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Post by topbilled on Oct 26, 2022 17:43:56 GMT
Reviews for Paramount films will be placed here.
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Post by topbilled on Oct 26, 2022 17:53:57 GMT
This neglected film is from 1942.
A chance to save himself
STREET OF CHANCE is one of those crime flicks from the early 1940s that’s of interest primarily to fans of noir. It defines some of the distinguishing characteristics of the genre– a story about a man who’s become a victim of circumstances, dealing with the unbalanced world in which he lives.
Burgess Meredith, in a rare starring role, plays an amnesiac who can’t account for a specific period of his life. While he had been away from his wife (Louise Platt), he took on another identity…and as fate would have it, became involved in a murder. Is he innocent or guilty? A police detective (Sheldon Leonard) following his every move, thinks he’s guilty.
Most of what unfolds concerns Meredith’s quest to get to the truth and clear his name. His search for clues leads him to a woman (Claire Trevor) who works as a maid for a wealthy family. During the period when he was suffering from amnesia, he had become romantically entangled with her and she seems too eager to help him evade the law, though it makes him look guiltier.
The family that Trevor works for is headed by a mute elderly woman (Adeline De Walt Reynolds). The old gal seems to have witnessed the murder. She will ultimately provide testimony that will exonerate Meredith when she tells what she knows through blinking.
STREET OF CHANCE is based on a short piece of fiction by Cornell Woolrich called ‘The Black Curtain.’ Mr. Woolrich was a consummate storyteller who told gripping tales. His stories focused on the fine line between reality and what a main character wants to believe is real. Somewhat forgotten today, Woolrich deserve reappraisal.
Back to the film…Meredith is perfect as a meek and scrawny ordinary guy going up against the system. Various legal, political and social rules oppose him. In this regard, STREET OF CHANCE borrows its basic dilemma from ‘The Trial’ by Franz Kafka.
Meredith does a credible job pulling us into everything he’s facing and having to endure. We want him to prevail and put the nightmare behind him. As for Miss Trevor, she gives a razor sharp performance as a calculating woman who stands in the way of Meredith’s freedom. She’s the real culprit, but she’s a master manipulator. Fortunately, she is exposed in the end and doesn’t get away with her misdeeds.
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Post by yanceycravat on Oct 28, 2022 2:14:48 GMT
I wish Adeline De Walt Reynolds made more movies! Looks like she was only in about 30. She played Barry Fitzgerald's mother at the end of Going My Way (1944). She lived to 98!
Eddie Muller should show this one.
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Post by topbilled on Nov 4, 2022 16:30:46 GMT
I wish Adeline De Walt Reynolds made more movies! Looks like she was only in about 30. She played Barry Fitzgerald's mother at the end of Going My Way (1944). She lived to 98!
Eddie Muller should show this one.
Adeline was an interesting lady, and she also has a role in the 20th Century Fox western PONY SOLDIER, which I am reviewing tomorrow. |
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Post by topbilled on Nov 4, 2022 16:57:07 GMT
This neglected film is from 1942.
Alan Ladd for hire
Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake were paired in four crime flicks at Paramount between 1942 and 1948. THIS GUN FOR HIRE was the first one. Miss Lake was already an established star at the studio, and she receives above-the-title billing with Robert Preston. But Ladd had not yet scored his breakthrough with audiences.
Interestingly, he is given special introductory billing…despite previously appearing in a few minor roles at RKO and Monogram. His turn as killer Philip Raven would be his first significant part in an ‘A’ feature. And as the old saying goes, a star was born.
Within a short time, Ladd became one of the most bankable names on the Paramount lot. His career quickly eclipsed Lake’s, and even Preston’s, who found himself billed after Ladd as a second lead in WHISPERING SMITH. Ladd’s hit films continued for well over a decade, and he remained under contract at the studio until 1953.
In THIS GUN FOR HIRE, he plays a loner with homicidal tendencies. It’s hardly the stuff viewers would find sympathetic, or the production code office would let go unpunished.
Ladd is a hitman who has been hired by slimy Laird Cregar, an executive for a well-known chemical company. Cregar wants him to retrieve a stolen formula, then eliminate the thief. This is on orders from Cregar’s boss (Tully Marshall) a wealthy industrialist.
