Reviews

I was long awaiting this film as I love all things Irene Dunne but I must say I was disappointed. "Lady in a Jam" is a strange amalgam of screwball comedy and classic romance. It never seems to gel as either. I kept waiting for the film to pick up pace but it continues on at a slow, lackluster pace. There are the talents of character actors Eugene Pallette and Samuel S. Hinds to boost the film and leading man Patric Knowles is certainly handsome. But the movie just never really interests me. The only thing I can imagine is that Miss Dunne and her cast mates had an overriding interest in roughing it in Arizona, the site of its on location scenes. La Dunne is just as if not more beautiful when she goes "au naturel" as a gold prospector. She just glows. Jane Crawford, the little girl who plays "Strawberry" has the best role in the movie. The wisdom that she spouts to Irene Dunne's character is priceless. Ralph Bellamy as Dunne's hapless corn seed suitor is largely repeating the part he played opposite Miss Dunne in the much superior "The Awful Truth" five years earlier in 1937. I guess this movie would be okay if you're stuck inside on a rainy day or sick in bed with a bad cold.

My Granny and I never missed watching "The Big Valley" during its prime-time run on ABC during the 1960s. She was a major Barbara Stanwyck fan from back in the day when Miss Stanwyck was the Queen of Hollywood. I of course had no way of knowing this and I simply loved the bravado, sass and spunk with which Miss Stanwyck instilled her character Victoria Barkley. Loren Greene's Ben Cartwright is a well-meaning dud in comparison. I liked her sons better than the Cartwright boys too, especially Nick! Watching it now, I can spot a lot of inconsistencies, such as the Orlon carpeting on the staircase of the Barkley manse and the overabundance of that God awful pool cue chalk blue eye shadow so popular in the 1960s. I mean it's like Victoria and Audra had an account with an Avon lady on the prairie. Still, Miss Stanwyck is a treat and I still love to watch her in reruns. Since my Granny hipped me to her at such a young age, I made sure to catch her act from her Hollywood heyday. I think "Double Indemnity" is my favorite. My Granny's other favorites from back in the day were Bette Davis and Irene Dunne. Too bad those two ladies couldn't have had guest appearances on "The Big Valley". That would have been a hoot, maybe an episode where Bette gets to menace Joan Crawford or one where Miss Dunne out sasses Miss Stanwyck.

In what I believe was Irene Dunne's second to last acting role, she plays Margaret Henderson, a mild mannered widow and mother of two, who being fed up with the status quo, decides to fight city hall. After being involved in a potentially fatal accident at a blind intersection, Miss Dunne's character channels her outrage and frustration into a grass roots, clean sweep campaign. She runs up against indifference, political entrenchment, and abandonment by an ally who sells out to ensure his own political survival. She goes forward undaunted until her political opponent, played here by Allyn Joslyn at his slippery, slimy best, almost wrecks her campaign for good. Up to this point, we think that we are simply watching a retold tale about good vs. evil when Joslyn's corrupt Woody Purvis attempts to smear Margaret in a way so evil that his plan backfires. He tries to destroy her by revealing heretofore unknown information about her late husband's war record. Information so devastating, but yet so irrelevant to Margaret's political aspirations, that it backfires and she is swept into office. Miss Dunne's imbues her portrayal of Margaret with all the integrity that she herself possessed--a brave and noble woman who finds herself inundated in the dirt and evils that is politics but one who comes through it in the end triumphant.

I watched this on YouTube as a curiosity piece. Being wild about all things Irene Dunne, I wanted to take in her last acting role. At age 63 (and looking about 10 to 15 years younger)she brings all her famous sass and wit to the part of Anita Farrell, a famous actress who has been coaxed out of retirement by Nick Adams' budding playwright. All is smooth sailing until Adams' character is swindled by a con man posing as a producer. When Dennis Morgan, Anita Farrell's manager, foils the plot, the con man wrecks her comeback by revealing that she has terminable cancer--a fact he discovered by purloining her medical records. Miss Dunne's acting genius is displayed during this climatic scene as she goes in one split second from a carefree, born again star to a woman who learns to her shock and horror that she has very little time left to live. The scene is made all the more powerful in so much that there is no dialogue, only Miss Dunne's masterful facial expression. While perhaps not a fitting swan song for Miss Dunne's career, she handles her part with all her trademark sparkle and aplomb. Dennis Morgan, another Hollywood veteran, is also great as Dunne's manager--a man who has loved her for many years and enabled her to escape the slings and arrows of life's misfortunes. Miss Dunne's comments about her retirement are as endearing and wise as the woman herself, "Acting isn't everything, living is. I drifted into acting and drifted back out again." Bravo, Irene! Well done!

