OldieMovieFan Reviews

The Riverbank (2012)

made4tv

[7/10 · 2 May 2024]

It's wrong for imdb to place Kari Matchett third in the credits since not only does she dominate the entire movie, she's listed as the star in the film credits... which is as it should be. She easily outperforms the entire cast. Let us hope the editors fix that.

"The Riverbank" is a small, simple movie, with simple aims, not attempting a galactic view like the Thor & Captain America stuff that was all the rage in 2012, but it still has a lot of great performances.

The actors are much better than this script though, sadly, and with the cheesy production values, feeble music and cliché police sirens in the transition scenes, it ends up as a sort of Hallmark Mystery.

Kari Matchett deserves a lot better.

Theodora Goes Wild (1936)

Actually, Irene's Second Comedy

[8/10 · 29 April 2024]

The general commentary from IMDb's commenters that this was Irene Dunne's first comedy should watch her actual first comedic role, in 1935's "Roberta."

That movie gets classed as a musical, which of course it is, but it's 100% musical comedy. Nobody ever put Ginger Rogers in a 1930s movie without expecting a heavy dose of comedy and of course Astaire never did anything else, until his legs gave out in the '50s. That movie had paired Irene with Randolph Scott - a perfect choice for his lumbering, dim-witted football-player role in 'Roberta,' but not a great comedic partner for Irene Dunne. Essentially they were both comedy 'straight players' (Randolph Scott was much funnier than he's generally given credit for). But her studio noticed how well she performed with Ginger & Fred and soon loaned her out, this time not to her old employer at RKO, but to Columbia. Dunne travelled in Europe for a couple of months, trying to get out of making this film (almost certainly, to avoid Harry Cohn).

Dunne had a string of #1 hits in a row at this time, starting with 'Roberta,' then 'Magnificent Obsession' and 'Showboat' and winding up with "Theodora Goes Wild' before she finally missed the top spot, with Randolph Scott again, in 1937's "High Wide and Handsome," where this time the same mismatch of comedic talents had no counterfoil from Ginger & Fred and simply went flat. Still, the promise she had shown as a comedienne in 'Roberta' was fully confirmed with her performance as Theodora.

Dunne's comedy is always on a higher plane than for example Hepburn, and this movie give us a perfect example why. Where Hepburn's romcoms virtually always have the same crackpot ageing spinster role, clear into the 1950s (she's so old in 'The Rainmaker' that it's a perfectly hideous spectacle, the movie saved only by a dazzling performance from Burt Lancaster), Dunne's Theo is highly intelligent and she CHOOSES to become a screwy dame, turning it on and off at will and smoothly hoisting Melvyn Douglas on his own petard.

A perfect 1930s romcom, "Theodora Goes Wild" is one for the ages!

Rafter Romance (1933)

"Wha... on the 4th floor? It couldn't be!"

[10/10 · 24 February 2024]

Ginger Rogers made an astonishing 10 films in 1933, 3 of them all time classics ('42nd Street,' 'Gold Diggers of 1933,' and 'Flying Down to Rio') and nearly all of them still hold up today. That's basically one movie each month!

If you watch them in sequence, you can see a steady improvement in her acting and screen presence, and much of that improvement is due to her first important partner of the 1930s, director William Seiter. They made five films together and, in one of the greatest metamorphoses in screen history, Ginger transformed from a B-movie leading lady to a superstar.

'Rafter Romance' was the second movie that they made together, after 'Professional Sweetheart' (Ginger's offering for June, 1933) and already under his direction we can see her emotional range expanding. The movie itself is a good story, tapping into the classic 'Seventh Heaven,' and Rogers teams up with Norman Foster, her co-star in three movies of the early 1930s.

Foster didn't stay in acting very long, instead he moved to directing, but he worked with many of the great actresses of the day: Clara Bow, Claudette Colbert, Janet Gaynor, Carole Lombard, and his favorite co-star, Ginger Rogers. It's easy to compare his screen presence and timing with Ginger's famous second partner of the 1930s, Fred Astaire. Of course, Foster was no Astaire - didn't sing or dance - but his performances do have a similar light, breezy feel and they fit together well with Ginger's perfectly natural acting.

George Sidney, Robert Benchley, and Laua Hope Crews turn in their patented performances. But of the role players it is Guinn Williams who receives the laurels, for his funny modern-day impersonation of the dashing Knight Errant, striding forth from his chariot (he's a cabbie) to defend the Damsel from her various perils.

It's a really fun movie, simple and goofy and lighthearted. It's a B film, sure. But when you put it on that basis, 'Rafter Romance' is one of the best B films ever made.

To this reviewer, Rogers made 4 all-time great movies in 1933!

Random Harvest (1942)

LeRoy at his best

[10/10 · 22 February 2024]

Long considered one of the great films, Colman and Garson give superb performances in this terrific melodrama about love found, and lost, and about beginnings.