Some of the background for Graham Greene’s novel, which served as the basis for the movie, involves weapons of destruction. We learn about a deal between the big boss and Japanese government officials eager to buy a poisonous gas that Marshall’s scientists have developed. Meanwhile, a vacationing police detective (Preston) and his girl (Lake) get drawn into the proceedings.
Preston goes back to work, to help investigate Ladd’s killings; while Lake takes a job with Cregar of all people. At the same time Ladd decides to off Cregar, after he was double crossed by Cregar with marked bills. Now he’s gunning for revenge.
In the next sequence Cregar takes protective measures to defend himself against Ladd. As tensions escalate, Lake gets caught in the middle when Cregar almost kills her. Yes, it’s a tangled web in the best noir tradition.
Ladd saves Lake’s life, suggesting he’s not all evil. But he keeps her hostage with him, and they go on the lam. While this occurs, Preston and the other coppers conduct a manhunt to track them down.
The scenes with Lake and Ladd together, braving the elements, up against considerable odds, comprise the heart of the picture. I’ve never seen Miss Lake play such a sincere and likable person. Usually she’s a bit cold, or at least reserved in her cinematic assignments, but not here. It’s easy to see why a hardened guy would start to fall for her.
There’s an interesting moment when we find out the main reason Ladd’s character became a killer. Supposedly he was an orphan and abused as a child by a vicious aunt. He killed the aunt, was sent to a reform school, and ended up killing others. Of course it doesn’t excuse him for the murders he’s committed, but it offers some explanation.
In the last sequence Ladd makes his way to the office building where Cregar and boss Marshall are located…while Lake has been reclaimed by Preston.
A standoff occurs where Ladd kills Cregar. Meanwhile Marshall manages to sign a document confessing his misdeeds with the Japanese. Then he conveniently suffers a fatal heart attack. Gotta love how the writers tie up these dangling plot threads!
Ladd’s character is ultimately redeemed, but per the production code, he must still go to prison or else be killed. So the police corner and shoot him. Paramount would repeat the anti-hero formula in LUCKY JORDAN…another instance with Ladd as a bad guy whose heart ends up in the right place.
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Post by Fading Fast on Nov 4, 2022 17:09:06 GMT
Great color and background.
I "discovered" this one as a young kid who (I'm sure) didn't understand all the background or even fully follow the plot, but I got the Ladd-Lake chemistry, the wonderful noir style (didn't know that name either, I'm also sure) and, heck, I was a boy and, well, Veronica Lake.
Now in my 50s, I've seen all their pairings and, while it's changed a few times, my favorite right now is "The Blue Dahlia," but there is no bad Ladd-Lake movie.
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Post by topbilled on Nov 9, 2022 16:24:49 GMT
This neglected film is from 1933.
Fields & Skipworth are at it again
The first time I watched W.C. Fields opposite Alison Skipworth was in a segment from the anthology film IF I HAD A MILLION. Skipworth’s character receives an unexpected windfall and buys an expensive automobile. She cruises around town with her new gas guzzler but ends up in a crash. Fields helps her get revenge on the inconsiderate road hog who caused the accident. While they’re at it, they make it their mission to teach all road hogs a lesson!
Their work in that sequence is the best thing about the picture. Paramount execs also thought so, and the studio teamed them up again in a series of rip-roaring comedies. Paramount also hit pay dirt having Fields share scenes with infant star Baby LeRoy. And so TILLIE AND GUS has the genius funnyman creating mayhem with both Skipworth and LeRoy.
Some have written that this was the studio’s spoof of MGM’s TUGBOAT ANNIE. I’m not quite sure I agree, since the leads in this production do not resemble Marie Dressler or Wallace Beery at all. Miss Skipworth is too refined to ever be confused as a stand-in for Dressler.
And Mr. Fields’ handling of props far exceeds anything Beery ever did.
Yes, there’s a river barge in both films, but that’s where the similarities begin and end. What I love most about this picture, and all pictures where W.C. Fields is left to his own devices, is that the plot is secondary. It’s really just an excuse to string together a series of routines that Fields had developed in vaudeville and perfected for the cinema. We are willing to leave the story and concentrate on his gags, as well as Skipworth’s priceless reactions.
