The Heiress (1949): Why Not Disinherit Catherine?

Dr. Austin Sloper (Ralph Richardson) disapproves of the man his daughter Catherine (Olivia DeHavilland) loves. In the third act of the movie he threatens to alter his will again as he does in the 1st act.


When Catherine agrees that he should alter the inheritance and takes pen in hand to begin dictation of his new will, Dr. Sloper changes his mind. His excuse for not following through on the threat is that, "I don't want to disinherit my only child."


Richardson plays Dr. Sloper's scene with anguish.


Why doesn't he follow through on the threat? Why doesn't he want to disinherit his only child? She defies his authority and wants to marry a man who will only harm her financially, emotionally and perhaps physically. To disinherit would be to make known his opinions, his disapproval of his daughter's decisions. He does not wish to fund her foolishness.


Catherine would still be well-off due to her mother's inheritance, which Dr. Sloper cannot alter. With both her parents' money, Catherine is simply excessively wealthy.  She would not become impoverished when her father disinherits her.


So why not go through with the threat? For three reasons.

1. Dr. Sloper, believes that "family feeling is very proper." Were he to disinherit his daughter, he would push against his own values of service and protection of the family. 
2. This is 1840s New York; a woman of Catherine's station must have money or a marriage to live comfortably or to have any power or influence. To disinherit Catherine would be to take away some of that influence. 
3. Taking away her money makes Dr. Sloper like the man he despises - Morris Townsend (Montgomery Clift).

Morris is Catherine's feckless fiance who presumably would also have dissolved her fortune. He would have dissolved it, not in one fell swoop, but year after year in extravagance as he has done with his own inheritance. Morris loves no one but himself, his own selfish desires.


Dr. Sloper, on the other hand, cares for Catherine in his own way. He's not a likeable person. In his attempts to teach Catherine to be sociable and gracious he is instead abusive. However, to disinherit would be too cruel even for him.


See also:
The Heiress (1949): Her Mother's Presence
The Heiress (1949): The Garden Muse

Please Don't Eat the Daises (1960) - Doris Day

Free love, hippies and substance abuse may dominate popular ideas of the 1960s, but the culture that they countered was still around and held sway at the box office. With the fall of the studio system and of morality offices and their film codes, this decade saw expansion in topics to be explored in the movies.

These more risque films ran side by side with traditional family movies at the cinema. Consequently, this is also the decade which saw the rise of the MPAA rating system in 1968. Filmmakers could still make any movie they wanted and families could have a rough idea of the content of a film before little Johnny would have an eyeful of something his parents did not want him to see.

One of the brightest lights of both worlds in the 1960s was Doris Day. She could play in a sex farce as the sophisticated, single working lady who doesn't want to be just another notch in some guy's bedpost. The actress could also play the married lady with traditional values who loves all things family-oriented.

One of her best in the latter category is Please Don't Eat the Daises (1960). The biggest problem for Kate McKay (Day) in this film seems to be moving the family from the city to the country on short notice. Just when you're thinking this is another Meet Me In St. Louis plot where all their troubles aren't really troubles, another theme is introduced.

Kate's husband Larry McKay (David Niven) must now commute from the country to his job in the city. He's away from his wife more often and is sorely tempted to be unfaithful by a persistent actress - Deborah Vaughn (Janis Paige).

It's also a tale about Larry's increasing snobbery with his change in jobs from theater professor to theater critic. Broadway plays close at the stroke of his pen. The power is intoxicating and Kate has no qualms sticking a pin to her husband's inflated ego. The tension mounts.

It is because the connection between Larry and Kate is so believable, the audience understands that Larry is potentially abandoning everything of value to him. Though this film is couched in the guise of a fluff family comedy with detours into kids pranks and mayhem (including eating daisies), its central premise is a riveting tale every bit as serious as the problems of the Revenals in the drama Showboat, for instance.

Please Don't Eat the Daises is based on a the best-selling book of humorous essays by Jean Kerr. Hollywood scores points for putting some bite into the source material.

Classic Movies for St. Patrick's Day

For St. Patrick's Day, a link fest.

Tyrone Power

• Read mini reviews of 7 Classic Movies for St. Patrick's Day
• Read about Tyrone Power's acting lineage, which stretches back to the first Tyrone Power from Waterford, Ireland.
• Review of The Happiest Millionaire (1967) which uses a prominent recent immigrant from Ireland to move the plot.
• Review of Untamed (1955) with Susan Hayward and Tyrone Power. If Gone with the Wind began in Ireland with the potato famine, this would be the resulting film.

