Pillow Talk (1959) w/ Doris Day

 

Story

Pillow Talk follows an interior decorator named Jan (Doris Day) who shares a party line with a rude man named Brad (Rock Hudson) who hogs the phone with romantic calls to other ladies at all hours of the day.

When Brad discovers that the woman that he's harangued on the other end of his phone is gorgeous, he deceives her. Brad creates a new identity and starts to date the lady. Will Jan discover Brad's rouse? Will they fall in love?

Hudson, Randall and Day

Translated in other countries as Midnight Confessions or Bedroom Problems, Pillow Talk would be the first of three popular, slightly racy films starring Doris Day, Rock Hudson and Tony Randall, who usually plays Hudson's friend and sounding board in these movies.

According to Rock Hudson: His Story by Sara Davidson, Randall said,

 "[Pillow Talk] was brilliant. When you've tried all the lousy material I've had to do, you jump way in the air, your head hits the ceiling, when you get good material like this."

The movies are light comedic romps with fabulous costumes and fun music. However, Hudson was nervous. According to Hudson,

"Shooting Pillow Talk was like going to a party. I t was a day's work of fun; it wasn't work at all. [However, at first] I was quite apprehensive, nervous and scared, because I'd never played comedy."

He asked the director, Michael Gordon, how to play comedy. Gordon said," just treat it like the very most tragic story you've ever portrayed.... If you think you're funny, nobody else will."

Hudson said of Day,

"Doris was an Actors Studio all by herself. When she cried, she cried funny, which is something I couldn't even try to explain; and when she laughed, her laughter came boiling up from her kneecaps."

Doris Day was nominated for an Academy Award for this humorous performance.

Reviews were good. The Times Daily calls the film, "one of the season's most delightful comedies." Further, the writer proclaims that Thelma Ritter, "steals a good portion of the comedy playing Miss Day's perpetually hung-over maid."

Author Christopher Sergel would later adapt the screenplay by Stanley Shapiro and Maurice Richlin  into a play.

Madame Bovary (1949) w/ Jennifer Jones

Gustave Flaubert's controversial novel of an unfaithful wife comes to life with the help of MGM Studios in Madame Bovary (1949).

Emma (Jennifer Jones) loves excitement. She has married a small-town physician, Dr. Bovary (Van Heflin) to leave the confines of her provincial childhood home. Madame Bovary grows dissatisfied with her new life and wants to live in a bigger city and with a more exciting man. As her disdain for her husband grows so does her passion for any man who is wealthy enough to take her away from town.

She runs through a series of secret suitors (including Louis Jourdan as Rudolphe a dashing man of means who finds marriage destructive to his bachelor life) and creditors to fund her trysts. Meanwhile, her long-suffering husband awaits her with a tender heart, like a Biblical Hosea.

James Mason makes a brief appearance as the book's author Flaubert who is on trial for writing a character from his "depraved mind." His explanation of the story bookends the film. Flaubert narrates the story here and there through voice over. At the conclusion, Flaubert accuses the court of trying to squelch truth.

There is no reason to present the book's author, the film would have done nicely without the court scene. You get the idea that the filmmakers may have been speaking directly to the code office, which censored all of its scripts. So Flaubert is foisted high with reverence as the ultimate hero in this movie.

Bosley Crowther of The New York Times wonders if there is a need for a defense of Madame Bovary since many "ladies much like her have been seen on the screen for many years." Perhaps there is no need to defend her to the audience, but there may have been the necessity to defend her to the code office. Filmmakers often felt on trial when having to submit their ideas for censorship.

Vincente Minelli's artful direction creates a sumptuous feast for the eye. Particularly impressive is the waltz scene, where the audience feels as if it is dancing with Emma and Rudolphe, and thereby swept off your feet with the heroine.

Crowther says,

 "... Vincente Minelli has kept it [the film] moving with a smooth and refined directorial touch. The high point of his achievement,indeed, is a ballroom scene which spins in a whirl of rapture and crashes in a shatter of shame. In this one sequence, the director has fully visualized his theme."

Crowther is less than enthusiastic about Jennifer Jones' performance, calling it "a little bit light" for the anguish. However, yours truly found her performance appropriately wrought and dramatic.

According to Paul Green, author of Jennifer Jones:The Life and Films, Lana Turner was first choice for this MGM film. The author surmises that the salacious content plus Turner's voluptuous reputation wouldn't make it past the censors.

