|
|
Post by Fading Fast on Jun 7, 2024 15:17:17 GMT
Lazy River from 1934 with Robert Young, Jean Parker, Maude Eburne, Nat Pendleton, C. Henry Gordon and Ted Healy
Hallmark movies rightfully get made fun of today as the vast majority of them have embarrassingly simple and obvious plots, tiny budgets, awkward dialogue and poor production qualities, but quite often, a decent cast who still can't save the material.
The antecedents to these movies, though, can be found in some of the studio-era's B pictures, the "second feature" of a double bill. These were shorter, low-budget movies, often with simple stories and up-and-coming stars or talented A movie character actors.
As the richest and glossiest of the Golden Era studios, even MGM's B movies had a high quality to them. This is why Lazy River, made at MGM, could be a Hallmark movie today if Hallmark had a larger budget and wrote tighter stories.
Lazy River opens with three convicts, played by Robert Young, Nat Pendleton and Ted Healy, being released from prison. Young is a society boy gone bad, but he's befriended the other two who are more traditional inmates.
All three head down to Louisiana planning to scam the mother of another inmate out of money as her son bragged to everyone in prison about how wealthy his mother's shrimping business is.
Once there, they discover the business, run by the mother and her daughter, played by Maude Eburne and Jean Parker, respectively, is all but bankrupt. Since Parker is cute as heck and the convicts are really good guys, they stick around trying to help.
The plot gets a bit messy here, but the basic outline is that a Chinese "fisherman," played by C. Henry Gordon, is trying to run Eburne and Parker out of business and buy up their property in the ensuing bankruptcy proceedings.
Gordon, who is not really a fisherman, runs an illegal immigration business. He needs Eburne and Parker's dock and access road so his supply line of illegal Chinese immigrants can more easily avoid detection from the Coast Guard and the police.
The bulk of this short movie centers on Young falling in love with Parker, while he and his two buddies help Eburne and Parker keep their business. Being a precode, the boys do some shady things themselves, but it's "okay" as it's in service to a greater good.
The climax, no spoilers coming, becomes more intense as Young's wife, whom Parker didn't know about, shows up just as Gordon kidnaps Young. A few very convenient twists happen, and everything works out fine as you knew it would pretty early on.
Audiences weren't unsophisticated then. They understood these B pictures were lesser efforts intended to be simple entertainment. On that scale, Lazy River works.
Young does a good job playing a former rich boy finding his way in a poor fishing community. Parker has an appealing Claudette Colbert combination of niceness and cuteness. Pendleton and Healy, too, are good as ex-cons with some larceny in them, but no meanness.
You can't help rooting for the good guys - the ex-cons, Eburne, Parker and the fishing village - to defeat crooked Gordon. Hallmark regularly uses a recycled offshoot of this plot, usually with a large company looking to shut down a beloved locally owned family business.
MGM's attempt at portraying the Louisiana Creole fishing culture is, by today's standards, insensitive. For the 1930s, though, it's just the usual slapdash effort with a lot of rear-projection stock footage of Louisiana and actors speaking in horrible accents.
Lazy River is a simple feel-good movie for its day. The ex-cons are really decent guys; the poor fishing villagers are honest, hard-working folk and the bad guys are two-dimensional crooks. Of course, everything works out in the end.
It's a 1930s style Hallmark movie, but with the talent of a major studio behind it, so the result is a silly but enjoyable effort. If Hallmark had a bigger budget and better talent behind the camera, it would be churning out movies like Lazy River today. |
|
|
|
Post by topbilled on Jun 7, 2024 15:44:59 GMT
Good comparison re: Jean Parker and Claudette Colbert. Parker had been in 'A' films (she was one of the sisters in the 1933 version of LITTLE WOMEN and played the daughter in LADY FOR A DAY). But she soon settled into B-film territory. After leaving MGM, she freelanced at a variety of studios and wound up in poverty row pictures in the 1940s...but she continued to work steadily in motion pictures through the 1950s. She was married to Robert Lowery, a leading man in B-films.