There are only fleeting moments that don't ring true; Garson's stage performance is amatuerish, Colman could have used some softer lighting and a coating on the camera lens for the first couple of scenes (although nothing can be done about the back of the head of a middle aged man) - but these things pale before their towering performance together.

LeRoy, who made a handful of masterpieces and many great, great films in his long career, was working at the peak of his powers when he directed this one!

Essential.

The Man Who Came to Dinner (1941)

The Namedrops Are Endless!

[6/10 · 5 February 2024]

Many films of the early '30s namedropped Clark Gable and Jean Harlow, and movies throughout the Golden Age of Hollywood dropped Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire's names, but it seems like this one goes through the whole catalog, from Ginger and Gable to Claudette Colbert and at one point even Woolley's own nickname 'The Beard' gets dropped!

Jimmy Durante just about explodes the set whenever he shows up, and Grant Mitchell gives one of his patented 'man who's been outraged beyond endurance' performances. Woolley does a great job in a role he clearly had rehearsed hundreds of times on Broadway.

Davis gives the least of the performances, which is odd since she was the headliner and always a fine actress; she said many times in interviews over the years that she had wanted John Barrymore in the role of Sherry Whiteside. It does feel as though she is 'mailing it in' with this one.

Ann Sheridan easily gives the best performance of the film, and it's one for the ages because she's marvelous.

Fun movie!!

Gunfighters (1947)

One of Scott's Best

[10/10 · 5 February 2024]

Randolph Scott had a long career, full of high points and some clinkers. "Gunfighters" rates right up there, and it has one of the best scenes he ever played - one of the best scenes of the Golden Age of Westerns.

It's the scene where he and Dorothy Hart fall to talking about the future, and they hit the mood exactly; it's just how two people fall in love.... all at once!

This was Hart's first film in a very short career, only five or six years; she refused to play the game by Hollywood's rules and soon left. Barbara Britton has a nice part as the younger sister in love with her father's ramrod, played by Bruce Cabot, and she is marvelous. This is one of Cabot's best performances, too.

You can see the influence of "Gunfighters" in dozens of Westerns made right through the 1950s, so much so that it's easy to think this film is cliched; but its ideas were used for the rest of the Golden Era, from the actions of supporting characters in most of Wayne's movies, to the crooked sheriff, to the most direct influence of all, the gunman desperate to hang up his pistols in Henry King's "The Gunfighter."

Gregory Peck gave a fine performance in his 1950 film but not a bit better than Randolph Scott's performance here as Brazos Kane, a man driven by his sense of honor and justice to do the very thing he hates, knowing it will destroy his relationship with the woman he loves.

Thunder in the City (1937)

The difference was Hollywood

[5/10 · 3 February 2024]

As most commenters here on IMDB have noted, this one was made in England, and has lower production values than one would expect in a 1930s movie starring Robinson. It isn't a great movie, to be sure, but it isn't much different than most "foreign films" in those days. Try watching a Claire Luce film, or a Gertrude Lawrence movie from the 1930s - both famous English stars of the day. While neither of them could approach the megawatt stardom or talent of Hollywood actresses, you can still see the best treatment that Britain could offer her biggest stars at that time.

Actually, "Thunder in the City" stands up very well to other British films of that day.

Robinson and Bruce dominate the film. Richardson, one of the greatest English actors, disappears so completely in scenes with them that it's obvious their training and experience in Hollywood placed them on an entirely different level from everyone around them.

The difference in quality that is so glaring to viewers today, is really because they are accustomed to watching movies of the '30s that were produced by Hollywood studios.

The Famous Ferguson Case (1932)

An early J.B. programmer

[5/10 · 27 January 2024]

Simple story about country vs. City attitudes, or rubes vs. Slickers. The credits proclaim Blondell as the star, with Grant Mitchell the other main actor, but it's really Tom Brown's show. The studios put quite a bit of effort into Brown, but he didn't have much in the way of star quality; he moved to supporting roles and had a fairly long career.

Blondell on the other hand has a strong screen presence, easily overwhelming the rest of the cast, but she doesn't have much screen time at all, and isn't given much to work with when she does appear. She completely overwhelms the second actress, Adrienne Dore (just as Kay Francis would do in 'Street of Women' and Ginger Rogers also, in 'The 13th Guest' a year or so later). It's easy to see why Dore had only a brief career in movies, even though she is stunningly beautiful; the camera loved all these great leading ladies and simply didn't love Adrienne.

Mitchell - and the film - could have been well served to have his scenes cut, since neither he nor they add anything to the movie.

Still, it's a fun little film, better than a lot of tv, and definitely worth watching for very early Blondell!!

The Last Five Years (2014)

Wow the music in this movie is abysmal.

[2/10 · 11 January 2024]

Having watched hundreds of musicals, mostly from the Golden Age of Hollywood, 1930-1960, but also just about all of the big ones 1960-1990, it's difficult to think of a weaker show than this one. Maybe one of those forgettable Grables after 1945? It's really sad to say that because you'd think things would keep improving over time but in this case... that's a no.