What are some of your favorite movies of Ireland or Irish characters?

Tim Burton Directs Disney's Live Action Remake of DUMBO

Tim Burton - director of many hits, including Batman with Michael Keaton, and more recently the Johnny Depp film Alice in Wonderland- is prepared to convert yet more cartoon characters into live action.

This time it's Walt Disney's Dumbo from 1941, based on a story written by Helen Aberson about a circus elephant with self-esteem issues who learns to fly. Because Disney was trying to launch a simple film at low cost to maximize profit, the animations are not as lush as they had been for, say Fantasia. The emphasis is on the characters in the foreground and less on the details in the background. Consequently, there will likely be a stark contrast in production values with anything coming out of the mind of the compulsively-detailed Burton.


Read More at the Wall Street Journal

The Happiest Millionaire (1967)

A lovely Disney film for the entire family.

In The Happiest Millionaire, Fred MacMurray plays Anthony Biddle - an alligator-loving, boxing enthusiast millionaire of the early 20th century from a famous Philadelphia family. His daughter Cordelia Drexel Biddle (Lesley Ann Warren) -feeling suffocated by her heritage- attends a ladies college in a different state. While there, she meets and becomes engaged to New Yorker Angier Buchanan Duke (John Davidson) who is just as obsessed about cars as Mr. Biddle is about boxing. 

The rest of the film is father vs fiance, Philadelphia vs New York City,  old money vs nouveau riche. There's even a song about it called "There are Those," sung serviceably and acted beautifully by Gladys Cooper and Geraldine Page as members of the two warring families.
 
Keeping the peace and winking to the audience now and again is John Lawless (Tommy Steele), a man recently from Ireland who is hired as butler to the Biddles. His soliloquies to the camera, breaking the fourth and such would be perfect for the Kyle Crichton play on which this movie is based, but he is not in the stage version. Lawless is a film invention to give the audience a bit of Disney fantasy.

He is aided in this task with a bright and lively score by Jack Elliott and upbeat, clever songs by Richard and Robert Sherman, aka The Sherman Brothers. The film could have been a straight comic drama, but the songs do elevate it to a lush, almost-real-but-not-quite fantasy. 

During the song "I'll Always Be Irish," Lawless sings about enjoying his heritage and rounds it out with, "and I'll bet someday we'll get an Irish president." In this the lyricist refers to the 35th U.S. President -John F. Kennedy- who had been assassinated  four years prior to the release of this film,  fifty years after the setting of this movie, bringing in a little note of sobering reality to what could easily have been a saccharine movie. You'll see this a lot throughout the film -it brings you to the edge of reality and eventually snaps you back into a fictionalized world.

This film reminds one of Meet Me In St. Louis in that it is based on a true story and is a beautifully-costumed, period family drama where there are no great stakes, but you're invested in it anyway. Recommended for the entire family.

It's the Little Things

When Walter Neff, insurance salesman (Fred MacMurray), overtly flirts with Mrs. Phyllis Dietrichson (Barbara Stanwyck), mentioning her prominently-displayed anklet, Phyllis tucks one ankle behind another in a gesture of sudden modesty.


Later in the scene, we almost hear the gears turning in her head as Phyllis forms the idea to kill off her husband and collect the insurance money using Neff's connections. She then crosses her legs so that the anklet is displayed again. This is her first deliberate lure.

She's still keeping herself aloof at this point, controlling this newly-forming relationship, but Phyllis is definitely on the hunt in one little gesture. She's reminiscent of an anglerfish - dangling something shiny and alluring in front of her victim.

Walter - who flirts without caution as if this is his regular behavior on a sales call- thinks it's just a lonely, discontented wife looking for a promising partner. He has no idea what he's getting into.

Hot Enough for June (1964) - Dirk Bogarde as a Spy

The Man Who Knew Too Little meets The Cold War meets 007

The James Bond craze (among other things) sparked many spy films in the 1960s.  The suave, sophisticated man of mystery who knew the right thing to do at the right time for national security was often copied. It was also spoofed in films like Casino Royale (1967) with David Niven.

Then there are films like Hot Enough for June  (aka Agent 8 3/4) from 1964 which might be best described as a serio-comic spy story.

Nicholas Whistler (Dirk Bogarde) is an unemployed writer who takes a courier job with a glass manufacturer. He must go behind the Iron Curtain to trade industry secrets. It turns out the glass manufacturing business is a front and Nicholas is unknowingly smuggling state secrets to and from British Intelligence agents behind enemy lines.