Some of the reviews I read online about LAZY RIVER compared the story of the three reformed crooks to the 1955 Paramount crowd pleaser WE'RE NO ANGELS (in that later production, the ex-cons are played by Humphrey Bogart, Peter Ustinov and Aldo Ray). I agree, there are some obvious comparisons that can be made between these two movies.
With regards to MGM turning out glossy B films or programmers like this one, sometimes I think it's a result of the story being intended as an 'A' film then having its budget trimmed or status downgraded when a leading star (in this case, Joan Crawford) refused to do it. They have to substitute with other performers who don't have the same drawing power at the box office, and as a result, it means the budget has to be reconfigured so the film can be profitable and stay aligned with expected ticket sales. If Crawford had done it, or if it had been a Marie Dressler vehicle, it certainly would have been an 'A' picture.
They had already sent the original director (Tod Browning) and a cinematographer to Louisiana to shoot exteriors. And the quality of the exteriors seems to prove this was probably originally intended as an 'A' film.
|
|
|
|
Post by Fading Fast on Jun 7, 2024 16:11:02 GMT
I didn't think of it myself, but now that you say it, I see the comparison to "We're No Angels," a fun enough, but not great movie. As noted in my comments, I see a lot of modern-day Hallmark in the movie, but with a bigger budget, bigger stars and better production qualities all around than Hallmark has today.
There's always been a demand for those feel-good types of movies with how they get made and by whom being the only question. Today, they are made as cable-TV movies, in the studio systems, they were made as B pics.
Your comments are interesting about how an A movie can become a B picture by the time it's cast. The way you explained it, it makes perfect sense.
|
|
|
|
Post by topbilled on Jun 12, 2024 15:23:33 GMT
This film is from 1953.
She’ll do whatever’s necessary to save her husband
This relatively short programmer from the folks at MGM changes narrative direction and tone halfway into the story. That is not exactly a bad thing. At first it seems the tale will be about a nice American family encountering trouble south of the border. And this is a fairly good synopsis, but it’s much more. It becomes a drama about what a wife will do to save the life of her husband, even if it means letting an escaped killer put his grubby paws all over her.
The opening sequence is rather laidback. We see Barbara Stanwyck’s character and her husband (Barry Sullivan) heading to Ensenada with their young son (Lee Aaker). The son is overly precocious, even for a movie kid. The family stops off at a few places along the way.
But their idyllic vacation takes an awful turn after they reach an out of the way beach with a dilapidated pier. Apparently their Spanish skills are pretty poor if they cannot understand a sign that reads ‘Peligro’ or ‘Danger.’ We are told the husband had spent time in Mexico during the war, so he has some bilingual ability, but he hasn’t passed any of his knowledge on to the boy, who has no idea what is so peligroso about the old pier.
So the boy starts walking across. Soon he’s gotten his foot stuck between some planks. In a way the danger is over exaggerated. He could easily squeeze his foot out of his shoe and lose the footwear, but then the proverbial stage would not be set for the huge drama that comes next. Sullivan goes up along the pier to help the boy. He gets his son’s foot unstuck, but then on his way back to the beach where Stanwyck is waiting as a dutiful wife during the Eisenhower era would do, Sullivan also loses his footing. This time the pier gives way.
Sullivan tumbles down on to the sand below, but a large concrete pole has also come crashing down. It pins him under, against the beach. Stanwyck and the boy rush to his aid, but they cannot dislodge the cement pillar.
While the boy stays and keeps his dad company, Stanwyck must spring to the rescue. She hops in their convertible and drives off to get a rope and some help.
There is an amusing scene a short time later where she meets a Mexican couple and mispronounces the word for rope. She says corda but she really should be saying cuerda, so of course they have no idea what the heck she means. As she races off to find someone else, we see they did have a rope fastened on to the side of their donkey.
The next part is where the story’s tone shifts abruptly. She arrives at an abandoned rancho (nobody is ever at home in this part of Mexico!) and she finds a rope. But she also finds an escaped con, played by Ralph Meeker, who just killed someone. He hops into the car with her, finds a gun in the glove compartment and commandeers the rest of Stanwyck’s road trip. I do have to admit these scenes are rather tense and exciting, even if Meeker gets a bit too Method with his acting.