It's not Kendrick's fault (other than accepting the role at all) that this is so poor. She does just about what anybody could do with it. One wishes desperately for one of the High School Musicals, any one of them.

This movie is like a really, endlessly, long music video from 1981 that got rejected by mtv.

Stage Door (1937)

Perception and Deception by Greg La Cava

[10/10 · 6 January 2024]

Ginger Rogers had 3 key partnerships in the 1930s; with director Willam Seiter, with dancer Fred Astaire, and with director Gregory La Cava. With Seiter, she moved from B film leading lady to A-list superstar; with Astaire she invented and re-invented genres still being explored today; with La Cava she made 3 films, left musicals and Astaire far behind her, and became one of the great dramatic actresses of the Golden Age of Hollywood.

This dramatic period or phase in her career consists of only 3 films (4 if one correctly counts 'Stage Door'), but it was profoundly influential on all of Hollywood because of her complete departure from all her previous roles. Suddenly and to a certain extent permanently, studios that had insisted on typecasting actresses had the ground cut from under their arguments; the entire acting community immediately began clamoring for wider choice of roles, pointing to Ginger's successes. And then, having already climbed to the top of the serious-acting mountain, Rogers promptly abandoned drama, to make hugely successful propaganda films for the war effort.

Of the three films La Cava and Rogers made together, 'Stage Door' comes closest to displaying Ginger's own profession.

Audiences "trained" to watch films from only one point of view are sure to misunderstand this film. It is very, very funny but in no way is it Comedy. It is Tragedy. Nor is Hepburn important to this film, although on the surface it appears that she is. These fundamental features of deception and of perception are part of the depth and the genius of Gregory La Cava's films. Nothing is ever as it seems. His films are presented in the style and the jargon and slang of old Hollywood movies, and they are perfectly watchable on that surface level, without looking any further. But if one watches them carefully it slowly emerges that this director, almost alone among his peers, is grappling with perception and with truth.

Rogers' character, Jean Maitland, is a musical actress. She is terrified of the future, knowing just as Ginger knew, that for musical actresses a career is pretty much over at 30. In interviews at the time, Rogers talked at length about this very subject, how her goal had always been to keep her solo film career front and center, separate and right alongside her movies with her dancing partner. And she hinted that she thought it was time to move on. Numerous accounts state that Astaire was furious, even though he had been saying exactly the same thing - in writing - to the RKO studio executives since 1934.

Unlike Ginger Rogers, though, Jean Maitland isn't a superstar at the top of her field. She is dead broke, with no prospects and a grim future before her. Maitland knows the only way to get work is to get into producer Anthony Powell's limousine.

Rogers gives a stunning, quicksilver performance, one that probably can't be fully understood in a single viewing. Jean Maitland is nothing less than the alpha she-wolf of the Footlights Club. She bares her teeth, dominating the pack, and when new competition appears she instantly puts it in its place and keeps it there. Jean faces a brutal world with an equally brutal snarl.

Yet when one of the girls, Kay Hamilton (Andrea Leeds, with a performance so powerful she would have stolen almost any other film, but not this one with Ginger Rogers running on full blast), grows despondent Jean is sympathetic and kind and tries to help her out of her despair. When Maitland herself finally gives in and accepts Powell's advances, she has no illusions. She breaks up with her boyfriend and goes into the lair of the alpha male wolf with eyes wide open. She gets thoroughly drunk in order to take the next, hideous, step. She-wolf of her world, but still raised in the culture of Western society, she is devastated and humiliated to find Powell isn't willing to have any full-time partner.

Life among wolves.

So far, La Cava has given us a brilliant movie. But then it is promptly wrecked, although it isn't really his fault. Watching 'Stage Door' is like admiring the front of a sleek sports car and then walking around it and seeing the passenger side is smashed in.

Despite Pandro Berman's later myth-making, RKO Studios had lined up Margaret Sullavan, a great actress and one of Ginger Rogers' closest friends, for the role of Terry Randall, but Sullavan couldn't take the job. The studio brought in a failed actress, Hepburn, for the part. The film suffers greatly as a result, with Hepburn inevitably turning Terry Randall into the same character she always played - a rich, ageing spinster.

The film moves abruptly away from Jean's story and correspondingly droops when Rogers is not onscreen. It is a bizarre, jarring attempt by the studio to give screen time to another actress and it immediately causes all momentum to be lost, never to be regained. This failure of focus permanently damages the film. For the movie to have a full story arc, the actress who should have gotten the stage role is obviously Gail Patrick's character (Linda Shaw), both as reward for submitting to Anthony Powell's casting couch, and as emotional sledge-hammer upon the shattered Kay Hamilton.

Still, Rogers gives an amazing performance, one of the finest displays of acting in the history of film, fully rounded and emotional and with a lithe, muscular grace that overwhelms the screen. The best actress award for 1937 is arguably the worst mistake the Academy Awards has ever made. By this time, Rogers was well into her most important period in film, 1934-1946, and while critics acclaimed her performance in 'Stage Door' as a breakthrough, in reality critics were only now waking up to what audiences had already known for years; Ginger was a phenomenal actress.