Others in the MGM stable were considered, including Greer Garson (too conservative) and Elizabeth Taylor (too young).  MGM asked Selznick Studios to loan Jennifer Jones, who was demure enough to get past the code, but mature enough to play the role. They agreed to the deal if  MGM would also find parts for other Selznick contract players, including Jourdan, Mason and Christopher Kent.


Madame Bovary is a great costume drama with sensitive performances. Recommended.

Have you seen the film? What did you think of it?

Make Mine Mink (1960) w/ Terry-Thomas

A motley crew of  London apartment dwellers become mink thieves.

An altruistic Dame (Athene Seyler), a former Army major (Terry-Thomas), an etiquette teacher (Hattie Jacques) and a nervous pot mender (Elspeth Duxbury) all live in the same, dull apartment complex and all crave excitement. After replacing a stolen mink, they decide to steal fur, convert it to cash and give it away to charities.

Make Mine Mink (1960) banks on one joke - the dichotomy between stuffy tea times and scruffy black market dealings- but it works. The earnest line reading brings hilarity to this film.

Athene Seyler as Dame Beatrice is absolutely winning as the main thief with a heart of gold. There is a scene in which she wants to get into a secret backroom to steal fur coats. She smile prettily and says in loud voice, "Is this the place where the illegal gambling goes on?" She's also wearing a garment from speakeasy days - a visual joke that had me in stitches.

Terry-Thomas is the popcorn-selling name here. He runs his gang of misfits with military precision (or tries to). His murmured cracks and breathless one-liners gave me a chuckle or two. It would be another three years before he would play his most famous version of a late-blooming thief in It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.

Dame Beatrice meets her upscale "fence."

There is an endless stream of funny and strange characters introduced whose story lines never go anywhere, including Kenneth Williams as a friend of Dame Beatrice's family who is secretly an upscale black market furrier. (His modern office is to die for!) You really want each of the odd, little, side moments to expand into their own separate movie.



We recommend Make Mine Mink (1960) for a rainy afternoon.

What's your favorite Terry-Thomas film?

Forever Female (1953) w/Ginger Rogers

If All Above Eve were told as a zany comedy, this film might be it. Forever Female (1953) follows the career of a  (Shall we say "mature?") Broadway actor named Beatrice Page (Ginger Rogers) who refuses to give up a new role that is too young for her.

Enter a somewhat younger and less-experienced actor named Sally (Pat Crowley) who pursues Beatrice's job and her man - the playwright Stanley Krown (William Holden). She also gets some mild interest from Beatrice's ex-husband, the producer of the play, E. Harry Phillips (Paul Douglas).

It's not unlike many such stories about life in the theater, the short lifespan of a woman's stardom in the theater because of her age. However, coming as it does only three years after a similar story that won the most Academy Awards ever, at the time, it seems Paramount Studios was riding a trend made popular in recent years by All About Eve (1950) from Twentieth Century Fox Studios.

The director of the movie, Irving Rapper, encourages Ms. Crowley to be energetic to almost frightening proportions. Phillips takes in all this boundless youth and says, "Who are you? Or might I ask, WHAT are you?" You know that puzzled look Cary Grant has anytime Katharine Hepburn  says anything in the screwball comedy Bringing Up Baby?  In Forever Female, Stanley and Phillips look befuddled any time Sally widens her eyes and squeals out her lines. It's hilarious. She's meant to be weird.

The odd bit is that the story tries to give Stanley and Sally a tender love story which doesn't quite work for the character. She's ambitious, crafty and -like Eve Harrington in All About Eve- is only concerned about herself and her career.

When she chases a powerful guy, you're not exactly sure of her motives. Is this meant to be genuine or a career move?  As Stanley and Sally dance, the violins swell, and Sally seems so heartbroken over the guy as he rejects her. Sally flees the scene sobbing, like an actress who has been given perfect dramatic direction. Is she really crying or is this emotional manipulation?

Beyond the story promoting Sally as an up-and-coming new star, this film was meant to launch the actor herself, veteran Broadway performer Pat Crowley, into film stardom. The ingenue gets a stand-alone credit at the beginning of the film, then another one just before the words "The End" pop up.

In the trailer for Forever Female, words immediately splay across the scene, "Paramount gives a little girl a great, big job." Crowley is the first person you see, seated with her back to the camera in a director's chair with her name on the canvas. She turns to camera, gives a perky greeting, introduces herself, brushes her name with her elbow and introduces the movie.