Meeker has no intention of helping Stanwyck rescue Sullivan, and even her comments about her young son don’t matter to him. There is considerable sexual subtext, since we can assume Meeker hasn’t had physical contact with a woman in a while.
Stanwyck’s character gloms on to this fact and during a wild scene, she lets him kiss her passionately more than once. She will string him along and get him to go back for her husband. After all, she reasons that Meeker will need different clothes and a new ID card, which he can take from her husband.
In the following sequence they head to the stretch of beach where Sullivan is still trapped under the pillar. We know that Stanwyck will outfox Meeker. She will be successfully reunited with Sullivan and their son, after she’s persuaded Meeker to help remove the beam that is on top of Sullivan. But there is a poignant moment where Meeker takes off, fleeing the police, and Stanwyck looks after him wistfully. The movie just sort of ends there, since we know Sullivan is now safe.
But I would like there to have been a proper coda, where the family’s vacation is over, and they are heading back across the border into the U.S. and learn about Meeker’s capture or demise. We needed to see Stanwyck deal with the repercussions of what had happened to her. But all in all, this is an above average programmer, and it made money for MGM, since the theme of danger in a foreign country seemed to interest moviegoers.
|
|
|
|
Post by Fading Fast on Jun 12, 2024 15:47:10 GMT
I wrote the below comments four years ago and only made a few tiny tweaks today before posting. I also want to give a much-deserved h/t to Topbilled for catching an error of mine about the location of one scene.
Jeopardy from 1953 with Barbara Stanwyck, Barry Sullivan and Ralph Meeker
At one hour and seven minutes in runtime and with a pretty straight-foward, family-in-jeopardy plot, Jeopardy is more like a really well-done one-hour TV drama than a major-motion-picture release. But within its box, it's outstanding.
An American family, mother (Stanwyck), father (Sullivan) and son, are vacationing on a remote Mexican beach when Sullivan gets his leg caught in the remains of an old pier. Unable to free him and with the tide balefully coming in, Stanwyck goes for help hindered by the remoteness of the location and the language barrier.
As drama, it draws you in owing to the quick shift from happy family vacationing to husband only hours away from being drowned, while his wife desperately speeds along a remote single-lane road in search of help.
Director John Sturges keeps the tension elevated as he regularly cuts back to scenes of the husband, with water rising higher around him in each successive shot, eventually trying to keep his young son calm who has yet to fully process what's happening to his dad.
And then, everything gets much worse. At an isolated-and-closed-for-a-local-fiesta ranch, Stanwyck runs into a young American man (Meeker) whom she asks for help. Moments later, as he's getting in the car, we and she realize he's not a kindly stranger but a thug seizing an opportunity.
Stanwyck is now in the car with what, we quickly learn, is an escaped convict looking to capitalize on the family's situation any way he can. Using a gun taken from Stanwyck and reminding her that if she dies, so does her husband, Stanwyck helps him pass several roadblocks and other police encounters all looking for him.
Stanwyck, adumbrating the character she'll perfect later in her The Big Valley TV days, tries everything, including physically attacking the much-bigger Meeker*, to get away and get back to helping her husband, but Meeker is up to the challenge from Stanwyck's hundred pounds of fury.
Finally, it comes down to this, all buried deep in movie-code lingo and signaling: Stanwyck agrees to have sex with Meeker, if he'll, then, help rescue her husband. Blink and you'll miss it, but that's what happened.
After that, it's a shared cigarette - just kidding - it's off to rescue the husband in a pretty gripping scene for 1950s special effects including a rope struggling to provide enough torque and a car that can't get enough traction as the incoming tide all but swallows up Sullivan.
Jeopardy is not Citizen Kane, but with TV in its infancy, these short, well-done sixty-minute movies - with first-rate actors - provided solid TV-style entertainment to a movie-going public.
