Reviews

Yes, Robert Walker was not a great Jerome Kern and Van Heflin was completely fictional, and yes, the story line was tedious and sappy, but...all those incredible stars in one movie (despite some of the greatest ones like Kally and Astaire and Robeson being left out) in some of the most beautiful songs ever written (some of the greatest ones likewise also left out like "The Way You Look Tonight") just coming at you one after the other in sumptuous settings: what an unrepeatable and irreproducible gem of a movie! And the fact that Kern missed the Lusitania by oversleeping was replaced by a more dramatic plot line that had him trying unsuccessfully to catch that boat (We're all so glad he didn't!) and follow Frohman to England I thought was an actual dramatic improvement on what really happened.

But you know, to me the most telling aspect of the whole movie which reflected so perfectly American mores and prejudices of the day was the fact that nowhere in the movie was the fact alluded to that Jerome Kern was---Jewish! And to this day none of your 40 other reviewers betrayed an awareness of this fact. The Jewish movie studio heads like Louis B. Mayer and Arthur Freed were not about to compromise the success of their glorious effort by turning any portion of the movie-going public off. But that thick American anti-Semitism of the day was about to receive its rebuke just a few seasons later in Gregory Peck's Gentlemen's Agreement.

An incredible video has just been released by National Public Television on the Jewish heritage in the American popular musical. And astonishing as it is to realize that with the exception of George M. Cohan and Victor Herbert (Irish), Cole Porter (Christian denomination?) and Andrew Lloyd Weber (?) all the great Broadway composers and lyricists from Jerome Kern to Leonard Bernstein to Stephen Sondheim have indeed been Jewish and Jerome Kern was one of the greatest of them all. But this movie did its best to keep all that a secret (and succeeded.)

There's something very Greek about this compelling story as one generation visits its sins upon its offspring. Though some of your reviewers pointed out that the Rafe/Peppard character does not appear in the original novel for the life of me I can't figure out what the story would have been like without him. The development of his character and his gradual integration into his father's affection and respect is certainly one of the film's mainstays and very attractive features. If there was no Rafe character in the novel then I can only conclude that the movie script writers improved the story greatly.

I found the emotional relations between the different pairs of characters endlessly fascinating and gripping: Mitchum/Parker and their icy 18 years of separation; Theron/Rafe and their finding each other as brothers; Parker/Hamilton as the over-protective mama and her boy; Theron/Libby and their sensitive and beautifully scripted love scenes followed by their heartbreaking estrangement as Theron chooses his mother over his true love; Rafe/Libby and their equally brilliantly scripted encounters one after the other from Rafe's quiet admiration of Libby at the car washing scene to Libby's unburdening of her soul to Rafe in the restaurant and their final happiness in marriage; Mitchum/Libby's father as the one's cold dismissal of the other is eventually returned by the father's revenge and his assassination of the one he thought had shamed his family. The beautiful and emotional moments just keep coming at you one after another.

Everyone's acting was brilliant, Kaper's score was understated and beautiful, Minelli's directorial pace superb, and the scripting outstanding. Having never heard of this movie before but having sat enthralled throughout its almost three hours I thought this one one of the finest movies I have ever seen.

This film falls into that genre of movies which celebrate education and the power of great teaching to influence and develop young minds and hearts especially through the medium of the fine arts. Besides the several films which your other reviewers cited I could add How Green Was My Valley, Renaissance Man, Konrack, Mr. Holland's Opus, The Chorus, etc. In this film the arts were represented by the students' staging of Tchaikovsky's The Sleeping Beauty, just as in Renaissance Man by the Shakespeare plays, in Mr. Holland's Opus by the ensemble music they all performed together, in The Chorus by all the music the students sang together, etc.

The CT character was admirably strong. Since he was by age a 7th grader in a 4th grade class he had already reached the stage of disillusionment and could strongly insist on the non-existence of Santa Claus as well as of a god in whose image they were all supposedly made but who had failed to solve the conundrum of two different images: white and black. CT wasn't having any of that and walked out.

