawford in Dance, Fools, Dance, the siblings actually try to go out and get jobs to bring in more money, while Dr. Stevens offers to rent a room since he needs a place to live anyway. Eddie even gets two jobs which runs him ragged, while Elizabeth, who obviously hasn't worked a day in her life, also goes out to find work that she's not quite suited to. The only people who can't be bothered to help are the romantic interests; not just Ronald, but also Kitty (Joan Marsh), grasping girlfriend of William's.

Because of the sort of movie that Three Cornered Moon is, you have to expect that it has a happy, or at least a hopeful, ending, which we do get to after a fashion. This is Paramount, and not one of those Warner Bros. social commentary movies, after all.

The DVD box describes Three Cornered Moon as one of the first screwball comedies, and it's easy to see why somebody might describe the movie that way. There's a wealthy (or formerly wealthy) family, with a ditzy mom and children who seem to live on air, mixed with a few nutty romantic entanglements. But the movie is just as much a drama as it is a comedy, and often a fairly dark one at that. (As an example, Elizabeth's boss clearly expects sexual favors from her in order to keep her job.) It's a mix that doesn't always work, as it took me a long time to warm up the the characters. But in the end it's an interesting if imperfect movie.

I don't think I'd pay a standalone DVD price for Three Cornered Moon, but I'm glad I was able to get it in a box set.

Thursday Movie Picks #347: Best Actor/Actress Oscar winners

This being Thursday, it's time for another edition of Thursday Movie Picks, the blogathon run by Wandering Through the Shelves. Being the first Thursday of the month, we're getting another Oscar-themed edition of the blogathon, this time looking at Best Actress and Best Actor winners. This is obviously a fairly easy one, as one need only look at a list of winners. I thought for a bit about exactly how I wanted to go with this week's blogathon, and eventually decided upon three early Best Actress winners, but not the first three:

Coquette (1929). Mary Pickford got what was essentially a career award for what is frankly a pretty dire movie, an early talkie with a lot of silent film overacting and a melodramatic plot that, well, will either leave you rolling your eyes or howling with laughter. Pickford, who was pushing 40, plays a southern belle whose doctor father thinks her boyfriend (Johnny Mack Brown) compromised her, so in a fit of honor Dad shoots the boyfriend, leading to the way over-the-top courtroom climax.

Min and Bill (1930). Marie Dressler runs a rooming house on the waterfront for the fishermen, one of whom (Wallace Beery) is her lover. She's been foster mother to Dorothy Jordan, who has a well-to-do fiancé. But Jordan's biological mother (Marjorie Rambeau) shows up to spoil everything when she figures out that her daughter is about to come into a bunch of money. Dressler, who won the Oscar) has tremendous chemistry with Beery, and the finale is heartbreaking.

The Sin of Madelon Claudet (1931). You may have seen or heard of the Lana Turner movie Madame X. It's a hoary story that was remade multiple times under that title, and the basic story was cribbed for several other movies with different titles, including this one. Helen Hayes wins her first Oscar, forty years before Airport, playing a rural Frenchwoman who gets knocked up by an American (Neil Hamilton) who returns home; after falling afoul of the law with jewel thief Lewis Stone the child is taken from her and she resorts to prostitution to give the kid enough anonymous benefits that he can go on to medical school. Years later, when Madelon is old and sick, she gets tended to by... Dr. Claudet, who doesn't realize that he's taking care of his mom. In the other Madame X stories, the son becomes a lawyer who defends his mom in court not knowing her true identity. And then there's the similar To Each His Own (1946), wich won Olivia de Havilland the Oscar for sacrificing her son in World War I and only meeting him decades later....

Thursday Movie Picks #347: Best Actor/Actress Oscar winners

This being Thursday, it's time for another edition of Thursday Movie Picks, the blogathon run by Wandering Through the Shelves. Being the first Thursday of the month, we're getting another Oscar-themed edition of the blogathon, this time looking at Best Actress and Best Actor winners. This is obviously a fairly easy one, as one need only look at a list of winners. I thought for a bit about exactly how I wanted to go with this week's blogathon, and eventually decided upon three early Best Actress winners, but not the first three:

Coquette (1929). Mary Pickford got what was essentially a career award for what is frankly a pretty dire movie, an early talkie with a lot of silent film overacting and a melodramatic plot that, well, will either leave you rolling your eyes or howling with laughter. Pickford, who was pushing 40, plays a southern belle whose doctor father thinks her boyfriend (Johnny Mack Brown) compromised her, so in a fit of honor Dad shoots the boyfriend, leading to the way over-the-top courtroom climax.