*If filmed today, petite Stanwyck would have beaten up fit and close-to-twice-her-weight Meeker because in 2024-TV-and-movie land, petite women regularly beat up physically fit men nearly twice their weight, but that interesting understanding of physics and reality hadn't happened yet in 1953.
|
|
|
|
Post by topbilled on Jun 18, 2024 14:12:29 GMT
This neglected film is from 1954.
That old time boxing religion
This is a feel-good sports drama from the folks at MGM. You know it’s a feel-good movie by the amount of harmonica music that plays on the soundtrack. It certainly is catchy. The set design takes the viewer back to simpler days, evoking a sense of nostalgia with keen attention to period detail. As always, we have the studio’s usually strong production values helping to make this a worthwhile motion picture.
I was particularly impressed with Dewey Martin as a boxer who fights and wins because the Lord is in his corner. Martin had previously played a pug in a noir called THE GOLDEN GLOVES STORY (1950). In both flicks he is a lean fighting machine, if not exactly mean enough to be out for blood.
Of course, Martin is not the world’s greatest actor, but he brings a fresh-faced sincerity to the role. It’s required for a story of this type to be believable, especially since his character is a fervent Christian (a man named Daniel), placed in an arena that seems like a den of thieves.
Keenan Wynn plays his initially unscrupulous manager, the greatest thief of them all. Off to the side is Earl Holliman, portraying a fighter turned assistant who becomes friends with Martin. And Shelley Winters is on hand as Wynn’s wife. She and Wynn are perfect together, and their on-going banter is easily a highlight of the film.
We know the characters in this story are all going to come to the Lord before the final fadeout, or at least experience some sort of personal transformation. That’s the main reason Martin is in everyone’s life, and the main reason the filmmakers are even telling this story.
As such, there are some good conversion scenes that are not as heavy-handed as I expected them to be. We do have a few religious services with preaching. It’s not ELMER GANTRY level traveling religion, but there are occasional hallelujahs and amens from the crowd. What’s more important is how Wynn, Winters and Holliman react to these spiritual demonstrations.
It causes them to be introspective, and this is meaningful for everyone, especially for Holliman who is defined as being none too bright. It’s interesting to see them all grapple with their consciences and grow as human beings. For 73 minutes, something positive has happened to this group on screen; and I’d like to believe it’s been just as good for the viewer.
|
|
|
|
Post by topbilled on Jul 8, 2024 15:35:09 GMT
This neglected film is from 1946.
Postwar fidelity
On paper I’m sure it seemed like a good idea– tell a story about a postwar couple who rediscover they are right for each other. After all it’s a mid-40s rom-com, probably a project intended for Van Johnson and June Allyson. Though I don’t think it would’ve fared better with them, because the main problem is not the stars– in this case, Tom Drake and Donna Reed. Both have charm, and both do their best.
Instead the issue is more to do with a script that seems to be in need of a rewrite or at least some considerable polishing. The premise is this: a returning army veteran (Drake) has a job waiting for him at a big city department store as soon as he is mustered out of the service. He also has a girl (Reed), or so he believes.
Only when he turns up, we learn she moved on with a more successful businessman (Warner Anderson)…something she failed to mention in her letters. The longer she keeps the truth to herself, the more complicated things get. Especially when the notion of proposing to her crosses his mind.
As far as premises go, it’s fine and dandy. But how the gal and her coworkers conspire to keep the truth from the ex-soldier is uneven and often defies logic. At one point, she barters an agreement with a man (Sig Ruman, as a stereotypical Russian) who has moved into her old apartment.
The arrangement will allow her to stay there for awhile so she can keep up the pretense to Drake that she still resides there, because it’s where she lived when Drake went off to war. Why? Can’t she just say she moved during his absence? I guess she doesn’t want him to see how materially successful she’s become and that she can now afford a better place…but why would it matter?
She acts as if he cannot accept change or make the necessary adjustments. Come on, he was overseas for four years. Surely he’s learned to adjust to change and adapt to new situations. This story might have worked better if like Carole Lombard’s character in NOTHING SACRED (1937), it was mistakenly thought that Drake was dying and Reed wanted to make things “perfect” for him…how he remembered life before the war. As it is, there’s no plausible reason for her to lie to him continually or for her to entangle her store coworkers in such ongoing deception.