I discovered that this was Harry Belafonte's first movie. Indeed he seemed rather stiff in his acting and delivering his lines.

I was surprised that the segregated school the students attended was a smart looking brick building. I always imagined them as wooden shacks. Was I wrong? A jarring note in the film was the white doctor at Tanya's bedside. It implied that black people weren't smart enough to become doctors, or more likely were prevented from being so.

I found the movie a rather sugar-coated version of black life in the south, but still, all the African-American characters were treated with respect and without condescension which I found admirable.

I was disappointed to discover that IMDb had no information as to the identity of the excellent trumpeter who performed on the soundtrack. Any way to retrieve this information at this late date? The silliness of this plot was that if this kid was such an expert performer on a valve trumpet (which he was) then why was he so interested in getting a simple bugle with no keys? Well, you could say that army bugles are keyless and that this was his ambition. But still, where had he ever learned to play so well, anyway? As to the racial prejudice in putting down black males as noted by another reviewer, the best answer to that was a comment I heard on another TV network about the famous Polish artist Arthur Szyk, who specialized in anti-fascist propaganda pictures during WWII. In one of his pictures (drawn about the same time this movie was made) a white soldier and a black soldier are walking side by side and the white soldier asks the black soldier what he would do about Hitler? The black soldier replies, "I would turn him into a Negro and put him down anywhere in the United States." That about sums up race relations in the US when this movie was made.

Such undeserved condescension on the part of most of your reviewers! I thought it was an absorbing romantic drama in which Stanwyck was at her very best. As she turned from youthful sparkly-eyed amused flirt in her first scenes with McCrea into the mature more gray-haired woman seriously urging him to do his political best for those whom he represented, her virtuosity as an actress of transformations came greatly to the fore. It was a pleasure to respond to her in her various moods of youthful love, a stunned mother's loss of her two babies, her vigorous denunciation of her father in his unconscionable request of her, and finally the resignation of old age in which she at last destroys the long-lived marriage certificate she's been carrying around through most of the story.

McCrea was also very good, especially in the scene in which he confesses himself guilty of the same kind of corruption so rife in the American West at that railroad-building time.

The story seemed to echo the true events of The Ballad of Baby Doe (opera) in its background of silver mining and marital troubles; and it certainly resembled Edna Ferber-Abby Mann's Cimarron in retelling the story of a marriage in which the husband spends years on the road away from his wife.

The 19th-century flooding in Sacramento was certainly up to date given the similar events happening in that city in our own times as well.

A great movie. Pay no attention to those detractors.

I too was struck by the anachronistic costumes (WWII garb for a WWI story) as well as by the inaccurate depiction of WWI airwars and bomb shelters as noted by one of your reviewers. I thought another reviewer's point well taken as to how did Taylor actually reacquire the little good luck charm after Leigh's death. But Taylor's Americanism as noted by another of your reviewers was accounted for by Sherwood's original play protagonist as actually being an American (himself.) So that we can accept.

But I noted too that while your reviewers referred to Sherwood's original 1930 play as well as to the 1931 James Whale original movie version an important predecessor to this story seems to have escaped everyone, namely Arthur Wing Pinero's celebrated play, "The Second Mrs. Tanqueray" (1893). In this play, famous in its time for its faux-realism and its eagerness to put the question of prostitution onto the stage, a lady with a doubtful past likewise aspires to membership by marriage into the aristocracy. But when her past is discovered she too chooses suicide as the only way out. The parallels between SMT and WB struck me immediately. Perhaps WB is even more directly related to SMT than either Sherwood or Whale.

Herbert Stothart's score was quintessentially typical. HS' method was usually to take familiar melodies (such as "Auld Lang Syne") and doll them up with fantasy orchestrations. You can usually tell a Stothart score when you hear it.