Min and Bill (1930). Marie Dressler runs a rooming house on the waterfront for the fishermen, one of whom (Wallace Beery) is her lover. She's been foster mother to Dorothy Jordan, who has a well-to-do fiancé. But Jordan's biological mother (Marjorie Rambeau) shows up to spoil everything when she figures out that her daughter is about to come into a bunch of money. Dressler, who won the Oscar) has tremendous chemistry with Beery, and the finale is heartbreaking.

The Sin of Madelon Claudet (1931). You may have seen or heard of the Lana Turner movie Madame X. It's a hoary story that was remade multiple times under that title, and the basic story was cribbed for several other movies with different titles, including this one. Helen Hayes wins her first Oscar, forty years before Airport, playing a rural Frenchwoman who gets knocked up by an American (Neil Hamilton) who returns home; after falling afoul of the law with jewel thief Lewis Stone the child is taken from her and she resorts to prostitution to give the kid enough anonymous benefits that he can go on to medical school. Years later, when Madelon is old and sick, she gets tended to by... Dr. Claudet, who doesn't realize that he's taking care of his mom. In the other Madame X stories, the son becomes a lawyer who defends his mom in court not knowing her true identity. And then there's the similar To Each His Own (1946), wich won Olivia de Havilland the Oscar for sacrificing her son in World War I and only meeting him decades later....

The Big Circus

Some months back, the TCM spotlight was movies about the circus. This gave me the chance to record The Big Circus, which I hadn't seen in ages, and do a post on it now.

Victor Mature is the star, playing Hank Whirling, the proprietor of one of those traveling circuses that sets up a real big top and goes from town to town by train. However, he just lost his partner, Jules Borman, who was bigger and better financed, so the Whirling Circus is in a parlous state. Indiied, in order to go on the next tour, the bank is only going to provide a loan if they can send one of their employees, Randy Sherman (Red Buttons) on the tour to see that the money is being managed properly.

Actually, they send two people, as Randy brings along Helen Harrison (Rhonda Fleming). Her job is as a press agent, which miffs Whirling in part because nobody told him about this, and in part because she's a woman, and he doesn't know whether lady press agents can handle the difficult circus world if they're not the talent or born into it.

One who was born into it was Hank's kid sister Jeannie (Kathryn Grant). In fact, she has just enough talent that she could start practicing with the trapeze act, which includes Zach (Gilbert Roland), who also does the high wire, and Zach's spotter Tommy (David Nelson). But Hank doesn't want Jeannie doing the acts, especially not a dangerous one like the trapeze. Rounding out the major members of this circus are Skeeter the Clown (Peter Lorre in his fat period) and ringmaster Hans Hagenfeld (Vincent Price).

There's a fair amount of conflict since Randy and Helen are all business, and Hank thinks they don't understand the circus business. But there's going to be more conflict. One involves Jeannie's practicing with Zach, and another involves Skeeter getting too drunk to perform. Indeed, in one scene, Randy realizes the show must goes on and takes Skeeter's place in the performance of the clowns, even though he doesn't know the routine.

The biggest problem, however, comes when somebody decides to sabotage the circus, with half the train crashing and killing, among others, Zach's wife. This sends him into a deep funk. That's really a problem since the way for Whirling to save the circus is to get a performance in New York. For the publicity, Whirling's plan was to have Zach to a tightrope walk across Niagara Falls, which was actually performed for the first time a century before The Big Circus, by Charles Blondin. Needless to say, one needs to have all one's faculties and be in the right mental state to do something so dangerous....