I found this to be a very disquieting film. Not only because it seems to straddle genres between screwball comedy and bittersweet romance but because I simply can't believe Irene Dunne's character. She acts well in this film but I cannot believe that she would let herself succumb to Preston Foster's villainous charms and then carry a torch for him after what we are led to believe is a one night stand. Dunne's character is completely wrapped up in that encounter and she can't believe that the love she imparted will never be returned. She is the only one who can't see that she is just another notch on Preston Foster's belt! And all the while a new love, Robert Montgomery, is ready, willing and able but yet Dunne is oblivious to the depth of his feelings for her. Though she marries him and bears him a child, it is not until the very end of the film that they come full circle as a couple and then only after each has found their own identity--she as a chorus member in the opera and he as a soldier. On the plus side, it is refreshing to watch veteran character actors Eugene Palette and Esther Dale in small but crucial parts, the former providing much needed comic relief. Almost skipped this one entirely, only Miss Dunne's loveliness and Robert Montgomery's acerbic wit saved it.

This is a tale of opposites attracting and the course of true love flowing like a river of doubt. Irene Dunne plays the lady and Fred MacMurray the boxing champ. Although they come from different worlds, they can't help falling in love--he with her ladylike ways, quiet charm and elegant beauty and she with his sheer manliness and out and out sex appeal. Their wedded/bedded bliss is snatched away all too soon as trainer/manager Charlie Ruggles (best remembered by us baby boomers as Daddy Farquahr on "The Beverly Hillbillies") yanks MacMurray back into his training regimen. Ruggles explains to Dunne why a fighter's wife can't follow him to camp. And although it is unspoken in this 1930s flick, we know that it is because their continued sexual activity would rob him of the strength he needs to vanquish all foes. Ha! Dunne relinquishes MacMurray to Ruggles but only after we learn that she is pregnant. To her this is a greater prize than MacMurray can ever hope to attain in the ring and she hopes that having a child will bond MacMurray even closer to her. Wrong! He doesn't make it to the hospital on time and she is alone, except for her faithful father played here by William Collier. Things only go further south from there. MacMurray spends years chasing the heavyweight championship and misses out on seeing his son grow up, all the while growing more and more estranged from Dunne who is for all practical purposes abandoned. Even when he is home, he seeks out female companionship with the floozy he ran around with before he was married. Dunne rightly divorces him and they share custody of their young son, the only person smart enough to see the wisdom of a reconciliation and their becoming a family once more. This is how the movie ends and just in the nick of time as the closing credits roll as they embrace on the staircase of the family home. This film while well acted feels like a retread, one that Dunne and MacMurray perhaps only fulfilled under contractual terms. Dunne is treated rather like a doormat and her usually strong character is somewhat too submissive to MacMurray's lug nut of a man. Oh well, it is not a total miss. A good enough movie for a way rainy/cold day but that's about it.

While not as big and splashy as their pairing in "Love Affair" released the same year, Irene Dunne and Charles Boyer star in what is rather a "small" film. "When Tomorrow Comes" is a tale of unrequited love between two people who because of the man being bound to a mentally ill wife can never be together. Irene Dunne convincingly plays an underemployed ordinary working gal, one who aspires to be a singer but who is stuck toiling the days away as a waitress. Her character bonds with Boyer's character by disobeying her restaurant's "no substitutions" rule and fulfilling his request for French apple pie. This scene is endearing as she dares to simply place a piece of cheese on top of a slice of hot apple pie and cover the pie until the cheese melts--LOL, "it ain't nothing' but a thing" as Dunne goes the extra step to please the customer. From then on the two are friends and go off together to explore Manhattan and go sailing together. Their would be love affair is derailed by nothing less than a hurricane and the reappearance of Boyer's wife, played here by Barbara O'Neill. O'Neill steals the show as she portrays a woman who is mentally unbalanced, but not for the reason everyone suspects. While her illness is attributed to the death of her infant son, we soon discover that she is using this as an excuse to keep Boyer bound to her. In the scene where Dunne confronts her and pleads for her to release Boyer, we are chilled by O'Neill's psychopathic threat to do harm to Boyer should he leave her for Dunne. O'Neill is scary as hell and Dunne understands as the audience does that she is promising to do Boyer harm not merely threatening to. Because of this, Dunne knows that Boyer can never be hers and for this reason she must bid him farewell forever. The final scene where they part ways as she exits from the restaurant where they are having their last supper together is a tearjerker. No matter how many times she plays the poignant heroine who is called on to do the right thing, Dunne nails it. Her pain is our pain. Boyer's pain in losing her is also our own. Their love is lost and the pain is unbearable.