Great Catherine is the last Shaw play to have been made into a movie. And no wonder considering the slaughter these people made of this one. Not only is this the worst filming of a Shaw play ever created (though Sophia Loren's and Peter Sellers' The Millionairess gives it a good run in the awful department) it is for me one of the worst films of any kind that I've ever seen. If you think that people falling down drunk throughout a film (Zero Mostel's Potemkin) is amusing this film is for you. I however think this sort of baloney action is tedious and very unfunny. The only redeeming feature in this film is the Tiomkin score and the Russian peasants' greatly choreographed free for all at the ball. I used to think that what killed this film was the director's slowing down the action of the repartee from trippingly fast to turgidly slow but now having seen the film all the way through on TCM recently I've decided that every other part of the project likewise contributes to its stinkeroo lack of quality. Moreau and O'Toole swimming around fully clothed in the water of the destroyed model Bunker Hill battle---give me a break! To think of O'Toole participating in such a fiasco after Lawrence of Arabia, The Ruling Class, My Favorite Year, and countless other films in which he acts up a storm leaves me very unhappy and disappointed. I agree with another of your reviewers: if you want to see a film of a Shaw play this one should not be the one you see first! Both thumbs as far down as they can get.

It's amazing how great the movies have become in recent years. And Hugo is certainly one of the great ones. Some of your critics showed disappointment with the movie. I guess they were expecting something else. What I saw was a highly successful combination of biopic and documentary about a great film pioneer. We saw it only in normal vision without 3D so I can't comment on that. But all the sets and visuals were of course stunning and incomparable.

After all of Melies' talk in the movie about how he had to sell his films (about 500 of them) into destruction for making shoe heels, on the IMDb site we see the same 500 films going back even as far as 1896 when Melies started. So these films must be accessible in some fashion even today if only to have their credits listed. I remember back 20 years ago when I was residing in New Zealand the big news broke that one of Melies' films had been found in a local film archive and the discovery was all over the papers.

It was piquant to see portrayed on the screen real live contemporary to their time artistic figures like guitarist Django Reinhardt, painter Salvador Dali, and author James Joyce. My wife and I commented that one of the actors certainly resembled James Joyce and that's who he turned out actually to be in the film. When I saw the guitarist I said he reminded me of Django Reinhardt and that's exactly who he was supposed to be.

We were delighted to observe Scorsese's "Hitchcock moment" when he cast himself as a photographer taking Melies' picture in front of his studio.

What a precious way to become wrapped up in the early history of cinema through this extraordinary film! It reminded me of the movie The Road to Wellville (1994) which similarly immersed the audience in another time and period through its visual fineness and its portraying of genuine historical figures like the Kellogg brothers of Battle Creek circa 1900-1910,about the same turn of the century time as Hugo.

Astonishing film!

It was a most uncanny and moving experience to see Will Rogers Jr. portraying his dad on the screen and looking just like him. This was unusual but not unique in film history: Eddie Foy Jr portrayed his father Eddie Foy Sr in Yankee Doodle Dandy with James Cagney as George M. Cohan(1942);and Andre Melies portrayed his father, the pioneer filmmaker Georges Melies, in Le Grand Melies (1952).

I was greatly moved by the whole experience of seeing this incomparable movie. The touching and sensitive way in which the filmmakers left out Rogers' and Post's death in their airplane crash raised the film to an even higher level of emotionally appropriate story telling. The Billy Mitchell episode was also trenchant and documentarily appropriate as was all the other skillful weaving in of contemporary events. The interspersing of life on the ranch with contrasting episodes from the wide world of Rogers' travels and his reaction to the depression-era's tragic altering of people's lives was beautifully portrayed.