Like another pair of masterpieces of early sound film, Jean Harlow's "Hold Your Man' and 'Dinner at Eight,' and like Greg La Cava and Ginger Rogers' last collaberation, 1940's 'Primrose Path,' critics have been quick to look at 'Stage Door' as a comedy. But that is only looking at the surface, and failing to see the emotional power of these stories. In fact, all four of these films are Shakespearean in their depth of character and the enormous emotional range required of their actresses, in plot, and in the use of humor to ease the pain of tragedy.

Woman Chases Man (1937)

Chasing a "cat" from a tree with a chair

[10/10 · 30 December 2023]

Charming screwball farce played by two of the greatest performers of the 1930s, Miriam Hopkins and Joel Mcrea, with a terrific supporting cast and a director with a fine sense of the absurd.

Hopkins, who suffered no fools and hurt her own career by it, loved working with McCrea and they made a quick series of five films together 1934-1937, all fairly successful at the box office and all great movies well worth viewing, with this one being the last. McCrea was moving into the greatest period of his career, 1937-1946, a time when nearly all his films were big hits. Late in life he credited Ginger Rogers and Barbara Stanwyck as the greatest actresses he worked with in his career, but he also spoke very highly of Hopkins and credited her with helping his career besides being a great screen partner. His wife Frances Dee was very popular with other actresses and the McCrea ranch was the locale for many script readings and scene preps, with Rogers, Stanwyck, Bette Davis and Hepburn being regular visitors.

In this movie, Hopkins is so caught up by the shenanigans in the scene in the tree that she briefly loses her polished acting voice and you can clearly hear her native Savannah, Georgia drawl. And no wonder - it's hilarious!

West of the Pecos (1945)

Mitchum & Hale team up for some lighthearted shoot-em-up fun

[8/10 · 30 November 2023]

Mitchum loved Westerns and played side parts in a dozen or more of them, many with Willam Boyd's Hopalong Cassidy stock cast, before he was elevated to B film star with "Nevada" in 1944. He's still learning how to master a set here but he's active and his confidence is growing fast and you can see the greatness to come.

Barbara Stanwyck & Jean Arthur had been dressing in Western garb long before this movie, in the '20s & '30s, but they generally played Western women who all wore those kinds of clothes on the range anyway. There's some light humor when Hale dresses like that since in this role, she is from Chicago and accustomed to wearing finery. She doesn't back away from a fight, and neither does her super-rich father, played by Thurston Hall. Hall started in films in 1915 and really knew his way around a set.

Mostly forgotten movie, this one is a lot of fun!

Heartbeat (1946)

For a people in despair

[10/10 · 26 November 2023]

Heartbeat was a huge hit, one of the biggest of Ginger's career. Rogers had been the most popular film star in Europe for many years, dating clear back to 1934's "The Gay Divorcee" and with her leading man, Jean-Pierre Aumont being a hero of the French Resistance during World War II, Heartbeat played in France for years. Millions of free tickets were given away in Europe, without any publicity, to give some small relief to the people in despair after World War II, and it appears the studio assisted in the effort because despite the huge box office receipts, profit was much less than usual for a Rogers film.

The bizarre outfit she wears, sport shorts with matching color high heels and a fur top! Seems utterly inexplicable. It is explained however, through the plot: Melville Cooper is selected to be Ginger's husband in an arranged marriage to gain her freedom from reform school, and the hapless bankrupt uses Jean-Pierre Aumont's money to buy her several outfits (Aumont is outraged at the cost). Thus Cooper's taste is responsible for that gauche bikini, which is so striking that people have talked about it ever since.

Lighthearted, swinging through poverty and despair to crime and on to one of the most elegant romances ever seen, "Heartbeat" was a perfect tonic for war-torn Europe.

Hondo (1953)

One of the greatest films

[10/10 · 26 November 2023]

Lots of critics say "The Searchers" is the greatest Western ever made, and they're welcome to their views but "Hondo" is better.

There's no better performance of a frontier woman than Geraldine Page's Mrs. Lowe. She runs laps around Donna Reed in "From Here to Eternity" and (after the shameless theft by hepburn in 1969), 1953 is probably the worst Best Actress selection in the history of the Academy Awards.

Ward Bond is at his peak here, and out of all his dozens of brilliant roles in many different genres, this is John Wayne's best performance. This movie was made in 3D but the studio was afraid theaters would balk at the expense so they used another system, developed by Fox. There are copies of the movie in 3D and even in the face of modern action films, seen on a big screen in the original format "Hondo" remains visually stunning. A far better story and movie than "Shane," Wayne's performance is better than Gary Cooper's in "High Noon." The actor, who largely directed "Hondo" because Farrow was in over his head, was well and truly snubbed this year.

The best Western writer, Louis L'Amour, teamed with the best Western actor, and a cast that strikes the perfect note, this one is a masterpiece.

