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Reviews
Kiss Them for Me (1957)
"Kiss Them" : A sub-par film with a notable script.
I watched most of this 1957 film on Turner Classic tonight. I had never heard of it. It promised to be a "four Navy buddies on shore leave and assorted pranks" flick, particularly with the thought that it featured Jayne Mansfield. I figured that Cary Grant really needed to pay alimony. However, two things about the film kept me from turning it off. The first was Suzy Parker. The second was very much unexpected and it was a ribbon through the screenplay which began to shine in Grant's lines telling off the ship building tycoon played by Leif Ericson. While I realize that the film was made twelve years after the close of the Second World War, this was no sentimental script which appealed to an audience's passions for a war in progress. Grant's Navy aviator was sick and tired of the war, of combat, of the blood and gore, of picking up after the guy next to him is blown into twelve pieces. Grant's character again displays a cynicism about the war when he tells a whopper to an inquiring reporter in a nightclub.
The screenplay was even more remarkable when you realize that this movie was released in 1957....just on the late fringe of McCarthyism and the Second Red Scare.
It is a tepid film at best, but a tip of the hat to Cary Grant for portraying a realistic warrior who conveys that he is sick and tired of the gore of war.
Hired Wife (1940)
Why is this film invisible?
I saw this film for the first time tonight on Turner Classic Movies. As a fan of films of this period, I had never heard of it. As a fan of Rosalind Russell, I was surprised that I had never seen it mentioned in essays or articles about her career.
Brian Ahearn was OK, but Russell is her comic best here, much as she is, of course, in "His Girl Friday".
Another spark in this comedy is the always reliable Robert Benchley as Brian Ahearn's attorney and friend of many years. He is vintage Benchley, with the droll line uttered with a poker face, a sly double take, and more than one sequence involving snoring and talking in his sleep....the sort of comedic genius which Benchley is remembered for.
Very enjoyable.
Keeper of the Flame (1942)
Obvious as to who Forrest was meant to refer to.
Spoiler Alert.
After hearing about this film for years, I finally watched it tonight on TCM. For the comments about it having been an echo of "Citizen Kane" and a reference to William Randolph Hearst, it seems to me that the "great man" is based on Charles Lindbergh. After all, Lindbergh was the most admired public figure in the U.S. after the 1927 trans-Atlantic flight and then following the kidnapping and murder of he and Ann Morrow Lindbergh's son in 1935. But the kicker was Lindbergh's involvement, nay his leadership of the America First movement that cinches for me that Mr. Forrest's "great man" -- who is shown to have secretly been behind a conspiracy in the guise of a patriotic movement -- is meant to refer to Lindbergh.
Command Decision (1948)
Wonderful script.
I watched "Command Decision" last night on TCM. It's the first time I've seen this film in over twenty years...perhaps longer. What struck me throughout this movie is the script. Some have complained that "Command Decision" was "too much like a stage play". Yes, it was adapted on Broadway from the stage play adaptation of a novel. The Broadway production ran for a year. Nonetheless, this film's attraction is both good work by the cast of A list Hollywood actors and, equally, a well written script which was intelligent and believable. In at least two instances, there are lengthy monologues -- one by Walter Pidgeon and one by Clark Gable -- which were book ended by rapid fire questions, responses, or comments. The script is outstanding.
Red Planet Mars (1952)
God, apparently, is a Martian.
This could have been an interesting science fiction film : no special effects, no space ships, no flesh and blood monsters. It could have been a tale about contact with beings from another world. Instead, it was made as a Cold War pot boiler, complete with highly principled Americans with religious fervor and evil empire Russians who are not about to tolerate religious worship.
Was it just an accident that the character of the President of the U.S. bears a striking resemblance to Dwight Eisenhower? And the film was made in 1952...the year before Ike became president.
The story had real possibilities, including another scientist (than the Peter Graves character) who was involved in the contact with beings on Mars, which could have made for a thinking person's film about human-non-human communication. While there were very real fears and international conflict in 1952, the producers gave in to the Red Scare and made a period piece out of what could have been a thoughtful movie.
The Last Hurrah (1958)
Delightful film.
I believe that I have watched "The Last Hurrah" six or eight times. It is not history. It is John Ford. Well, ... there's a bit of political, social and cultural history in this film and in the novel by Edwin O'Connor. It is a commentary, from Ford's point of view and with the customary Ford schmaltz, on big city politics in the first half of the 20th Century. Although the film never mentions the locale, it is Boston. The novelist, O'Connor, a New Englander from Rhode Island, admitted that the Frank Skeffington character was based roughly on James Michael Curley, who served as mayor of Boston four different times and as governor or Massachusetts and as a Congressman from Massachusetts. Curley wrote his autobiography in 1957, a year after O'Connor published his novel.
Ford uses many of the stock company actors which he regularly used in the 1950s and '60s. But Spencer Tracy is splendid as Skeffington. When I later read the novel, I thought of Tracy as Skeffington and I constantly heard the harp music theme used in the film in my mind. "Ditto, Ditto, Ditto. How do you thank a man for a million laughs?"