When we do return to the story, there are some nice moments between our older leads and the younger cast. As in IT’S A GIFT and THE OLD FASHIONED WAY, there is a family feel to the proceedings.
The antics climax with a boat race that occurs on a national holiday. Mishaps increase and situations become so brazenly exaggerated that the only solution is total chaos. Despite the mass destruction, the main characters somehow miraculously survive. If they didn’t, then there’d be no real reason to expect Fields could appear on screen again and generate more mischief in his next adventure.
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Post by Fading Fast on Nov 9, 2022 16:51:12 GMT
Tillie and Gus from 1933 with W.C. Fields, Alison Skipworth and Baby LeRoy
Tillie and Gus is a short comedy (fifty-seven minutes) starring W.C. Fields, which, despite a dated style and routines that often feel tired and silly to us today, still entertains mainly owing to the talents and chemistry of Fields and co-star Alison Skipworth.
The plot exists only to showcase Fields and Skipworth who play friendly yet divorced scammers and hucksters called home by a lawyer's letter informing them of an inheritance.
When they get there, though, they see that their young niece, her husband and their baby are being cheated out of their estate by a crooked lawyer played with exaggerated zeal by character actor Clarence Wilson.
Wilson has stolen almost everything - the money and house full of antiques from the young couple - leaving them only a dilapidated ferry boat that becomes the young couple's hopes for a future as they want to use it to restart a ferry business.
Wilson, though, wants to start a competing business so he tries to buy the boat on the cheap from the couple without telling them why.
Fields and Skipworth, who their niece believes are missionaries (dear Lord), being scammers themselves, but good people deep down, see Wilson for what he is and stick around to help the young couple.
That setup is only a framework for Fields, Skipworth and actor Baby LeRoy playing "King," the infant son of the young couple, to get involved in a bunch of comedy sketches while Fields and Skipworth fire off one liners and sarcastic asides.
Since all of the sketches - such as Fields and Skipworth cheating at poker, Fields flummoxed trying to follow a fast-talking radio host giving complicated directions about how to make paint, the baby pulling the plug in his bathtub and flooding the room or Fields, effectively, throwing fireworks into the ship's boiler - have been copied repeatedly, they don't feel fresh or truly funny anymore, but Fields and Skipworth still capture your attention as talented actors and comedians.
While Fields has the bigger personality and fame, Skipworth's more restrained style is equal in talent - this is an actress that understands timing and delivery. Together, their chemistry is so good that, even today, they for the most part, keep you engaged in what for us are old routines and jokes.
If TV (especially 1960s or 1970s TV) had been invented back then, Fields and Skipworth would have been perfect in their own show as an older couple who owns a rundown boarding house with a lazy handman, a smart aleck desk clerk and quirky guests, where everyone harmlessly tries to cheat each other each week, but instead, they all end up learning a lesson in decency.
Back in 1933, though, actors and comedians like Fields and Skipworth had to find a way to showcase their talents on the big screen, so they made short comedy movies like Tillie and Gus that really were just personality vehicles with a silly story attached.
In this one, that silly story climaxes in a boat race to see who gets the city's ferry-business contract, which gives Fields a chance to wear one of those old underwater diving suits with Skipworth working the air pump above - and messing up a bit - as Fields sabotages the competition's boat.
It takes a little perspective today to appreciate a movie like Tillie and Gus as all its routines and jokes have been used and expanded on repeatedly in the ensuing nearly ninety years since its release. But Fields’ and Skipworth's talents and screen chemistry still provide some real entertainment for those willing to see past its dated style and now tired humor. |
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Post by topbilled on Nov 14, 2022 14:31:42 GMT
This neglected film is from 1951.
Hope with Lamarr not Lamour
I tend to find Bob Hope’s solo efforts– the ones without Bing Crosby– a bit hit or miss. This early 50s effort misses the mark more than it should. The bosses at Paramount have provided a decent director (Norman Z. McLeod); a sizable budget; a lovely leading lady (Hedy Lamarr); and a roster of dependable costars. But something is off.