The Doctor Takes a Wife (1940)

Occupational Diseases of the Mind

[8/10 · 23 November 2023]

Imagine meeting a giddy father-in-law, and then immediately afterward receiving a book with that title for a wedding present - and you aren't even married, but are only pretending!

Loretta Young is a feminist heroine who writes novels for spinsters. Through a series of misadventures which start the instant the film begins, she has to live a duplicitous life with Ray Milland, playing the chauvinist pig doctor who feels no less foisted-upon by circumstances than she does. He skewers Loretta remorselessly about her feminist leanings but the daggers come out when she learns that he is given a professorship simply because the dean prefers married employees. The dazzling Gail Patrick, Edmund Gwenn, and Reginald Gardiner provide great support for the leads.

Hilarious & charming, not quite madcap only because there are Keystone Kops and Marx Bros. In the world to compare, "Doctor Takes a Wife" is endlessly humorous and lighthearted, a perfect movie for wintry evenings.

The Lady Gambles (1949)

A fine melodrama, seems a bit desperate

[5/10 · 20 November 2023]

Stanwyck overplays her hand in this one, trying earnestly to make an important point instead of her usual confident, supremely natural performances. Movies about addiction and social ills were all the rage after Ray Milland won an Academy Award with 1945's "The Lost Weekend," and one wonders how much of that was the acting community trying to win awards and the studios trying to ride the coattails of a big hit.

"Weekend" though, is a masterpiece, with Milland thrilled to work again with Billy Wilder after teaming up on a Ginger Rogers smash "Major and the Minor" in 1942, and the rapport they had built continued to make the next film a great success on all levels. The director of "The Lady Gambles," Michael Gordon, was never in Wilder's league or even close. He was more of a Double A level... not ever getting to the majors. His career consists of a single hit, "Pillow Talk" and a handful of unmemorable movies. In 1949 he was on the edge of being blackballed for his political activities, though Stanwyck, a lifelong Republican, had no qualms about working with him and in the event they got along well, if nothing like Milland and Wilder. He had her read books on gambling to prepare for the role, since the actress knew nothing whatever about gambling, and some books about Freud, for background.

Stanwyck had made a series of great pictures in the 40s, but as the decade drew to a close, the government shook up the movie industry with a series of rulings against the studio system, so she was happy just to be working.

Preston and Stanwyck both give good performances, as does McNally, but none of them are at their best, and they can't overcome the preachy atmosphere that Gordon creates.

Cattle Queen of Montana (1954)

Dwan let her down

[4/10 · 18 November 2023]

This director is unbelievable, a true paradox of brilliance and folly. The film work itself is marvelous, camera and outdoor scenery, the tone and the balance. But the acting and script is some of the worst ever seen in an A picture. It isn't Stanwyck and Reagan, who give fine performances; it's everyone else. It really does seem like they took the various mannerisms and tropes of John Ford's Stock Company and handed out the parts to people they pulled off the street. "Here. You take the Carey Jr. Part. And you'll have the J. Farrell MacDonald part." Just awful performances from the character actors, one and all.

Compare this with a couple of fine Westerns from that year: "The Bounty Hunter" with Randolph Scott or "Black Horse Canyon" with Joel McCrea. We can see that Stanwyck dominates the screen just like those two quintessential Western stars did. Greatness.

The part played by Reagan was offered to Mitchum but he turned it down, wisely preferring "River of No Return" and "Track of the Cat."

This movie regularly played late nights for many years; ladies of a certain age no doubt remember it playing in the background at slumber parties when they were children. Stanwyck could be seen as a role model for those girls, in a way; powerful, active, direct, and bluntly honest both in her performances and in her life. She was loved throughout the industry, an absolute survivor who triumphed over an appalling youth as an orphan, rose through burlesque and vaudeville and stood on her own feet. Like her lifelong friends Joel McCrea and Ginger Rogers, and of course her husband of many years, Robert Taylor, she was a very successful rancher, and like them she lived a quiet life away from celebrity. Her best friend, Joan Crawford, admired her above all other actresses, and Rogers and McCrea held her in the highest professional regard.

But even an actress of that caliber, surrounded by a great crew and a fine leading man, can't rescue acting as bad as seen from this cast. Director Dwan should have been running the second unit and left the supervision of the performances to someone else on this one.

Union Pacific (1939)

One of the greatest Westerns ever made, DeMille lays down a masterpiece.

[10/10 · 15 November 2023]

Criminally forgotten for many years, "Union Pacific" was a juggernaut at the box office, bringing in more than $5,650,000 and coming in at #2 for 1939 - widely considered the greatest year in film history - behind only the greatest box office movie in history, "Gone with the Wind."

Stanwyck's accent notwithstanding, her performance is as epic as the film itself. She had an ability to keep her face perfectly still and use only her eyes to convey emotion, and her hands are always expressive. McCrea strikes the perfect pitch as the supremely confident railroad troubleshooter, matching the great actress stride for stride in arguably his greatest performance.