The coworkers are the best part of the movie. Edward Everett Horton is an officious floor manager, with Spring Byington on hand as his diligent assistant. Also, we have Margaret Hamilton cast against type as a nice saleswoman. They all work together very well. There’s even an ambitious clerk (Wilson Wood) who reminds me of Joseph Schildkraut in THE SHOP AROUND THE CORNER (1940). I wouldn’t be surprised if the writer of this film drew inspiration from some of the characters in Ernst Lubitsch’s classic.
There’s a lovely sequence two-thirds of the way into the picture where Mr. Drake takes Miss Reed to meet his kind old grandpa (Harry Davenport) who owns a place out in the country. That’s when she realizes she still is in love with Drake.
The exteriors for grandpa’s estate seem to be the same ones that Metro used for Van Johnson & Dorothy McGuire’s home in INVITATION (1952) several years later.
All in all FAITHFUL IN MY FASHION is not a horrible way to spend 80 minutes. However, with more logical plot construction and much more realistic dialogue, it could have been a true classic.
|
|
|
|
Post by topbilled on Jul 17, 2024 14:51:02 GMT
This film is from 1942.
Emotions are finally expressed
WOMAN OF THE YEAR is a slow moving and methodical film, a lot slower than I expected it to be. It’s more of a character study. Two character studies. It could’ve been called MAN OF THE YEAR just as easily as it’s called WOMAN OF THE YEAR. Like PAT AND MIKE, or MIKE AND PAT, which one comes first doesn’t really matter since they are so equally played. Though perhaps Hepburn’s character is written a bit better than Tracy’s character might be.
Hepburn specifically wanted Tracy for her costar. It would be the first of nine motion pictures they made together. Hepburn had just come off her smash hit THE PHILADELPHIA STORY and was eager to prove her comeback was no fluke. She seems to be co-directing and quasi-producing this picture. Sometimes she stands off to the side in the shots watching/willing the character players to do their very best. It gives the film something different, something extra.
Hepburn’s quite luminous, more feminine, in this picture than she is in other studio assignments. Because she is so glam in this role, one almost has a hard time believing nobody married her character before Tracy came along. The aunt, played by Fay Bainter, has also not been married. In that case we have a gal who’s older and very much set in her ways.
Bainter and Hepburn had previously costarred in 1937’s QUALITY STREET, which was also directed by George Stevens. As the plot moves along the audience expects the aunt to get together with Hepburn’s widowed father (Minor Watson). But it is still impressive how economically this takes place. Without words Hepburn’s father grabs hold of the aunt’s hand during a public event. The camera then cuts to Hepburn looking on and noticing the loving act, even if she is not yet able to fully comprehend or approve. It’s a marvelous scene.
A wedding sequence occurs shortly afterward, and it is just as marvelous to watch. We glimpse the older couple’s vows reflected on to Hepburn who’s at a crossroads in her relationship with Tracy. This is probably the best part of the whole film-- the repressed emotions of both women finally expressed.
|
|
|
|
Post by NoShear on Jul 18, 2024 3:38:07 GMT
I wrote the below comments four years ago and only made a few tiny tweaks today before posting. I also want to give a much-deserved h/t to Topbilled for catching an error of mine about the location of one scene.
Jeopardy from 1953 with Barbara Stanwyck, Barry Sullivan and Ralph Meeker
At one hour and seven minutes in runtime and with a pretty straight-foward, family-in-jeopardy plot, Jeopardy is more like a really well-done one-hour TV drama than a major-motion-picture release. But within its box, it's outstanding.
An American family, mother (Stanwyck), father (Sullivan) and son, are vacationing on a remote Mexican beach when Sullivan gets his leg caught in the remains of an old pier. Unable to free him and with the tide balefully coming in, Stanwyck goes for help hindered by the remoteness of the location and the language barrier.
As drama, it draws you in owing to the quick shift from happy family vacationing to husband only hours away from being drowned, while his wife desperately speeds along a remote single-lane road in search of help.