Besides the fine acting by all concerned the sets and costumes were absolutely exquisite in recreating their eras in the story. Victor Young's adaptations of contemporary pop and folk songs of the time were skillful. Seeing Eddie Cantor himself acting and singing in this 1952 movie was very special to someone like me who actually heard him constantly on the radio during that same time period. The Al Jolson and Marilyn Miller clips were archive footage I presume, but where they dug up such high quality Technicolor episodes to put into this film is beyond me. Perhaps these were 1952 impersonations. However there was one serious flaw in this otherwise brilliant and affecting movie, namely the time line of the musical and historical excerpts and episodes. The movie had Rogers wandering around for two years and finally winding up at the St. Louis Fair of 1904 where he proposes to Betty. However, previously in the movie he had first met Betty in Oloogah about the time Oklahoma was to become a state in 1907. As part of the background time setting for this episode at the Rogers' home much was made of the song "Hello My Baby, Hello My Honey, Hello My Ragtime Girl" which wasn't written till 1909 as well as "Home on the Range" which wasn't written till 1912. So this musical and historical confusion goes along with the "nomination" of Rogers in 1932 at the Democratic convention, likewise fictional. Despite all that, a great and beautiful movie.

Most of your reviewers certainly had an aversion to this film. One of them even asserted it had no music despite an excellent score by Max Steiner. I thought Barbara Stanwyck with all her emotional storms and plottings really sizzled. This must have been one of her best roles ever. I couldn't stop watching it though I came in somewhere in a courtroom scene after the beginning and missed all the prologues. I thought the emotional relationships of everybody involved were strong and fascinating. In contrast to most of your reviewers I thought the plot lines got wrapped up satisfactorily and clearly and I was quite happy with how everything finally turned out. Especially with Stanwyck and Brent trying finally to make a go of it basically because of their child. Call me soft hearted and sentimental but I felt for them and their final solution. Though this film rubbed most of your reviewers the wrong way I loved it and thought it was great.

All your other reviewers filled me in on the accuracy or inaccuracy of the movie's biographical storyline. And unfortunately I missed the first part of the movie when it was presented on TCM the other day. But once into it I was immediately struck by the magnificent acting of all the principals and the dramatic richness of Korngold's score.

But the thing that really sets this movie apart is the actual script itself. I can count on one hand the movies I have seen with a literate script as good as a fine play and this was one of them. Writers Theodor Reeves and Keith Winter have been unknown names to me up to now and they don't have extensive filmographies. I would certainly like to find more of their work. As the literary and well-formed ripostes and counterthrusts bounce from one character to another and as the priceless bonmots sparkle forth from Greenstreet's Thackeray I thought I was at a play by Shaw or Oscar Wilde. Greenstreet was much under-appreciated I thought by your other reviewers. His entertaining and witty part was really the best in the movie.

As a typical example of the quality of the script are Arthur Kennedy's words as Branwell lies dying in his sister's arms. Having collapsed in the street on his way to the tavern he comments that his collapses usually occur on his way home from the tavern, not on his way there.

I saw a recent version of Jane Eyre the other day on public television, the first time I had seen a film of it. I've never seen the one from the early 1940s. I was struck by the resemblances to Dickens' David Copperfield and Nicholas Nickleby and how Charlotte Bronte established herself here as a female Dickens.

One could easily become devoted to Devotion. A splendid movie.

I had never heard of this movie when I saw it tonight on TCM. I found it quite rewarding and intriguing as I watched it. The characters growing in their self awareness and in their relationships to one another was a touching aspect of the story. But the high point in the movie to me was Stewart's stand-up defiant and strenuous response to the board of inquiry, so different from his usual retiring character. It brought back those other moments in his previous movies when he stood up to the powers-that-be, such as in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, and told them to stuff it. That was quintessential Jimmy Stewart. I'm surprised that none of your other comments took note of this great dramatic moment in the film. I certainly agreed with the majority of your reviewers that this was one fine movie which should be better known.

The viewers of the original Welles 1942 production of "The Magnificent Ambersons" were no doubt often mystified as to the plot line because so many scenes were cut by RKO. This newer version restores at least three episodes to flesh out the plot. The first shows Aunt Fanny and the hapless uncle actually putting down their money in the lawyer's office for the doomed headlight shares and the second actually portrays the accident which took Georgie to the hospital rather than simply showing the audience a newspaper clipping about the affair. And the final scene at the hospital bed was nowhere to be found in the original.