In yet just one more of the several "weepies" she churned out under contract during the early phase of her film career, Irene Dunne still manages to shine as Charles Bickford's unappreciated, abandoned and ultimately besmirched spouse. Her "Anna" is the woman that can be found behind every man who has made it big: rock solid, determined, loyal and faithful. She has ambition for the both of them but Bickford casts her aside for the floozy Gwili Andre once he makes it to the top. With everything seemingly going against her, Dunne manages to turn the tables on Bickford during the film's climactic divorce/custody battle court scene. When she lies about Bickford being the father of their son, the audience is stunned but she is simply waking up and learning to play hardball. It's a stretch that she welcomes him back into the bosom of his family once he returns from prison but then again Dunne always played characters whose virtues perhaps outshone conventional wisdom. Thank goodness she was finally able to break free of these typecast roles once she got out from under a long term contract and became a freelancer. "Theodora Goes Wild" (1936) was her watershed film and the one that established her as one of the founding mothers and leading geniuses of screwball comedy.

Irene Dunne and Laura Hope Crews deliver powerhouse bravura performances in this pre-Code adaptation of the stage play of the same name. Dunne's character is the only one wise and savvy enough to see that something is just not kosher about Laura Hope Crews' relationship with her sons, particularly with Dunne's husband's character, portrayed here by a very young and virile Joel McCrea. The scene where Dunne enters the separate bedroom assigned to him by his mother and witnesses her kissing her son goodnight is particularly haunting. Dunne is creeped out and so are we the audience, as it is apparent that the kiss borders on the sexual. It is there and then that Dunne's character becomes determined not only to save her marriage to McCrea but also to make him stand up and be a man by disavowing the control his mother wields over him. She fails in her attempt and it is only when she leaves him that he comes to his senses and joins her in her escape from the house of "smother" love. Frances Dee is particularly young and lovely in this, one of her first screen roles. Also, Eric Linn as the younger brother is quite fine. Dunne's battle of words with Crews is not to be missed.

Though not as spontaneously hilarious as Dunne and Grant's earlier pairing in "The Awful Truth" (1937), "My Favorite Wife" again displays the masterful comedic timing and wonderful on screen romantic chemistry that Irene and Cary shared. Just as she did in "The Awful Truth", Miss Dunne has to use every trick at her disposal in order to goad Cary Grant into doing the right thing. She not only has to compete against her replacement spouse counterpart and ice queen Bianca, she has to win her husband and the father of her children back...all the way back to the marriage bed. The end scene with Cary Grant dressed as Santa Claus and wishing Irene Dunne a Merry Christmas is hysterical. Because of the strict movie code of the time, he can't come right out and say what special gift he is delivering to her but the audience knows just the same! Movies were so much more entertaining back then because they left so much to the imagination, thereby enriching moviegoers' imaginations in the process.

My mother used to reminisce about how her Dad took the whole family to see this wonderful film when it first came out. According to her, it was a real happening. Years later when I saw it at a retrospective, I suddenly realized why. I mean was there ever a greater cast assembled for one film...Irene Dunne, Allan Jones, Helen Morgan, Charlie Winninger, Helen Westley, Paul Robeson, Hattie McDaniel, Queenie Smith, etc. Dunne and Morgan are heartbreaking in their roles, Winninger and Westley in turn both hilarious and heroic, Robeson and McDaniel monumental. My favorite scene is where Captain Andy and Magnolia are reunited in Chicago when after his long search for her, he finds her at the Trocadero. Irene Dunne's rendition of "After the Ball" is haunting. Legend has it that she insisted that it be recorded live so as to convey the song's emotional magnitude. When she sings it, we the audience feel every hurt and heartache that has befallen Magnolia, and the fact that she sings it to her beloved father with whom she is now reunited is just icing on the cake. This is the penultimate film version of Edna Ferber's novel, so much more sincere and evocative than MGM's splashy color 1951 remake. The 1936 cast could act, sing and emote circles around their 1950s' counterparts. After all, most of the cast members were troupers of the old school and brought the wealth of their life experiences to each of their roles.