I think the main problem is that the gags are mostly uninspired, including one with Mr. Hope’s character having to wear a girdle. And much of the dialogue is so inane in spots that all we can do is shrug and roll our eyes at the proceedings. It’s not that Hope and company don’t try, they certainly do. It’s just that much of what ended up on screen isn’t funny.
The initial set-up involves Hope as a vaudeville actor performing some contrived shtick at a burlesque house. He is apprehended by police because he shares a physical resemblance with a wanted spy. Why the police are in charge of this investigation and not the FBI is a mystery. The coppers shoot and wound the doppelgänger (also played by Hope). This requires Hope the vaudevillian to masquerade as the villain to foil an international plot that threatens U.S. security.
After he agrees to help, Hope flies to Tangier where he meets Miss Lamarr (in other pictures this would have been Miss Lamour). She’s a gorgeous spy working for the other side, headed by criminal mastermind Francis L. Sullivan. We’re never told who the other side really is. Only that there’s going to be a transfer of microfiche with government secrets on it that Hope must intercept. As MacGuffins go it’s a vague one.
Naturally, Hope’s character falls for Lamarr though it takes two-thirds of the picture’s running time for him to figure out she’s in cahoots with the crooks. The last third of the story has her experience a change of heart and decide to save him from Sullivan and the other goons. She now realizes she loves the impostor, not the man she originally thought he was.
Not all of the hackneyed love story works. Lamarr and Hope exhibit no palpable chemistry as a screen couple. It seems obvious that while Hope finds luscious Lamarr an attractive dish, she’s not into him the way she seems into most of her leading men. As a result, her performance is rather cool and detached, which goes against the denouement and happy ending the writers have plotted for her character.
The funniest sequence in the film involves a fire that occurs at Sullivan’s villa. Lamarr rescues Hope in a stolen car and drives him into town, with henchmen on their tail. In town they duck into a building where a group of firemen are answering a call. Hope and Lamarr don firefighter outfits and hop on the truck with the men. They wind up back at Sullivan’s place, to help put out the blaze. It’s a bunch of silly nonsense.
MY FAVORITE SPY is the third film that Miss Lamarr made at Paramount when she signed a multi-picture deal after leaving MGM. The first was SAMSON AND DELILAH, her most successful picture, where she starred in a biblical epic directed by Cecil DeMille. The second assignment was COPPER CANYON, a John Farrow western in Technicolor that paired her with Ray Milland. Then finally, she made this farce with Bob Hope.
She had been stuck in a rut at Metro, typecast in vamp roles. While she’s still playing an alluring woman in these later films, her assignments at Paramount provided the actress with more variety and the opportunity to try something different.
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Post by Fading Fast on Nov 14, 2022 16:00:30 GMT
Lamarr somehow never really found her grove; she doesn't even have one really notable picture that she's associated with. She had the talent and the beauty, but it was never fully leveraged by Hollywood. She has a bunch of good pictures and good roles and she is so arrestingly beautiful that you could watch her movies with the sound turned off just to see her, but all that, and only a mediocre career.
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Post by topbilled on Nov 18, 2022 16:25:33 GMT
This neglected film is from 1939.
Lifestyles of the rich and absurd
Though I’m not sure if there are any documented cases, my guess is that someone could die from laughing. At least while watching this outlandish farce. Nobody does manic comedy better than Martha Raye in her prime. Put her with Bob Hope and his rapid fire one-liners, and the result is something so hilarious you can barely catch your breath between the laughs.
The execs at Paramount had previously paired the duo in all-star comedies with W.C. Fields, George Burns and Grace Allen. So that gives you an idea of the talent under contract at the studio in the late 1930s. In supporting roles, Hope and Raye did very well with audiences. In 1938 they were given their first vehicle as stars– a military comedy called GIVE ME A SAILOR which also featured Betty Grable. It was a hit. So of course, another project was planned.
Maybe if Mr. Hope hadn’t done even better with Bing Crosby and Dorothy Lamour a year later, he would have formed a permanent screen partnership with Miss Raye. While NEVER SAY DIE would be their last movie together, there were plenty of USO tours over the years and various TV specials, as late as 1986. They enjoyed a very lengthy professional collaboration.