As to the ending, the makers of the newer version definitely did not (despite the advertising) follow Welles' script completely since OW's own ending was a downer with Georgie being rejected. Both RKO and the 2002 remake both agreed on supplying a happy ending which I understand corresponds to Tarkington's own novel. To rationalize this one might agree that despite all of Georgie's vile behavior and misdeeds, still he was the son of the woman Morgan had once loved and to forgive and afterward see Georgie would always remind him of her. So it's not completely illogical and sentimental.

The one definite miscasting I found was that of Jennifer Tilly as Aunt Fanny. She was nowhere near old enough to be anyone's aunt, compared to the original's Agnes Moorhead who was just about right.

I found Johnathan Rhys-Meyers fascinating in his vivid overacting. He was the one you didn't want to stop watching. In contrast I found Tim Holt's version of Georgie in 1942 rather stiff and wooden compared to JRM's lively impersonation of a highly despicable character who made you want to jump onto the screen yourself and teach him some manners. The 2002 version brought out the Freudian Oedipal aspect of the mother-son relationship much more strongly than the original as well.

By the happiest of coincidences I saw TMA just after watching in a theater the movie "Me and Orson Welles." In the movie, based on Welles' production of Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar" at the Mercury Theater in New York in 1937, Welles is shown studying Tarkington's novel in his spare moments and underlining important passages from it as well as quoting lines from it during one of his radio dramatic appearances. Welles explains to another character that Tarkington was a friend of his family. I'm sure that Welles, the spoiled son of an adoring mother, found Georgie quite autobiographical even though he appears in another man's book. By adapting Tarkington's novel into his own screenplay Welles certainly found a character in Georgie with whom to identify.

Despite this film's age (38 years and counting) when I saw it last night this was the first time I had ever seen it. I immediately added it to my list of the greatest movies of all time. Its mixtures of genres while highly unusual are not unrepresented elsewhere: Dr. Strangelove, Monty Python, Rocky Horror, etc., would seem to fill in its category with other examples of the combination of social satire, psychological horror, off-the-wall musical numbers, etc.

But what really makes this film so special is of course Peter O'Toole himself. This has to be his greatest role as an actor and would have been the same for any other actor who might have succeeded in bringing it off so brilliantly as O'Toole did. Could anyone else have done it? Peter Sellers? Richard Burton? Laurence Olivier? Perhaps the latter had O'Toole's versatility to be able to go from one bizarre attitude to another without incongruity or the slightest skip of a beat. But I don't think Olivier was ever offered such a marvelous actor's showoff role as this.

But among the fifty or so critiques of this incomparable, stunning, and never-to-be-forgotten film which I read on your site, none referred to the very possible antecedent to Peter Barnes' play and movie, the celebrated Italian playwright Luigi Pirandello's play Henry IV, which also posited an insane monarch imagining himself to be a character out of history and the attempts of the monarch's relatives to cope with the situation.

As I read through all 28 reviews I was struck by the unanimity of opinion in favor of this touching drama. That is, until I came to the very last two which were completely turned off by it. The final reviewer even called it "sappy." I can certainly see where both sides are coming from. But I was impressed by the acting in this film, especially Wyman's.

When I went to look up this film I looked for it in the early 1940s, the time of the plot. I had to go up to 1956 to find it. One of your other reviewers also found it strange that it was made so many years after WWII. One thing I did find puzzling was the date of the Johnson character's death, in July of 1942. We never did find out the exact theater of the war in which VJ was supposed to be fighting. But by that date the allies had barely reached North Africa and the battle of Midway was about that time, a naval battle in the Pacific. Not too many casualties had yet been suffered compared to later when each Japanese island had to be individually fought for one by one..

It was good to hear another expressive and varied score by Franz Waxman. Did he actually write the father's song featured so centrally in the movie? It was also good to experience a movie which meant so much to so many viewers and to read their heart-felt reactions. I too was touched by it for all the reasons your other reviewers cited. But I could also feel the reasons for the reactions of the two naysayers. I would also include in "Miracle"'s category of poignant love stories one not mentioned by anyone, "The Enchanted Cottage" of 1945.