"Well, the odd part is you know all the stars," she says, "and you don't know me from Adam. Well, maybe from Adam because I'm a girl. And that's what Forever Female is all about - girls and, naturally, men. Well, of course, that's what everything is all about, but in Forever Female we've got a new slant on it."

The slant isn't new at all, and that's fine. The trailer emphasizes the romance in the story to induce movie-goers to buy tickets - there are more people interested in romance than in a Broadway career, perhaps.

However, the film itself is most definitely about working on Broadway (though we spend more time out of the theater than in it). As much time is given to Sally's new career as is given to Beatrice's long one. There's some space given to Stanley's writing career and his angst about compromising his play to get the best actor in the role.

Pat Crowley did well in this, her first film. The star would have a prolific career in movies and television (including the hit TV shows "Please, Don't Eat the Daises" and "Dynasty"). She still performs today.

The next year after Forever Female, LIFE Magazine would make the budding film star its cover girl in the March 29, 1954 edition. They also tried to make this show biz veteran relatable to its readers.

The magazine follows her around a California apartment complex, stating that, when she's not making films, she babysits for the neighbors, likes to hang around the community pool, does her own laundry. But these common domestic scenes are interrupted when the actor says about her career, "I was going just as big when I worked in New York." Then you're knocked back in a world of a very knowing, capable performer who seems slightly frustrated with being the new kid in town.

Forever Female is a delightful backstage romp. The three big names are fun to watch. Paul Douglas as the producer is an anchor, a rock in this film about angst-ridden artists. William Holden mostly gets some wonderful reaction shots as everything seems to go wrong for the character. Ginger Rogers makes an interesting little speech about the trials of aging women in show business. At the end of which she briefly stares accusingly at the camera (and therefore at the audience. Well done.). And Pat Crowley's  broad theatrics work well for the part, especially when her character is expressing ambition.

Watch Forever Female (and other fine films) in its entirety at the official Paramount Youtube channel called The Paramount Vault.

The Experiment Concludes

.. and she limps over the finish line!

The experiment to blog 6 days per week about classic movies for one month is now over. Yours truly will return to weekly features.

The best thing about publishing every day for a blog is the routine, the rhythm you get into as you write. You look forward to getting up in the morning, finding something useful and informative, presenting it to your audience. Viewing the responses in the afternoon is also fun. Even when you're exhausted, habit takes over, and you begin to enjoy the process again.

You find yourself thinking of topics to discuss while in the car, the shower, the store - the same thing you always do, but more often.


The worse thing about publishing every day for a blog is the mental flogging when something goes amiss. Solution: write plenty of blog posts ahead of time and publish them piecemeal. That was my plan, but I simply didn't do it. I did enjoy having that rush of excitement every day, but the scheduled posts would have helped during the couple of times that I missed a day.

Here are the entries. Thanks for hanging in there.

An Affair to Remember (1957) w/ Cary Grant

A shipboard romance docks on dry land. It's saccharine sweet, but you love it anyway.

Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr play two strangers onboard the luxury liner, the S.S. Constitution (the movie would premiere onboard that same ship). They fall in love despite their engagements to other people back home. They agree to meet at the top of the Empire State Building, but -due to convenient plot points- the meeting never happens, so they get on with their lives.

The first part of the film - the cruise- is filled with humorous dialogue and fun. It's a comedy. On dry land, the movie is a tragedy filled with misunderstandings and unfulfilled dreams.

It's amazing how two people who have never met before a cruise, people who are not in the same social circles, suddenly keep bumping into each other afterwards. It's the kind of plot where if one character would just talk -"Say, I couldn't make it to the meeting because..."- the whole thing would be over in about an hour.

Also during this latter hour, there is a cloying Christmastime scene where Kerr directs children who sing, hearkening back to similar scenes in the actress' musical triumph in The King and I.  The latter part of the film is a bit too saccharine at times.

They stretch the tragic bits a little too long. However, the end scene - which I won't spoil for you- makes up for it. You are so choked up, you forget about the interminable last hour of the two hour film.

Leo McCarey directs this remake of his earlier film Love Affair (1939). This was a comeback for the director after  a 5-year absence. According to Michelangelo Capua (author of Deborah Kerr: A Biography), a car accident, physical pain, and time out of the limelight might have ruined his career. Nevertheless, he charged ahead with a revamped classic with two charming stars.