Only three years into her Hollywood career (after the initial misstep of "Leathernecking" (1930), Irene Dunne shines in this pre-Code drama. Her portrayal of Sinclair Lewis' "Ann Vickers" is complex, layered and multi-faceted. She is a modern woman and she is determined to change the world as Edna Mae Oliver's character states "if it takes her all winter". But the world almost breaks her. She is impregnated and then emotionally abandoned by Bruce Cabot's cad "Lafe", sent to work in a Purgatory of a women's prison, and finally saved by the love of Walter Huston's Judge Barney Dolphin. In him, she has met her equal--morally, intellectually, and emotionally. Their love is here to stay, as we see when she not only proudly bears their son out of wedlock but stands by him when he is sent to prison on political corruption and graft charges trumped up by his opposition. She too suffers in that she loses a top-tier professional post and must makes ends meet by writing freelance newspaper articles. However, she is undaunted and toughs it out until such time that Barney is paroled and reunited with her and their young son. It is so refreshing to see Dunne in this early role, so far removed from both the screwball comedy and perfect wife and mother roles she would play in the middle and latter phases of her long career. We mourn with her the loss of her first child, the death of whom is ambiguously depicted as coming about by abortion. We rejoice in her finding her soulmate, Barney and cheer them for their unaffected love and affection and the joy they express over their impending parenthood. While this is a "weepie", the Queen of which she would become, Dunne's performance is superior to that of her similar roles of this era. Her talent is just as complex and strong as that of her character and she inhabits the role exquisitely.

I think that Audrey Hepburn's portrayal of Joanna is her most intense, subtle, and mature. We see her progression from college co-ed to married woman with child, all over the course of about 14 years. In the beginning she is a woman without experience and falls for the boyish charm of Albert Finney. During the course of their marriage, it is she who evolves as she copes with being a parent and with his philandering. This movie portrays what happens to women who enter relationships as innocents, who deal fairly and faithfully with their husbands, only to be done dirt. Had this movie been made twenty years later, we may have seen Joanna progress to a life without Mark and perhaps claim her own identity separate from his. The only movie contemporary to "Two for the Road" that deals realistically with a woman being trapped in a marriage with a cheating spouse is "The Happy Ending" with Audrey's contemporary, the underrated Jean Simmons. I think that "Two for the Road" kind of craps out at the very end by simply devolving into a madcap Swinging 60s frolic, as we see the characters kiss and make up and ride off into their high-end Euro trash sunset.

There is not one thing that I can say to detract from the quality of this film. That it was George Stevens' first film after returning from the horrors he witnessed in WWII speaks volume. On the surface it is a slice of Americana, but like Frank Capra's "It's A Wonderful Life", it is so much more. It is about a family's survival, orchestrated by its loving and wise matriarch, portrayed here in her penultimate screen role by Irene Dunne. She is surrounded by an embarrassment of acting riches: Cedric Hardwicke, Oscar Holmolka (who as Uncle Chris almost steals the show), Rudy Vallee, Barbara O'Neill, Ellen Corby, Edgar Bergen, and Philip Dorn. Each occupies his or her role so completely that we forget that they are acting and we accept them as we would members of our own family. Mama is no nonsense and she has the smarts that it takes to keep the wolf from the door and to see to it that her large brood succeeds in life. There is no sacrifice too great. The scene where she offers her top secret meatball recipe to Florence Bates' snooty editor in exchange for the latter's promise to review Katrin's story is a tour de force by both Dunne and Bates. This film is woven like a tapestry and like the work of art it is, the viewer can find something new in it each time it is watched. That is the mark of a great film. To be sure, Irene Dunne was snubbed when she didn't receive the Best Actress Oscar for this her masterwork but the fact that the film has stood the test of nearly 70 years is a much greater award.

Irene Dunne and Clive Brooke find love after each loses it in unwanted marriages--she because of an abusive spouse and he because of a wife who pursues a marriage in name only. While Dunne's character Sara has the courage to stand up to and leave Nils Asther's no good Tono, Clive Brooke's Gordon seems more resigned to his fate. That is until he discovers that the new girl of his fancy loves him too. That is why this story works. Because love is lovelier the second time around, when both partners truly appreciate the fact that they have been blessed with a second chance. I love Irene Dunne in her very early, pre-Code film phase. She is so fresh faced and fun loving, especially in the scene where Brooke literally sweeps her off her feet in the churchyard and whisks her away and she says "Well, alright!". As if to say, it's about darn time you showed me how you really feel! All's well that ends well and the lovers are united in the final scene where we see them blissfully floating downstream with their erstwhile friend Hector sitting in the bow. We find out that they have indeed sealed the deal as Sara admiringly glances at her wedding ring, the outward symbol of her newfound respectability with Gordon and more poignantly as the reflection of their wedded bliss.