That dog Friday! In between Rin-Tin-Tin in the 1920s (also a German shepherd) and Lassie just a season or two later I discovered by seeing this film for the first time that there was also Friday, actor-dog extraordinaire! Not only was Edward Arnold deprived of a series and confined to but one more sequel to this very clever and entertaining movie in which his character as a blind detective might have gone on for quite a while, but Friday never got off the ground as a dog star either. And judging from his astonishing tricks and acting accomplishments in this film he would have continued as a canine sensation if they'd only have let him!

As to handicapped detectives, Edward Arnold's role seemed to be a clear predecessor to Raymond Burr's Ironside some decades later as a wheelchair-bound but equally efficacious lawyer.

As I watched this plot unfold, with the manipulative and steely step-daughter played so brilliantly and uncharacteristically (considering her later popular and more sympathetic roles) by Donna Reed as she constantly confronted her long-suffering stepmother Ann Harding, I could not help but be struck by the parallel to Mildred Pierce, filmed just a few years later. In that film the corresponding parts were taken by a likewise debuting and equally bitchy Ann Blyth and the much put-upon mother, veteran Joan Crawford. I wonder if the makers of MP had Eyes in the Night in the back of their mind as they wove their own plot.

And what is its genre? The backstage expose story; what theatrical life is really like behind those Broadway (and other) curtains. It certainly has a lot of competition: Singin' in the Rain both I and II (1929 and 1952), 42nd Street, Golddiggers of (You name the year.); Dames of 1934; Noises Off (1992) from the farcical side and A Star is Born I and II from the 1930s and the 1950s from the tragical side: not to mention Summer Stock of 1950: the list keeps rollin' along. So what makes this movie so special? And why are there so few comments about this stunningly great movie? Have so few people actually seen it? How amazing to see a younger Frank Langella pre-Dracula and pre-Frost-Nixon by 30 years! How amazing to see the fresh and talented Tom Hulce so pre-Amadeus! And yet another superb Stiller! What a wonderful line-up of talented people at their very best from so long ago! And such a script! Who was this David Shaber? So full of realistic disillusion and pathos compared to the usual sentimentality and feel-good comedy! As especially exemplified by the Star-Is-Born-like episode where the heroine achieves Broadway while the Langella character has to content himself with still another provincial tour.

Langella's subsequent hysterical and sadistic blowup against the star-struck Latin teacher and his granddaughter in which he vents his fury and frustration is just one of many fantastic and psychologically real moments in the film. (The Latin teacher and his love affair with backstage life certainly echo Marlene Dietrich and her seduced professor in The Blue Angel of 1929.) Another in the series of mercenary and cold-hearted agents like the late Kevin McCarthy who was preceded by Burt Lancaster in The Sweet Smell of Success (1957) and succeeded by Alan Alda in Clubland (2001) in movie history. The sexual liberation of the Hulce character recalls similar incidents in O'Neill's great comedy Ah, Wilderness.

And what a tribute to the vanished operettas of long ago: The Red Mill of Victor Herbert; Rose Marie and The Vagabond King of Rudolf Friml; The Desert Song of Sigmund Romberg etc. What satirical insertions of bits from the great plays like Romeo and Juliet. Tributes to the theater itself as expostulated by the star Langella. The richness and depth of this movie are simply endless. And to be saddled by such a title! Who could have an inkling of what this great movie is about from such a ridiculous and unsuggestive title? But on the other hand, what title could one have applied to such a magnificent drama which might have lived up to its stirring, emotional content?

PS: I just saw (2009) Frank Langella in his latest acting spectacular: as Richard Nixon in Frost-Nixon. How this great actor after 30 years simply goes from triumph to triumph!

I saw this film recently for the first time. I could see the parallels to Ferber's other very famous work, Showboat, which likewise sweeps an epic camera across decades of development in American history. But what really struck me was reading the commentaries by other viewers. Some went to great lengths to summarize Anthony Mann and his directorial career. But despite the numerous titles of his other films which were listed and judged not a single commentator mentioned what just might be his greatest film of all, Devil's Doorway (1950) starring Robert Taylor as a dispossessed native American and war hero. Please go to that movie's IMDb website and read my and others' very admiring reviews of this classic film. I saw Mann's commenting in Cimarron too about race prejudice and legal chicanery and couldn't help but be struck by those echoes of his 1950 masterpiece.