In NEVER SAY DIE, Hope plays a hypochondriac cough cough, who thinks he’s dying. Shades of what Rock Hudson experienced in SEND ME NO FLOWERS. In this version, based on a successful stage play, Hope is a bajillionaire engaged to gold digger Gale Sondergaard. He’d like to be well rid of her and do something meaningful with the time and money he has.
Enter Martha Raye’s character, a wacky Texas oil heiress. She’s vacationing at a European spa when she bumps into Hope. She has a predicament– whether to consent to an arranged marriage with a stuffy prince (Alan Mowbray) or run off with a hick (Andy Devine) from back home, at the risk of being disinherited by daddy.
Hope decides to intervene. He proposes that she marry him, as it would kill two proverbial birds with one stone. He won’t have to wed Sondergaard, and she won’t have to wed Mowbray. Then after Hope kicks the bucket, Raye will have Hope’s money as his widow, and be free to marry Devine without having to worry about being cut off. Of course things, only get more absurd after they tie the knot.
The main fly in the ointment is that Hope’s not really dying. The second issue is that he and Raye are actually falling in love with each other. Hey, stranger things have happened! And then there’s the problem of what to do about Mowbray, challenging Hope to a duel.
Somehow, it all gets resolved. Hope lives. He gets to keep Raye as his bride. And in a silly twist, Sondergaard and Devine are struck by Cupid’s arrow and end up as a couple!
This is a very funny movie that should be enjoyed by audiences. Never say you haven’t had a thoroughly good time watching the antics of Martha Raye and Bob Hope.
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Post by topbilled on Dec 5, 2022 15:50:44 GMT
This neglected film is from 1951.
The mothers-in-law
‘Tis the season for romance and comedy in this well-paced Paramount gem. The studio assigned the film to in-house director Mitch Leisen, who previously guided Barbara Stanwyck, Claudette Colbert and Paulette Goddard in similar lightweight vehicles. Mr. Leisen originally made a name for himself as a set designer, so when’s directing, he may be a bit more concerned with the visual details of the story, rather than how it is acted.
But in this case, there’s nothing to worry about. Mainly because he has such a gifted cast at his disposal. They could really direct themselves.
Studio contractee John Lund is a handsome businessman whose new marriage is complicated by the arrival of two very different mothers-in-law. That’s the plot in a nutshell. Mr. Lund had also been directed by Leisen in his motion picture debut, as both lover and son to Olivia de Havilland in TO EACH HIS OWN. They also worked together in BRIDE OF VENGEANCE and NO MAN OF HER OWN.
In THE MATING SEASON Lund is paired with gorgeous Gene Tierney. She is cast as the delicate upperclass wife and handles her role very nicely. Miss Tierney, who has been borrowed from 20th Century Fox, may not be the world’s best actress. No one would ever mistake her for Ingrid Bergman. But she’s still capable in this type of frothy entertainment.
As the young couple settles in to a new marriage, Lund’s working class mother turns up. This role is expertly played by character actress Thelma Ritter, who is also on loan from Fox. Ritter deservedly earned one of her six Oscar nominations for her performance in this picture. She is perfect at portraying the working class aspects of a woman who for years ran a hamburger stand and now poses as a domestic cook.
Some of the plot contrivances are hard to swallow. For instance, why would Lund even agree to let his wife think that his mother is their cook? Yes, he may be ashamed of her station in life, but Ritter’s a hard worker who never asked for a handout. And she seems to have always put him first.
Why compromise her integrity and be dishonest? The fact that this “mix-up” continues as long as it does, makes us start to think of Lund as a cad. The scenario takes on another dimension with the visit of Miriam Hopkins as Tierney’s highfalutin mother.
Of course, she totally disapproves of both Lund and Ritter, even before learning they’re related! Miss Hopkins projects snobbery better than anyone on screen, and it’s fun to see one of Paramount’s former top stars at this phase of her career. She’s become a memorable supporting actress, a scene stealer without peer.
Putting Hopkins and Ritter in a film together is a stroke of casting genius. It’s a shame the story isn’t really about them constantly hashing it out over what’s best for their children. Imagine if Ritter’s role had been handed to Bette Davis, then we would have had a dynamic rivaly going on, a battle for the ages with two different mother figures deciding what’s best and getting in the way of the newlyweds’ happiness.