Kerr and Grant co-starred before in an odd, feminist, geopolitical comedy called Dream Wife (1953). Their chemistry in both films is unmistakable. The two always seem to be having fun.

Even The New York Times' Bosley Crowther enjoyed some parts of the romance, saying,

"... the attraction of this fable is in the velvety way in which two apparently blasée people treat the experience of actually finding themselves in love. This is an immature emotion that is loaded with surprise. And the old script of "Love Affair," worked over by Mr. McCarey and Delmer Daves, provides plenty of humorous conversation that is handled crisply in the early reels by Mr. Grant and Miss Kerr. "

According to Geoffrey Wansell (author of Cary Grant: Dark Angel), McCarey compares the film and its remake,

"The difference between Love Affair and An Affair to Remember is very simply the difference between Charles Boyer [star of Love Affair] and Cary Grant. Grant could never really mask his sense of humor -which is extraordinary- and that's why the second version is funnier."

The film was extremely popular, grossing more than its predecessor and garnering 4 Academy Award nominations. Crooner Vic Damone sings the title song; people rushed to buy the album.

In 1993, Sleepless in Seattle (starring box office stars Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan) made several references to An Affair to Remember, resurrecting the older film in the public eye.  The next year saw another remake of the film  -Love Affair with Warren Beatty (and Katharine Hepburn in one of her last cameos. Read about her performance here.).



You've watched An Affair to Remember before. Watch it again for the sheer pleasure of the dialogue and humor of the first part. Then fast forward to the end and weep like a baby.

Beneath the 12-Mile Reef (1953) w/ Robert Wagner

An underwater Romeo and Juliet story.

Beneath the 12-Mile Reef follows two sponge fisherman families who war over a dangerous, deep reef that has the best sponges. Meanwhile, a young man from one family (Robert Wagner) and a young lady from the other (Terry Moore) make like a modern-day Romeo and Juliet and indulge in a forbidden romance. 

Apparently, the two stars got along well. LIFE Magazine followed them about for a day as they frolicked in the Pacific Ocean at home in California, 5 months before the release of the film.  It's a short piece that is meant to boost Moore's stardom. "Now at 24," says the reporter, "her admirers say she is being groomed to challenge Marilyn Monroe. Terry can't see this at all. 'Marilyn,' she explains,' is an indoor girl and I am an outdoor girl.'"

LIFE Magazine

Then Terry Moore must have felt right at home during the location shooting for this film.

Beneath spends several interludes underwater, engulfing you in the waters off the Florida Gulf Coast. They take advantage of the wrap-around screens of CinemaScope. These shots must have been absolutely enchanting during its first run in theaters. Even Bosley Crowther of The New York Times, never one to blandish compliments, waxes lyrical about the technical process, saying,

"Here the special color camera with the anamorphic lens goes under water to picture marine life around the tropical Florida keys and comes up with scenes of the floor of the ocean that are bigger than any of the sort you've ever seen.

"Coral reefs and jewel-colored fishes and gentlemen in bubbling diving suits loom through the opalescent water that stretches from wall to wall across the front of the theatre within the frame of the panel screen, and the inevitable octopus slithers out of the sub-aqueous gloom. Fishermen rake rubbery sponges off the ocean bed, and everything looks both large and fearful down there beneath the watery blue-green sea."

 The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences certainly noticed and nominated this film for an Academy Award for Best Cinematography, Color.

Reviews for this film also give effusive praise to the lush score by Bernard Herrmann. Author Steven C. Smith (A Heart at Fire's Center: The Life and Music of Bernard Herrmann) quotes Fox producer, Darryl Zanuck, who says, 

"I thought 'Beneath the 12-Mile Reef' was one of the most original scores I have ever heard. It really gave me a thrill. The manner in which Bernard handled the underwater sequence[s] was simply thrilling. The entire picture has been enormously enhanced by this wonderful score. It gives the picture a bigness it did not originally have - yet the music never interferes but adds to the dramatic values." 

 Screen Beneath the 12-Mile Reef  - based on a story by A. I. Bezzerides- for the cinematography and the score.

Further Resources

•  Originally a 20th Century Fox production, Beneath the 12-Mile Reef  is now in the public domain. Watch it or download it for free at the Internet Archive.