Director John Sturges keeps the tension elevated as he regularly cuts back to scenes of the husband, with water rising higher around him in each successive shot, eventually trying to keep his young son calm who has yet to fully process what's happening to his dad.
And then, everything gets much worse. At an isolated-and-closed-for-a-local-fiesta ranch, Stanwyck runs into a young American man (Meeker) whom she asks for help. Moments later, as he's getting in the car, we and she realize he's not a kindly stranger but a thug seizing an opportunity.
Stanwyck is now in the car with what, we quickly learn, is an escaped convict looking to capitalize on the family's situation any way he can. Using a gun taken from Stanwyck and reminding her that if she dies, so does her husband, Stanwyck helps him pass several roadblocks and other police encounters all looking for him.
Stanwyck, adumbrating the character she'll perfect later in her The Big Valley TV days, tries everything, including physically attacking the much-bigger Meeker*, to get away and get back to helping her husband, but Meeker is up to the challenge from Stanwyck's hundred pounds of fury.
Finally, it comes down to this, all buried deep in movie-code lingo and signaling: Stanwyck agrees to have sex with Meeker, if he'll, then, help rescue her husband. Blink and you'll miss it, but that's what happened.
After that, it's a shared cigarette - just kidding - it's off to rescue the husband in a pretty gripping scene for 1950s special effects including a rope struggling to provide enough torque and a car that can't get enough traction as the incoming tide all but swallows up Sullivan.
Jeopardy is not Citizen Kane, but with TV in its infancy, these short, well-done sixty-minute movies - with first-rate actors - provided solid TV-style entertainment to a movie-going public.
*If filmed today, petite Stanwyck would have beaten up fit and close-to-twice-her-weight Meeker because in 2024-TV-and-movie land, petite women regularly beat up physically fit men nearly twice their weight, but that interesting understanding of physics and reality hadn't happened yet in 1953. This "TopBilled" guy - he knows about films too, then, eh?  |
|
|
|
Post by topbilled on Jul 23, 2024 14:42:48 GMT
This neglected film is from 1940.
Susan and Crawford
Some folks tend to repeat a critical consensus that Gertrude Lawrence was a dynamo in the original stage production of ‘Susan and God.’ Yes, Lawrence certainly made her mark as the title character; the play ran for 288 performances on Broadway in 1937 and 1938. But Lawrence had limited box office appeal as a film star, so it is not surprising that when MGM decided to produce a screen version a few years later, they used one of their most bankable stars: Joan Crawford.
Crawford was just coming off her successful turn as a vamp in THE WOMEN (1939), which had revived her motion picture career. That offering had been helmed by George Cukor, who would once again direct the actress in SUSAN AND GOD. Cukor and Crawford admired each other’s talent, and they had several hits together (including A WOMAN’S FACE). Cukor knew that Crawford would be able to convey the character of Susan Drexel in a way that most other actresses could not.
In the story, Susan Drexel is a self-centered American woman who experiences a religious transformation while traveling abroad. Although I am a Crawford fan, I wasn’t sure if she might be slightly miscast. But if you stick with it, by the time the second hour gets underway, the occasional false notes fall away and she does win the viewer over.
Her work in the scenes with Rita Quigley as her daughter, in the second half, are genuinely touching and serve as a precursor for the Mildred-Veda interaction five years later. So in a way, the film marks a turning point for Crawford: she is definitely stretching her acting muscles here taking on a motherly role.
For Crawford’s leading man in this picture, the studio hired Fredric March. I am not quite sure if March, as good as he can be, was the right choice. He seems to realize this is a woman’s picture and that he is playing a supporting role.
As a result, he appears to be going through the motions. Clearly, March seems unhappy and lacks enthusiasm, and his performance suffers (I think it is significant that he seldom, if ever, worked for MGM after this).