The supporting cast was not left behind; Bob Preston, Brian Donlevy, Lynne Overman are all terrific in their roles. Even the small, detail characters are terrific - Francis McDonald as road builder General Dodge, Joe Crehan as General Grant.

The action scenes are awesome, from fist fights to barroom brawls to train wreck, and the love triangle is too.

See this one!

Runaway Bride (1999)

dust off the 1930s romcom

[6/10 · 11 November 2023]

Old fashioned movie that rolls the years away, straight back to the films of Claudette Colbert - "Palm Beach Story," "It Happened One Night" - and Jean Harlow - "Girl From Missouri," and Ginger Rogers - "Vivacious Lady," "Bachelor Mother." Runaway Bride directly lifts its ideas from Ginger's movies "Tom, Dick, & Harry," and "It Had To Be You." It doesn't matter if the scenes aren't original - Ginger performed a girl-fixing-the-car scene marvelously in 1933's "Sitting Pretty" - it only matters if the actors disappear into the role.

"Runaway Bride" doesn't have the same kind of charming screen presences as those old movies, but it isn't the leading lady's performance that suffers in the comparison. Julia Roberts would absolutely have been a star in the Golden Age of Hollywood; after all, Hepburn was around. But there's no reason to set the bar as low as that; Roberts is always compelling and natural and has a vitality and vivaciousness that reminds sharply of the great romantic comedy actresses. She is, perhaps, more of a funny personality than a comedienne; Roberts' comic performances are closer to the marvelous Jean Arthur than to Harlow. They both rely on their own personality rather than assume a character. But Roberts always has infinitely more charm and wit and acting ability than Hepburn. Her verbal timing is brilliant, and although at times she's rather self-consciously acting, hitting her mark late, falling out of character, etc., she never collapses into those hammy, stagey Hepburnisms that are so garish and glaring.

A lot of it comes down to the leading man; Jimmy Cagney, Joel McCrea, David Niven, Jimmy Stewart, Clark Gable, George Brent, the leading romantic men of Golden Age Hollywood have a force that is altogether missing in Richard Gere. Clark Gable played plenty of reporters, and he got hit plenty of times - "After Office Hours" with Constance Bennett - but when it happened, Gable was going to get off the floor and give the guy a serious thrashing. Even though he was every bit the pretty boy that Gere was, Joel McCrea had a powerful screen presence that Gere just isn't capable of achieving.

But even Gere's weak appearance isn't the main issue of "Runaway Bride." His charm carries him through and he had real acting ability. The real problem is, one can't escape the idea that both Roberts and Gere frequently think their scenes are hokey. It doesn't matter if a scene is hokey because audiences love to feel romantic. Roberts and Gere can't pull it off like Jean Harlow and Clark Gable or Ginger Rogers and Jimmy Stewart did, and it's because those actors and actresses knew that most of the world's romantic scenes were already ancient in Ancient Rome, and it does not matter, because the play's the thing.

Stingaree (1934)

A curiously poor acting performance from Irene Dunne

[4/10 · 29 October 2023]

Her singing is always marvelous, and her acting generally is too, so this film was a surprise. Dunne is very stagey, even hammy in this movie, quite a disappointment since she was one of the great actresses of the 1930s. Compare this with her marvelous performance less than six months later in "Roberta," where she and Ginger Rogers light up the screen.

This adds credence to the opinion that Bill Seiter was a much better director than he's been given credit for; that later film is immensely superior to Wellman's efforts here. Budget constraints aren't really the issue with this movie - the sets are simple but all that are required. It's the acting that makes the movie droop. Reginald Owen gives the best performance in his bit part as a mistreated official, a role he patented and could do in his sleep. Boland & O'Connor always played the same character (Owen more or less did too) yet their performances which add steam to most of their movies just seem trite in this one.

It's always worth watching a movie that has Irene Dunne singing, but there isn't much more to this one.

The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938)

In the running for best movie... ever

[10/10 · 24 August 2023]

For this reviewer, there are very, very few films in the same category as "The Adventures of Robin Hood."

Maybe "Raiders of the Lost Ark" comes the closest to catching the spirit of the thing, but although Harrison Ford has a terrific comic wit, he doesn't have the same lightness of heart that Errol Flynn had. The bounce in Flynn's step comes right off the screen and stays with you forever.

Star Wars, the Indie series, LOTR, & Pirates of the Caribbean are all tremendous achievements - but it took all of them multiple films to get what Flynn and DeHavilland and Alan Hale did with the blast of fun that is "The Adventures of Robin Hood."

In Person (1935)

The Backstage Story

[10/10 · 18 August 2023]

RKO bought the rights to "In Person" as the basis for the next Ginger Rogers & Fred Astaire musical following the massive 1934 hit "The Gay Divorcee."