I originally saw this film when I was a boy of 7 (assuming it was in the year the film was released, 1945) and I've been waiting all those 64 years to see it again, since it stuck permanently in my childish mind as a delightful experience. Well, upon finally seeing it again on TCM, on February 2, 2009, like several other of your commentators, I still think it's a delightful experience, and I couldn't believe my ears when it was announced to be broadcast as a TCM premiere. I believe it's the non-stop snappiness of the dialogue in true screwball comedy fashion which makes it so endlessly entertaining. Up till now I've given the prize for snappy dialogue to the biopic of Dorothy Parker (name and year?) in whose opening scene all the witty Algonquineers throw verbal shafts at one another as the camera pans across them one by one; but BM is right in there as a contender for that title. The one-liners went by so fast I can't remember a single one of them; but they're all good. Who wrote such witty stuff? I was sure it must have been a Preston Sturges comedy until the deco logo flashed across the screen "An Edward Small Production." Edward who? This was the first time I had ever seen or noticed that name before. Yet on IMDb his bio and filmography as a producer are a mile long. I'll have to investigate more of ES' work.

Despite all the miscasting and other plot gaucheries complained of by everyone, and with which I agree, there remains something very quirkily unique about this movie. Certainly my wife and I couldn't take our eyes off it till it was over. Besides the wildly satirical send up of those British ceremonial upper-crust ways which so amuse us whenever the present queen and her various entourages make those occasional appearances on public television, the very undeniable miscasting of Montgomery which rubbed so many the wrong way left us with a high admiration of those acting skills of his which enabled him to portray so well a character very much against his normal type. And his last lengthy monologue from the accused's dock was positively Lear-like in its crazed insanity. Despite all its flaws the chance to see Montgomery, Arnold, and Gwenn all acting their heads off in the same movie make this a rare and worthwhile 86 minutes.

As I watched Platinum Blonde another movie I had seen not long before on Turner Classic Movies kept poking at my memory. It finally came back to me: it was The Animal Kingdom, made one year after PB of 1931. The AK starred Leslie Howard in the parallel role played by Robert Williams in PB, while the female determined to squash her new husband's bid for independence was played by Myrna Loy. Sure enough there was a sidekick representing true love in the person of Ann Harding corresponding to Gallagher, the role played by Loretta Young in PB. And sure enough in both films the frustrated husband leaves his wife for the sidekick after coming face to face with his being blocked in his true life's ambition by an over-controlling female. And in both films the main conflict centers around a man following a life's work of writing for magazines and newspapers. I wonder why this theme of a man determined to follow his star being frustrated by a wife determined to transform her new husband into a psychological and social lackey found such resonance in the 1930s. It was as if Philip Barry, the author of the AK, had actually been inspired to write his own take on this matter after seeing Frank Capra's version in PB. I wonder if we can think of other movies with plots along this same line. But of course the quintessential original play which illuminates this conflict between the creative man and the philistine possessive woman, to which both Capra and Barry seem to be expanding upon and developing, was Bernard Shaw's Man and Superman of 1903. But in M&S there was no sidekick. Man married woman and stuck with her for life, just as Shaw married his own heiress, Charlotte. And Charlotte, far from attempting to squash Shaw's talent and turn it into another direction as in these two films, became her husband's chief encourager and promoter for the 45 years of their marriage.