There have been a lot of circus movies released, and as with submarine movies there aren't too many distinct plots one can do. So in that regard, The Big Circus isn't terribly original. It's competently made, and the circus performances are nice, but the movie as a whole isn't terribly memorable. It'll certainly entertain you for one watch, however.

Leadbelly

Another of the movies that I had the chance to DVR during one of the recent free preview weekends was a biopic I didn't know had been made, Leadbelly. It's going to be on again tomorrow morning at 5:15 AM on Flix, and again Friday on the SHOxBET channel that's a collaboration between Showtime and Black Entertainment Television.

The movie starts off in 1933, at Angola Prison in Louisiana. Huddie Ledbetter (Roger E. Mosley) is a prisoner there on the labor gang, when a visitor from up north comes looking for him. John Lomax (James Brodhead) is an ethnomusicologist, looking for authentic folk songs and the people who make them; Ledbetter's reputation apparently precedes him enough that such a northern college professor would come all the way to Louisiana to record him for posterity. This gives Huddie, who got the nickname "Lead Belly" (he spelled it with a space although a lot of sources, including the title of the movie, give it as one word) the chance to go back in time and reminisce about his life....

OK, that's a standard movie technique, but then it's a standard because it works reasonably well for a movie like this, especially when the subject of the movie is already known for something. Flash back a quarter century or so. Huddie's parents Wes and Sally (Paul Benjamin and Lynn Hamilton) are sharecroppers in western Louisiana. Huddie already has a talent for music, but he's also got a problematic personal life; after a girlfriend suggests that he's knocked her up, he decides that he's going to go to Shreveport, the biggest city nearby, and one that has a district where he might be able to become successful as a singer.

Not that it's going to be easy; Huddie ends up in the lobby of a brothel run by Miss Eula (Madge Sinclair). But she takes a liking to him and he's able to get work playing music, at least until there's a raid that forces Huddie to flee. He goes to Texas but his legal difficulties follow him. Even though he tries to live as a farmer under an assumed name, his musical prowess on the 12-string guitar and his penchant for getting into trouble follow him.

Eventually, he's imprisoned for manslaughter after stabbing a man to death, and spends several years in prison. But he's on the work detail for a function hosted by the governor, Pat Neff, and Huddie sings a topical song for the governor basically asking for a pardon. The governor says that his final act in office will be to grant that pardon. (Neff had, like many politicians, campaigned as being tough on crime, and couldn't well pardon somebody convicted of manslaughter until he was a lame duck.)

Obviously, Huddie does get that pardon, since he has to make it back to Louisiana to wind up in prison there for Lomax to find him. Interestingly, the final act in Ledbetter's story is largely passed over in the movie, with just a title card at the end pointing out that he did become a successful singer getting to sing on the stages in the big cities.

Ledbetter is a biopic about a man with whom I was vaguely familiar, knowing at least that he was a blues singer, although not knowing too much more about the man. The movie is interesting, albeit it rather formulaic. Gordon Parks directed, and since he started off as a still photographer it's not surprising that there are a lot of nice-looking montages here, many of them presented with Ledbetter's songs. In getting top-notch performances out of the cast he's not quite as successful, although it's probably worth noting that nobody here became a really big star, with Mosley's turn on Magnum, P.I. probably being the biggest.

Still, a movie like Leadbelly is a good jumping-off point for learning more about the life of an interesting and relatively little-known figure in American music. It doesn't seem to be on DVD at all, but it is on various streaming services.

Eyewitness

Christopher Plummer died at the beginning of last month. By coincidence, FXM had brought one of his lesser-known movies out of the vault for putting in the rotation: Eyewitness. It's going to be on again tomorrow morning at 3:10 AM with a repeat at 1:15 PM tomorrow, so I recently watched it to do a blog post on it here.

Plummer isn't the star, of course, that honor goes to William Hurt. He plays Daryll Deever, a Vietnam vet who now works as a janitor in a Manhattan office building. Among the offices is one Mr. Long and his son, both of whom emigrated from South Vietnam after the war. Daryll also has a friend Aldo (James Woods) who is a former co-worker at the building, and who believes Long might have been responsible for costing Aldo his job. (In an unrelated subplot, Aldo is trying to hook Daryll up with Linda, Also's sister.)