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Post by topbilled on Dec 12, 2022 15:44:57 GMT
This neglected film is from 1938.
A political experiment
If anyone else were king of the Paramount lot in the late 1930s besides Cecil B. DeMille, it would probably be director Frank Lloyd whose career stretched back to silent films. He was an expert at helming historical dramas, especially biographical ones that included an array of acting styles and presented rousing yet thoughtful spectacles for audiences to enjoy.
In this particular history tale, Ronald Colman is cast as Francois Villon, a French poet whose liberal ideas put him at odds with King Louis XI (Basil Rathbone). The monarchy seeks to retain its hold on the common people of Paris in the Late Middle Ages. But Villon, whose behavior and many encounters with law enforcement, works to subvert the influence of such government.
Colman’s character is a bit of a rascal, causing trouble in the streets. He is also prone to rob the king’s storehouses. It’s not that he fully disrespects Louis XI, he just doesn’t have much use for most of the king’s policies which discriminate against the poor and downtrodden.
After admitting to some of his recent misdeeds, Villon is taken to church to pray by a priest who has looked after him since he was six years old. Inside the church, his mind wanders and so do his eyes– he is now focusing on a spiritual lady-in-waiting (Frances Dee). She is kneeling near the altar, deep into her own prayer.
He follows her outside, anxious to learn more about who she is and possibly interact with her. He realizes as she steps into a fancy horse drawn carriage, that she must be associated with the royal court. Still, this doesn’t put him off and he manages to slip a poem to her before she leaves. And so begins their unusual romance.
Colman seems to enjoy the more irreverent aspects of the unconventional character he is playing. His attempts at romancing Miss Dee benefit him almost immediately. For she provides him with an alibi when the police arrive near the church and accuse him of the robbery which he did commit.
Colman handles these scenes tongue-in-cheek, since Villon is indeed guilty and hopes to get away with his various infractions. Villon is also someone who struggles with his feelings for those whose station in life is higher than his own.
Another actor having a field day in this picture is Mr. Rathbone as a rather odd-looking, odd-sounding ruler. His King Louis XI wants the people of Paris to be more patriotic. The king soon crosses paths with Villon, whom he decides to install as a chief constable, mostly as a joke.
The king has realized that all previous constables have failed in the position, and so he conducts an experiment to see if the post may be more successfully held by a man who is known as a cutthroat, beggar and thief. After all, why not have such a person work for the court, instead of against it..?
Part of what makes the film so memorable is the way it places polar opposites in scenes, then advances a plot point by having one character see a situation through another character’s perspective. Villon the poet eventually develops a begrudging respect for the crown, understanding what it means to build an army, motivate soldiers and rally the public to a unified cause.
By learning these lessons, he ends up maturing. After reaching this increased maturity, he is ready for a genuine relationship with the woman that his heart most desires. He can now live out the rest of his life happily, whether he’s a king or a nobody.
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Post by sagebrush on Dec 12, 2022 22:57:35 GMT
This neglected film is from 1938.
A political experiment
Oh my, how I love this film! Ronald Colman, Frances Dee, Basil Rathbone, Ellen Drew and Frank Lloyd direction: what's not to love? I saw this for the first time in a movie theater during a Ronald Colman month-long festival. It was a beautiful print and the audience was very enthusiastic, especially after Colman's recital of the "If I Were King" poem. |
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Post by topbilled on Dec 13, 2022 2:33:55 GMT
This neglected film is from 1938.
A political experiment
Oh my, how I love this film! Ronald Colman, Frances Dee, Basil Rathbone, Ellen Drew and Frank Lloyd direction: what's not to love? I saw this for the first time in a movie theater during a Ronald Colman month-long festival. It was a beautiful print and the audience was very enthusiastic, especially after Colman's recital of the "If I Were King" poem.
I read that Douglas Fairbanks Jr. played it in a radio adaptation but as far as I'm concerned, Colman owns the role.
Watching him and Rathbone go toe to toe in their scenes together is a great fun. Rathbone earned an Oscar nomination for his colorful portrayal of the strange king. |
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