In the event, 1935 saw the team produce "Roberta" and "Top Hat," two classics that still stand at the peak of movie history. Ginger brought out another film in between, the all-time essential "Star of Midnight" with William Powell. So it was that by the end of the year, it appeared the studio was facing a write-off with "In Person." But Rogers and producer Pandro Berman saw a way to make money with it - by turning it into a Ginger solo movie. They brought in George Brent, favorite leading man of Ginger's lifelong friend Bette Davis, a fine cast of supporting actors, lined up William Seiter, director of "Roberta" to run the film, and set down to work.

People familiar with Rogers' catalog of films with Astaire can see that "In Person" would not have been a good vehicle for Fred. The George Brent character, Emory Muir, is far too masculine and outdoorsmanlike for the rather petite city-dweller Fred Astaire. Fred was, from first to last, very range-bound in his roles. George Brent's screen presence is much closer to John Wayne or Joel McCrea than to Fred Astaire, and Brent is much the better choice for this role.

On the other hand it is a terrific vehicle for Ginger. She was able to indulge some of her various passions - for disguises, and multiple characters, complex situational comedy, and for the great outdoors, not to mention her amazing quadruple threat acting/singing/comedy/dancing abilities and that famous in-your-face combativeness towards her love interest. Her enthusiasm really jumps off the screen. The film is filled with incongruities; Carol Corliss is traumatized by crowds, yet for the intro she takes off for a supremely confident, extroverted stroll through crowded streets; Emory acts like a complete chauvinist, yet he's perfectly happy to do anything Carol asks of him, even to climbing a tree and waiting for her to call. There are also some belittling points about rural society: the people around the two stars in the city simply shrug knowingly at man and woman taking off for a week in a cabin by the lake, while the rural people are so scandalized that they demand a shotgun wedding. Alan Mowbray: "How charming..." This movie was the only chance Ginger had to play across from George Brent, and they both loved it. Although they tried several times to work on another film, their schedules never lined up. They only worked together one other time, in a 1939 radio version of "She Married Her Boss."

It's clear that the picture didn't get the kind of budget that it would have received if Ginger had been playing across from Astaire; the two dances in the film show this very plainly.

The first, astonishing, dance, which might be called 'Showing Off for Emory,' has a tiny set, in the cabin; there's no way to move the camera back, and the result is a very restricted setting, far too small for the thermonuclear Ginger Rogers at the peak of her powers. Ginger by herself completely overwhelms the set - it would have been impossible to add a dancing Fred Astaire into that tiny space. The scene is only saved from chaos, quite oddly, by the perfect stillness of a thoroughly dumbstruck George Brent. This dance, choreographed by Hermes Pan, is a dazzling romp over chairs, up and down stairs, and the taps are done at a torrid pace. It is one of the greatest dances in film, easily the equal of any of the fast dances that she did with Astaire, but criminally marred by far too small a set and the wrong camera (virtually the only directing blunder that William Seiter made in his five films with Ginger, forced by the small budget).

The second dance, again choreographed by Pan, also shows the limited budget of the film. This time the set is appropriately large, a nightclub in a terrific 'film within the film' scene. It's a more typical Broadway dance, the star fronting a chorus line of male dancers, as seen in films by virtually every major dancing star from Grable and Powell to Monroe and Jane Russell, and this type of dance continued to be seen long after the Golden Age had passed. There are two gimmicks, or 'buttons'; the first has Ginger strolling on a revolving table, the second 'button' has her leading all the men around by a string, or rather a bunch of strings, pulling them around at will. Rogers is stunningly beautiful. It's a fine showpiece, but it's clear that it would have been improved with a bigger budget. Astaire, who starred in front of chorus lines many times (c.f. The finale of "Shall We Dance"), has no place here either.

Still, the whole idea, from a business standpoint of view, was to make the studio's investment pay for itself. And in a typically boneheaded move by RKO, the studio released a Stanwyck movie, "Annie Oakley," on the same day, leaving the two films to compete for the same audience. Nevertheless, "In Person" was a fine success, peaking at #4 and generating about $147,000 in profit.

"In Person" rounded out arguably the largest output of truly great films of any year in history by an actress, three #1 hits and all five films in the top 5 at the box office; two terrific romcoms, "Romance in Manhattan" and "In Person," an all-time great slueth comedy, "Star of Midnight," and two masterpieces of musical film, "Roberta" and "Top Hat." Quite a movie, and quite a year.

Salome (1953)

Luminous Rita Hayworth was box office gold as Salome.

[8/10 · 12 August 2023]

America had triumphed in war over powerful, evil forces and many thought of her as a modern Rome, glittering at the summit of civilization. Hollywood, recognizing the mood, produced a number of spectacular films designed to feed the public's desire to be told how great and righteous they were. Salome is a classic example and was a giant hit.

The critics didn't care much for this film, and their arrows all reach their mark; stagy over-acting, plodding narrative, too much directing by Dieterle, etc. Etc. Mostly quite true, although it should be said that the film only seems slow today because the modern audience has a different point of reference, having watched the blistering speeds of the films of George Lucas and Steven Spielberg and the constant bombardment of the Internet. But these criticisms didn't matter to audiences then, and they shouldn't matter today. Turn off the cell phone for a couple of days before viewing!!