After getting home from work, Darryl likes to unwind by watching a recording of the local news, since he has the hots for one of the members of the late news, Tony Sokolow (Sigourney Weaver). In addition to being a newscaster, she's an amateur pianist whose parents (Irene Worth and Albert Paulsen) set up salon-type concerts to help raise money for their pet project, which is using that money to get refusenik Jews out of the Soviet Union. Plummer plays Joseph, who works with the elder Sokolows and is Tony's boyfriend.

All of this comes together one night when Daryll is doing his rounds in the building, and, when he gets to the Long office, finds that the elder Mr. Long is very much dead, having been murdered. Somehow, there's no suspicion on Daryll, which I'm guessing has to do with janitors and night watchman types having to check in and those records being checked. But at any rate, the TV station sends Tony over to cover the story and interview the people.

In order to get closer to Tony, Daryll decides he's going to intimate that he knows more about the case than he really does. Amazingly, it works, as Tony winds up over at Daryll's apartment on several occasions and even in bed with him once. This seems like a pretty blatant violation of journalistic ethics, at least if you ever thought that journalists had any ethics to begin with.

The police are obviously investigating as well, in the form of Lt. Black (Morgan Freeman before he really became a star) and Lt. Jacobs (Steven Hill). It's their cursory interviewing of Daryll that gets him off the hook, while they seem to imply that they've got their eyes on Aldo, who seems like a natural suspect. And he's not doing anything to make himself seem any less guilty.

Eyewitness goes on like this for about 100 minutes. It's an interesting enough premise with a lot of fine actors. But they've got a script that really lets them all down. Tony getting in bed with Daryll that quickly, especially if she knew about his crush on her, seems out of character, as does a decision later on to quit being a newscaster. I mentioned the irrelevant subplot of Aldo's sister; there's another irrelevant subplot involving Daryll's father. One moderately interesting section is the climax, which takes place in what are presumably the stables for the Central Park horse-drawn carriages. There's also nice vintage footage of Manhattan circa 1981.

Unfortunately, none of this is enough to make Eyewitness anything more than one of the least notworthy pictures in the filmography of any of the main stars. And as far as I can tell, it's not available on DVD or any of the main streaming services right now.

TCM Star of the Month March 2021: Doris Day

Doris Day (c.) in Storm Warning (Mar. 2, 7:00 AM)

We're into a new month, which means that it's time for a new Star of the Month on TCM. This time, that star is Doris Day, although I'm mildly surprised they didn't wait a year since her centenary is next April. At any rate, since she started her career at Warner Bros. TCM has a lot of her films to show, 30 of them in all if I counted correctly. The movies will be on every Monday in prime time, continuing into Tuesday morning on several occasions.

Doris Day singing "Que Sera Sera" in The Man Who Knew Too Much (Mar. 15, 10:15 PM)

The movies are grouped roughly chronologically, with her early movies this week, 1950s musicals next week, dramas mostly from the late 1950s on March 15, and two nights of more comedic movies rounding out the month. I should, however, point out that Doris does a fair amount of singing even in the movies you might not classify as musicals.

Rock Hudson carrying Doris Day in Pillow Talk (Mar. 22, 8:00 PM)

Unsurprisingly, once Day left Warner Bros. and started working at other studios, this led to movies where it's apparently more difficult for TCM to get the rights. Thankfully they have some of the Universal "sex comedies" like Pillow Talk, but fun things like Caprice or her final film, With Six You Get Eggroll, aren't part of the salute. Still, there's a lot for fans of Doris Day to love, and some stuff that'll be of interest to people who don't know so much about Day, especially the night of dramas on March 15.

TCM Star of the Month March 2021: Doris Day

Doris Day (c.) in Storm Warning (Mar. 2, 7:00 AM)

We're into a new month, which means that it's time for a new Star of the Month on TCM. This time, that star is Doris Day, although I'm mildly surprised they didn't wait a year since her centenary is next April. At any rate, since she started her career at Warner Bros. TCM has a lot of her films to show, 30 of them in all if I counted correctly. The movies will be on every Monday in prime time, continuing into Tuesday morning on several occasions.