Once our hapless hero discovers the truth, we have an extended chase sequence that often wildly veers between comedy and terror.

Unlike the more famous, well-kempt agent 007, the only tuxedo we see Nicholas in is borrowed, dirty and ill-fitting. Perfect downplay of the agent lifestyle. Nicholas must also contend with Vlasta (Slyva Koscina), the daughter of the enemy agent who is out to capture him. But Nicholas and Vlasta each have philosophical misgivings about their duties, which is rarely explored in spy films.

Hot Enough for June is an interesting study in the anti-007 type of spy film.





Further Reading
Hot Enough for June is one of Java's 5 Enemy Defects Spy Movies

Hesitate Reviewing a Famous Film?

Do you ever hesitate reviewing a famous movie just because you don't believe you can add anything to the conversation? If you're simply echoing someone else's writing, your piece is superfluous.


That's the constant challenge for online classic movie critics, historians and reviewers - finding a new perspective to old movies.

Sometimes you feel as if your reviews are the broth made from the soup bones of the decimated old films that everyone else has already picked over.

For these reasons, Java's Journey has yet to review the classics that everyone knows. There are scores of retrospectives about Gone with the Wind, but as of today, you won't find them here. The Journey has barely made mention of the superb Casablanca; has only dabbled into the  nooks and crannies of Singin' in the Rain, but never bothered with a full review.

To feel worthy of mentioning West Side Story, Java came up with a different angle that isn't much discussed on the web - the difference in viewing the film on the small screen versus the big screen. And she committed to a two part series comparing The Wizard of Oz to The Wiz to find something that had not been said about either of those two classic movies (at least not on the web).

So what's the answer? Trudge ahead anyway. Read more, view more, speak to more people about it and eventually you'll find an angle that not only informs the reader but interests you as well. As time goes on and fewer people know these old films, your corner of the internet will prove massively valuable. So keep plugging.

Debbie Reynolds invests in a new film studio

MGM star, Debbie Reynolds has recently said this on her Facebook page,

"My family is opening a studio at our ranch in San Luis Obispo headed by my son Todd."

Todd Fisher is the son of Reynolds and crooner Eddie Fisher. He seeks to produce films in the classic studio way - in that you'd have everything you need ready to go, instead of the current Hollywood model where you're starting for scratch every time.


Read more here: http://www.sanluisobispo.com/2015/02/28/3513218/hollywood-insider-opens-film-tv.html

40 Pounds of Trouble (1962)

Damon Runyon's "Little Miss Marker" -the short story of a little girl left as collateral to a gangster- made its way to the screen several times, famously with Shirley Temple in the title role. Fast forward about 30 years and here is the story again starring Tony Curtis in Forty Pounds of Trouble -  the only film listed under Curtis Productions.

Claire Wilcox (who would later have a career in television before quitting in her 20s) plays the charming little kid who learns about running a hotel and gambling establishment as the adults decide her fate. Suzanne Pleshette is on hand as a lounge singer at the casino who falls in love with the Curtis character, creating a new little family for the girl.

There would be other remakes, but this movie stands out for one thing - Disneyland. The little girl wants to visit the Walt Disney theme park, which causes havoc for the gangster since he cannot cross state lines. Disneyland had opened a mere six years earlier and was still a fascinating novelty. No doubt this film brought Disney to children who couldn't travel all the way to California.

The problem, though, is that in having detectives chase Tony Curtis from the gambling hotel and into the magical world of Disney, the story becomes a completely different film. The first two-thirds of the movie is Ocean's 11 Meets Paper Moon. The last third is like a beautiful, mostly wordless, travelogue of Disney's Main Street U.S.A., Tom Sawyer's Tree House, etc.

Despite this abrupt change in tone and storyline, Forty Pounds of Trouble is a lovely location film recommended for Disneyphiles and Tony Curtis enthusiasts.

Do You Collect Movie Memorabilia?

Recently, a friend of Joan Crawford gave away some of his correspondence with the legendary star as a treat for the rest of us in the Crawford group. His generosity was sparked by the knowledge that his most treasured missives are framed and displayed on his wall, the rest are packed away.

Deciding that the stored letters needed good homes, the movie star's friend gave away 15 of the precious memorabilia for Valentines Day 2015.

The lot did not fall in Java's favor, but the very idea of owning even a tangential piece of movie history is exciting. This opens up a different world that yours truly has not bothered exploring beyond the museums - collecting movie memorabilia.

Do you collect movie memorabilia?