This is a film about pageantry and royalty, and above all, about the glorious beauty of its star. Hayworth dominates the film as an ancient vamp with a strong character, a role played by many actresses before and after but Rita's performance stands out thanks to a confidence that comes right off the screen. Her legendary dance is a dazzling success!!

You'll Never Get Rich (1941)

Emotion and Technique

[6/10 · 12 August 2023]

After RKO Studios told Fred in 1939 that they had no more work for him, he bounced around Hollywood for a few years making much less expensive (though still quality) movies until Bing Crosby came along. "You'll Never Get Rich" is a good example. Most of the film is set around army barracks - not exactly an extravagant film set - and the general production quality is a far cry from the Ginger Rogers cycle of films that audiences had grown accustomed to in the 1930s. For example, compare the spectacle of "The Continental" or "The Piccolino" with the dance on top of a wooden tank finale of "You'll Never Get Rich" and it becomes obvious that studios had absorbed the lesson learned by RKO; costs must be kept on a very strict budget or an Astaire movie would lose a lot of money. Still, his name carried weight with producers and he stayed active.

Many reviews talk about the weakness of the plot of "You'll Never Get Rich," but actually Astaire musicals are quite consistent in their lack of strong plots. Ginger used to comment in interviews that musicals need a somewhat weaker plot because people want to focus on the music. One of her great post-Fred musicals, "Roxie Hart," is an example; people watch musicals to see Ginger's sizzling tap dance on a prison staircase, not ponder the universe.

Hayworth was Fred's first real partner after Rogers moved on. His other partners Fontaine and Powell had such glaring deficiencies - Joan couldn't sing or dance, Eleanor couldn't sing or act - that not even Fred Astaire could rescue those films. Rita could certainly dance and her acting was acceptable although certainly no competition for Rogers (or Fontaine either, for that matter), and the studio didn't give her anything to sing even though she actually had a good voice.

Rita's dancing is exciting, technically flawless, but there is no attempt to reach the profound depth of emotion that Rogers and Astaire display in their iconic romantic dances. Fred never found another partner that could reach the heights he climbed with Ginger... "Night and Day" or "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" or that profound swoon in "The Last Waltz"... and Fred never created that type of dance for anyone else. He stays within a narrow range with Rita Hayworth and while the technique can't be faulted, their dances can't have the same expressive power as those that he created with Rogers.

This was Hayworth's breakout role, and in later years she said that the only films she made that she thought were any good, were the two she made with Astaire.

It Had to Be You (1947)

Dreams really do come true

[9/10 · 4 August 2023]

"It Had to be You" was Ginger Rogers' first box office miss since 1934's heavily censored "Upperworld," although it was still profitable. By this time, she had had 18 #1 films; more number ones, in 15 years, than Katharine Hepburn would have in her entire 60 year career. Rogers was surprised at Cornel Wilde's ability to play comedy, which he wasn't known for, and had high praise for his work as her leading man. And her praise is well-deserved, he does a terrific job, working easily in a role built for a George Brent, Dennis Morgan, or early Gable or Cagney.

In her autobiography (and in several biographies, too), Ginger Rogers remained mostly silent about the time period around 1947-1949. She talks briefly about making this film and then leaving for the Rogue River region, where she famously owned a ranch. Several modern commenters have rushed to speculate what was happening: they guessed that she was hiding from the Red Scare / HUAC era, and that her mother's speeches were damaging Ginger's career, etc. Aside from this display of the most glaring lack of knowledge about one of the most confident actresses who ever lived, they could have simply read her memoirs which indicate she was proud of her mother's stance and she asked that people read her mother's speech itself instead of newspaper accounts. Others have speculated that she was trying to keep her marriage intact, and still others, that she was exhausted from a long career and entitled to some time off or even retiring.

The trade journals, however, show that she was steadily working behind the scenes with good friends like Joel McCrea and Barbara Stanwyck, trying to get Enterprise Productions up and running. Founded by 'that notorious Red Commie Pinko actor,' John Garfield, Enterprise tried to break in to the Hollywood studio oligarchy the same way that Pickford, Fairbanks, Griffith & Chaplin had done years earlier with United Artists. Along with other Hollywood royalty like Ingrid Bergman, Joan Crawford and Charles Boyer, Rogers traveled to cities across the country to work with exhibitors and distributors. McCrea had a solid box office success for the studio, "Ramrod," with Veronica Lake, and the studio produced advertising for a Ginger Rogers film called 'Wild Calendar' which was to follow "It Had to be You," but it was never made. In spite of the support of these glittering names, the company couldn't break the stranglehold of the studio system, and folded. That business failure is probably the most likely explanation for Rogers' silence about this time in her life.

The point of "It Had to be You" is that wow!! Dreams really do actually come true, and for Ginger Rogers the dream had come true and would continue for many decades to come. But alas, for that group of actors, the business dream just didn't happen.