Doris Day singing "Que Sera Sera" in The Man Who Knew Too Much(Mar. 15, 10:15 PM)

The movies are grouped roughly chronologically, with her early movies this week, 1950s musicals next week, dramas mostly from the late 1950s on March 15, and two nights of more comedic movies rounding out the month. I should, however, point out that Doris does a fair amount of singing even in the movies you might not classify as musicals.

Rock Hudson carrying Doris Day in Pillow Talk(Mar. 22, 8:00 PM)

Unsurprisingly, once Day left Warner Bros. and started working at other studios, this led to movies where it's apparently more difficult for TCM to get the rights. Thankfully they have some of the Universal "sex comedies" like Pillow Talk, but fun things like Caprice or her final film, With Six You Get Eggroll, aren't part of the salute. Still, there's a lot for fans of Doris Day to love, and some stuff that'll be of interest to people who don't know so much about Day, especially the night of dramas on March 15.

It's gonna be all right

Tomorrow is the birth anniversary of British actor David Niven, so it's unsurprising that TCM is spending the morning and afternoon with Niven's movies. One that I haven't blogged about before is Tonight's the Night, which will be on at 11:45 AM.

Rathbarney is one of those typically whimsical small villages in Ireland that populate the mind of John Ford and, apparently, some parts of the British entertainment industry. The village is more or less owned by General O'Leary, who seems to own all the land in the area but who is very generous with his tenants. He runs an annual hunt and has let everybody run up substantial debts.

But this year's hunt is different. The General is past 80, and rides a horse that's getting as elderly, in equine terms, as the General. He foolishly tries to take a jump that he'd done every year in the past, but this time around, the horse balks, throwing the General over a stone wall and down a small embankment. It's not an immediate death, although it is terminal. But before he dies, he gets to dictate some final wishes, among them being that all debts should be cancelled.

The General, having lived more or less alone, only with his servand Thady (Barry Fitzgerald) and no family, has as his nearest relative a great-nephew, Jasper O'Leary (David Niven). Jasper shows up in Rathbarney, apparently never having seen the place before. Also returning to the village is Serena McGlusky (Yvonne De Carlo). She's one of the two daughters of second-tier landowner Major McGlusky (Michael Shepley), and she left to go to Canada with her husband, who has since died and left her flat broke. Before she left, there was some talk that she might wind up with the local doctor, Michael Flynn (Robert Urquhart), although after her departure there was suggestion the good doctor might marry Serena's sister Kathy (Noelle Middleton).

At any rate, when Jasper arrives, he's shocked at what he finds. The General wasn't much of a property manager, although his generosity helped the village function. Jasper isn't very well off despite being an heir, and he has no intention of living in Rathbarney. His plan is to bleed the townsfolk dry, at least as much as he can get out of the town, before moving on to greener pastures. Complicating things is that the General's dying wishes somehow never made their way into the will, despite there being quite a few witnesses to those wishes. So Jasper is probably within his legal right to do what he's doing.

The townsfolk, understandably, resent it. Perhaps they were taking advantage of the General, but he was the only person with any means in the area, and it was those means that allowed the village to function in what seems to have been a symbiotic relationship. (How much longer the place could have gone on is never mentioned.) But now, there's no way they'll have either any prosperity, or even any fun in life. So they want to drive Jasper out, by violent means if necessary. They draw lots, and getting the short straw is the barkeep's assistant, Terence (George Cole).

There are a lot of elements here that should lead to a very fun comedy, but I have to admit that in watching it, it wound up being less than the sum of its parts. I think part of it has to do with the characters being unnaturally quirky, to the point of obnoxiousness at times, not being helped by the presence of Barry Fitzgerald. I can't blame Jasper for wanting to get rid of Thady. Niven does well with the material he's given, as does De Carlo. All of the non-Hollywood people do an adequate enough job, although everybody's brought down a notch by the material. And, according to IMDb, none of the movie was filmed in Ireland.

Still, as always, this is the sort of movie you should probably watch and judge for yourself, since it's the sort of quirky movie that some people will probably really like. It doesn't seem to be available on DVD here in North America, so you'll have to catch the TCM showing.