I did have the thought that this adaptation would have been just as good if it had been the first pairing of Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy. Hepburn would have easily conveyed the flippant hypocritical nature of Susan– in a way, she might seem more believable as an atheist who gradually comes around. And Tracy would have brought a bit more tongue-in-cheek levity to the proceedings of the beleaguered husband who must continually deal with the antics of this type of wife.
|
|
|
|
Post by BunnyWhit on Jul 23, 2024 22:00:53 GMT
Although I am a Crawford fan, I wasn’t sure if she might be slightly miscast. But if you stick with it, by the time the second hour gets underway, the occasional false notes fall away and she does win the viewer over.
[March] seems to realize this is a woman’s picture and that he is playing a supporting role.
With Rachel Crothers and Anita Loos at the pen, truer words have never been spoken. |
|
|
|
Post by topbilled on Aug 2, 2024 15:12:49 GMT
This film is from 1954.
Survival of the fittest in a Fortune 500 jungle
EXECUTIVE SUITE is a time capsule of 1950s prosperity. If we want to call it that. It could just as easily have been made in the late 40s or early 60s since it reflects postwar concerns before the countercultural revolution. A revolution which might have involved the children of our main characters, played by William Holden and June Allyson. It’s interesting to watch the film and try and guess what happened to these people ten and twenty years later.
Allyson was right at home with these domesticated parts which is not a slight but rather a compliment. My favorite scene in the movie is when she’s playing catch, since she gets to show off some of her tomboy qualities. Yet we do know that she is in every sense a consummate wife and “business” partner in the marriage. She anchors her husband and her support gives him a competitive edge over the other men at work.
Much has been made of the film’s sterling cast. I would argue that this may be a case where a motion picture is “over”cast. Some of the roles could have been played by unknowns trying to prove themselves at the studio. They didn’t all have to be established stars or well-known character actors.
Speaking of the character roles, I am sure that if Frank Morgan was still around he would have played the part taken by Louis Calhern. And if L.B. Mayer had still been calling the shots and Lewis Stone was still alive, Stone would have had Dean Jagger’s part. In some respects, it’s a tailor-made vehicle for studio contractees who might otherwise have been idle or between projects at the Lion.
I think Barbara Stanwyck was cast, not because she was pals with lead star Holden, but because Wise and producer John Houseman remembered her searing portrayal of BABY FACE. Back in 1933 she was a gutsy young social climber stepping on people to move up the rungs of the corporate ladder. At this point, two decades later, she has fully arrived. This character may be an heiress, but she has a certain amount of chutzpah. Such savvy keeps her at the top in this Fortune 500 jungle, traits Julia Tredway would have certainly had in common with her precode counterpart. When I watch the film I sort of fantasize that it’s Babyface with a name change and that she is the same character.
If we go with that thought, then where did all her scheming in her younger days bring her? She doesn’t seem to be very happy in this environment. And perhaps she is not fulfilled, certainly not in the way June Allyson’s character is fulfilled. She might even be romantically frustrated, flirting with Holden, but actually in a secret affair with Nina Foch’s character. Okay, I think you can see how I am brainstorming for a remake!
I do love how the story builds to that big boardroom scene at the end. But the ending is still a bit too predictable for my tastes. I would like to have seen some sort of upset or some sort of vague resolution that allows us to think about the characters’ fates the way we can at the end of PATTERNS.
|
|
|
|
Post by Fading Fast on Aug 2, 2024 15:49:22 GMT
I wrote these comments a little over a year ago.
Executive Suite from 1954 with William Holden, June Allyson, Fredric March, Nina Foch, Walter Pidgeon, Paul Douglas and Shelley Winters
MGM spent lavishly adapting Cameron Hawley's best-selling novel Executive Suite to the screen. Its all-star cast, wonderful on-location shots, impressive sets and all-around first-class production made it a hit in its day and a movie that has held up over time.
The studio turned a boardroom battle over control of a manufacturing concern into a philosophical debate over the existential meaning and purpose of a company and how best to lead it for long-term success.
The movie asks whether executives of a business should manage the balance sheet with a ruthless focus on short-term profit or, instead, have a larger vision to create products of value and excellence that inspire employees and customers alike.
When the president of a large furniture manufacturer dies unexpectedly, the company's board of directors is forced to choose, before the end of one tense weekend, the next president from the company's five current vice presidents.