I have to thank TCM for showing William Wyler's brilliant film uninterrupted. Heretofore, I had always suffered through watching bad prints of this film on the late show, with unlimited commercial interruptions. It's great to see Hepburn, MacClaine and Garner all depart from their stereotypical roles--Hepburn as the fey young thing, MacClaine as the uber-kook and Garner as the bon vivant cowboy. They all reach deep down into their acting abilities and come up with something real. They are three noble people whose lives are upset by the thoughtless cruelty of a child, her grandmother and a community. They are abandoned. Garner steps up to the plate to keep his lady love Hepburn but does not stick it out to the end. Only Audrey and her integrity triumph because she is unwilling to sacrifice the love (although a sisterly one) she has for her friend, Martha. The final scene in the cemetery where she exits head held high is probably Hepburn's strongest outside that of the final scenes in "The Nun's Story".

When I first tuned into this movie, I was expecting to see Judy Holiday in yet another screwball comedy. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that this film is a dramatic comedy, in so much that it deals with the most tragic situation a young married couple could ever face--the death of a child. Holiday displays a depth that I had only guessed at before. The grief that both parents feel is palpable, especially that of father Aldo Ray who is so lost in his sorrow that he crosses a street without looking and is severely injured by an oncoming car. To me, this movie is so good that I would recommend any couple contemplating marriage to watch it. I am somewhat reminded of Irene Dunne and Cary Grant's performances in George Stevens' "Penny Serenade", but this film goes on step further and shows how the couple must truly work on saving their marriage once they enter divorce proceedings. A little known George Cukor film, but to me one of his best.

This is one of my favorite actress Irene Dunne's movies I haven't seen so when someone put it on YouTube, I watched it immediately. While I found it bright and breezy, I kept wondering what a better film it would have been if Leo McCarey had directed it and if Cary Grant had co-starred. Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. seems a little lightweight acting opposite Irene Dunne. She carries the whole picture. There are so many famous characters actors in this film, Guy Kibbee for example, who are simply window dressing. Only Jean Dixon stands out. It's not a bad film, just an under-developed one. It's refreshing to see Irene Dunne let go and enjoy herself as her character Maggie embraces the "Joy of Living" for the first time. She seems very natural here, especially in her interactions with "Mike" her chauffeur, maybe how the real day-to-day Irene was. I really liked her rendition of Jerome Kern and Dorothy Fields's "Just Let Me Look at You" sung in the back of her limousine. It was warm and heartfelt and not as shrill and high-pitched as many of her movie musical numbers up to that time.

I always thought this version of "The Waltons" superior to the series that followed, especially Miss Patricia Neal's portrayal of the family matriarch Olivia. She brings such pathos to the role and I'm sure that she drew heavily on her own upbringing, while not an impoverished one, in Kentucky and Tennessee during the same era. I love the scene where on the coldest and bleakest of days, she retrieves her flowering Christmas cactus from the cellar and brings it upstairs into the light for all the children to behold. We the affluent and privileged of modern America cannot begin to appreciate what people of wont found in such simple beauty. Edgar Bergen also contributes an endearing portrayal of Grandpa Walton. Too bad Miss Neal and Mr. Bergen did not go on to repeat their roles for the TV series. Their superior acting would have added more depth than Michael Lerned's self-righteous Olivia and Will Geer's endlessly obnoxious Grandpa. I was always waiting for Ellen Corby to knock him senseless with a cast iron skillet. She would have been justified too!

I remember first seeing this film on the early, early morning movie as a very young child in the 1960s. It was the first Irene Dunne movie I ever saw and she was of particular interest to my older family members since she hailed from our hometown of Louisville, KY. I think the most masterful scene (the one that displays George Stevens' qualities as an auteur the best) is the train sequence when Roger and Julie have just been married but Roger must leave immediately to take up his assignment in Tokyo. To leave Julie without benefit of a honeymoon is too much for both her and the audience to bear. What complete romance, he makes good his promise and gets her off at the next stop. Notice the sign on the train platform viewed from the train window indicating just how far this young couple has traveled through the night on their impromptu honeymoon. They are in and we are out. All is left to the imagination and there is nothing more romantic nor sexier than that. And lo and behold, when Julie is finally reunited with Roger in Tokyo she informs him of their impending parenthood. A successful honeymoon indeed!