Previous reviewers have summarized the plot well. Likewise its pre-code frankness. But what makes this movie most interesting is the unusual context the various stars find themselves in. Think playwright Phillip Barry. What comes to mind: "The Philadelphia Story." Think Leslie Howard: "Pygmalion" and "Gone with the Wind." Think Myrna Loy: the "Thin Man" series. Think William Gargan: many later movies. Notice that Myrna Loy, later such an important star, has to take third billing after Ann Harding. That certainly wouldn't have been the case just a few years later. Good to see Ilka Chase in a screen role. I thought Howard and Loy superb in their acting, probably among the best work they ever did. Under the banal everyday polite surface of the dialogue and events little by little the characters expose themselves: Loy as the manipulative femme fatal and Howard as the man for whom the light begins slowly to turn on. For those whom the title puzzled, I caught Howard saying at one point, "We're just members of the animal kingdom."

Compare this film to Platinum Blonde of 1931 starring Jean Harlow. My IMDb review summarizes the parallels between these two films.

Everyone seems to agree that not only is Singin' in the Rain the greatest of Hollywood musicals but one of the best of any kind of movie ever made. That's what I think too. Its plot line of the arrival of movie sound points one inevitably toward one of the greatest comic plays ever written, Kaufmann and Hart's Once in a Lifetime, (1931) written equally hilariously about the same topic. And its reminding us of all the vocal pronunciation coaching that went on in those panic stricken days irresistibly summons up analogies to Eliza Dolittle's language lessons in Shaw's Pygmalion and My Fair Lady.

The musical goings on are very hard to focus on in the crediting department. Usually one name in the credits will suffice for a movie composer. But between orchestrators and music directors there are about 15 musicians in the crew list, most of them uncredited, including Johnny Green as music director and Alexander Courage, later of Starwars fame. The lush adaptations, orchestrations, and ballet numbers, all especially written for this movie make it a festival of musical riches, never mind the great songs themselves. I found it strange that Donald O'Conor's "Make 'Em Laugh" song never broke into the more familiar words "Be a Clown" featured in "That's Entertainment." Anyone wanting to read an excellent background book on the whole silent-to-sound transition should read "The Shattered Silents," by Alexander Walker (1978).

Having spent six years living in New Zealand I was especially gratified to see some of my old haunts and gorgeous scenery up there on the screen. When I was there 1986-1992 the people were still very upset about the goings-on between their native daughters and the visiting Americans despite 40 years having gone by. I was struck, in reading the reviews, both external and internal, by the insufferable condescension shown by the reviewers toward the finely nuanced shades of human emotion they had just been privileged to witness as created by author James Michener and director Robert Wise. Some of these people wouldn't know an authentic emotion if it shouted "Boo" at them. The clichéd use of the terms "women's movie" and "soap opera" ought to be finally banned from any attempt at serious criticism. Such marvelous performances by all concerned (both English and American) are to be treasured and appreciated rather than sneered at from some vantage point of aesthetic superiority on high. The emotional melting of the uptight moralistic Joan Fontaine and the pained, cynical Paul Newman are both heartbreakingly beautiful moments in this film. And the cottage pre-departure embrace between Newman and Peters reminded me of the similar moment on the beach between Lancaster and Kerr in From Here to Eternity of four years before. I think Until They Sail is one of the most wonderful movies I've ever seen.

Still in search of the late Heath Lamberts I watched my VHS of Club Land. In this film Heath plays a mediocre comedian in Alan Alda's stable. Like most of this movie he got his innings mostly into one cameo appearance, which he of course did superbly, like everything else he ever did. And everyone else did their cameo appearances superbly well too. It would take an essay to describe and praise every actor's/actress' brilliant cameo as each followed the other throughout this wonderful movie. A great film like this doesn't come along too often and when it does it needs more treasuring from your viewers and commentators. I see that Alan Alda garnered his share of nominations and awards for his role as the agent, and rightfully so. It's one of the finest examples of the actor's art I've ever seen, practically Olivier, who played a similar role as a broken down vaudeville comedian in his 1960 movie, The Entertainer. Writer/actor Steven Weber seems to have credits a mile long since 1984 and no doubt equally well deserved. This film is one of his few solely written scripts, and boy, should he be doing more of this! Such a touching, beautiful story superbly told, with psychological, ethnic, social, and historical nuances of the "old days" woven through and through. He should be the next Neil Simon. I'll look for more of his work.