This sets up the main story arc of the movie as the executives and their wives, some of the wives are more ambitious than their husbands, jockey for advantage over the weekend before the pending Sunday night vote.
Frederic March plays the ruthless head of finance who sees a company as a balance sheet to be manipulated for maximum profit today. Oleaginous and nervous, March is smart, prepared and always scheming for an advantage; he is a formidable adversary.
Opposing him is William Holden playing the young golden-boy engineer and Randian visionary who believes building quality products - products employees are proud to make and customers are proud to own - is the path to long-term business success.
Over the weekend, the plans, plots and alliances shift with the other vice presidents alternately promoting themselves or getting behind either Holden or March. Director Robert Wise turned a "boring" board vote into an intense battle of good versus evil.
The cast is impressive with Walter Pidgeon playing the older executive realizing his day has passed. Paul Douglas plays the head of sales and a board member whose extra-marital affair with his secretary, played by Shelley Winters, could compromise his vote.
Amidst all this infighting, a board member, played with smarmy charm by Louis Calhern, is selfishly trying to manipulate the vote so that he can advantageously cover shares of stock he shorted when he learned of the president's death ahead of the market.
Quietly centering the story is Nina Foch in an Oscar-nominated performance as the poised, smart and loyal executive secretary who knows the company's secrets, but also knows how to keep them. She is the quiet gem in this movie.
Rounding out the cast is Barbara Stanwyck as a large shareholder and the neurotic daughter of the company's founder and June Allyson as Holden's wife who shows plenty of grit and fight in a very 1950s corporate-wife way.
Executive Suite's Wall Street location shots capture a time when Wall Street was the physical center of the business world, while its well-designed and stuffy executive-floor set reflects the near-religious solemnity that can develop at the top of the house.
Director Robert Wise steered his large cast and tension-filled story to a climax worthy of its buildup. When Holden and March go mano-a-mano like Roman gladiators in Brooks Brothers suits at the fateful board meeting, you're on the edge of your seat till the final vote.
Executive Suite is one of Hollywood's best business movies, not only because of its stars and MGM gloss, but because its story transcends business and becomes a morality tale of good versus evil, of honor versus deceit, of integrity versus greed.
|
|
|
|
Post by topbilled on Aug 2, 2024 16:11:23 GMT
What a great review.
Especially like this paragraph:
Director Robert Wise steered his large cast and tension-filled story to a climax worthy of its buildup. When Holden and March go mano-a-mano like Roman gladiators in Brooks Brothers suits at the fateful board meeting, you're on the edge of your seat till the final vote.
During the 1976-77 television season, MGM's TV division launched a primetime soap version of Executive Suite. Twenty episodes were produced. Mitchell Ryan was cast in Holden's role and Sharon Acker played the wife. The story picked up a few years after the vote, where Ryan's character was still battling a chief adversary (Stephen Elliott in the March role); and the couple's son was now college-aged, home from travels in Europe and ready for a romance. A daughter was added, played by Wendy Phillips-- she was an idealist mixed up in politics.
The TV version eliminated Stanwyck's character, but made one of the vice presidents a female board member.
|
|
|
|
MGM
Aug 2, 2024 16:17:53 GMT
Post by Fading Fast on Aug 2, 2024 16:17:53 GMT
What a great review.Especially like this paragraph:Director Robert Wise steered his large cast and tension-filled story to a climax worthy of its buildup. When Holden and March go mano-a-mano like Roman gladiators in Brooks Brothers suits at the fateful board meeting, you're on the edge of your seat till the final vote.During the 1976-77 television season, MGM's TV division launched a primetime soap version of Executive Suite. Twenty episodes were produced. Mitchell Ryan was cast in Holden's role and Sharon Acker played the wife. The story picked up a few years after the vote, where Ryan's character was still battling a chief adversary (Stephen Elliott in the March role); and the couple's son was now college-aged, home from travels in Europe and ready for a romance. A daughter was added, played by Wendy Phillips-- she was an idealist mixed up in politics.
The TV version eliminated Stanwyck's character, but made one of the vice presidents a female board member. |
|