Evergreen (1934) - An Art Deco Extravaganza

A struggling actress of the 1930s impersonates her legendary stage star mother.

Edwardian music hall star, Harriet Green (Jessie Matthews), retires to marry a marquis (Ivor McLaren) in Evergreen (1934). A past relationship haunts her as does the daughter of that union. Giving up everything, including her daughter and impending nuptials, Harriet runs away from London to die in obscurity.

Harriet, the Edwardian star

Fast forward to the 1930s and Harriet, Jr. (Matthews in a dual role) is also interested in stage performance, but is currently in the starving artist mode. The daughter uses a stage name because she wants to be a success on her own merit.

That will change.

A publicity agent/love interest named Thompson (Barry MacKay in a charming performance), and two old friends of Harriet the elder - director Leslie Benn (Sonnie Hale, the real life husband of Matthews) and Lady Shropshire (Betty Balfour) - convince the daughter to impersonate the legend.

"I'm sure if [your mother] knew, she'd be ever so pleased that you're keeping her memory green, and not meaning any puns either," one of the friends says.

They claim to the public that Harriet, the returning star, has simply retained the glow of youth. It's all about the stunt, the hype. The novelty might save Benn's failing show.

The possibility of indictment for fraud, plus old boyfriends of Harriet the elder pop up to endanger the enterprise.

 Evergreen is a story about time

Evergreen is a story about time - savoring time, stopping time, changes over time, similarities over time, the trends of the day, the music of an era, the ultimate dominance of time, fighting time.

Marjorie is upset with her director and publicity agent.

Harriet Jr. will replace Marjorie Moore (Marjorie Brooks) who is a mature actress of a certain age. Marjorie refuses to admit she's a day over 21 so that she can continue her reign in Benn's plays as an ingenue. It's a comic version of Margo Channing in All About Eve. However, instead of  a young replacement for the sake of changing tastes, Harriet is the youth of the past preserved.

In this film, the public is presented as an entity that never wanted to change tastes from the music hall days. However, modernity and competition around the world to be the fastest, the most stylish, the most efficient, forced its hand.
 
The film reaches respectfully to the past, to Edwardian times. The stage for Harriet the elder is small and intimate, the music is languidly paced, men wear handlebar mustaches (but not in a costume-y way). They even have a scene where someone drinks champagne from a slipper. The film refers to these moments with Harriet, Sr. as "Yesterday."

Later, a title card pops up over a pan of modern day London that reads "Today." Jump cut to a chorus on a huge stage rehearsing a tap dance number to the latest music. It's more impersonal, but it's grand.

The director-producer-choreographer of the show, Benn, comes out and, in a rapid-fire reading of the lines, expresses his complete dissatisfaction with the rehearsal. He's an efficient man who must keep pace with the times. Everything must be whipped into shaped, everything must be modern.

There's even a man who's entire job is to follow Benn around with a stool and time when the director will sit down.

There is a dazzling, art deco extravaganza showcasing the song, "Springtime in Your Heart."

Harriet, Jr. starts in the 1930s, flips a giant hourglass and is transported to the 1920s, the 1910s and the aughts. At each juncture in time, Harriet and chorus showcase a popular dance of the day.

(However, in the 1914 era, a machine simply mass produces young ladies, changing them into vaguely military-like automatons.)

Harriet then smashes the hourglass, holding us suspended in 1904 forever, and ends the song.

Harriet, Jr. feels trapped in the memories of 1904 in her personal life as well. Pretending to be her mother, she must deal with questions about the past. She's well coached by her mother's old friends, but the strain is getting to her. In private, she expresses herself in modern dances, flits about her  streamlined, art deco house in a new negligee like Ginger Rogers.

This film has been compared to many of the extravagant MGM and RKO musicals of the day. You are struck by how huge the sets are, the shear number of extras in any song...

...the gentle curve of the handles on this over-sized door...

...the slim, gorgeous gowns and jaunty little hats that the ladies wear (as you might see in a movie with Jean Harlow - another person who seems forever suspended in the 1930s).

 Behind the scenes

Evergreen is a Rodgers and Hart  musical whose film bares little resemblance to its stage show roots. However, its original star was cast for the film. Often stage stars do not have the chance to preserve their performance on film once a movie adaptation is in the works. Jessie Matthews wisely had a foot planted in both stage and film. She was a popular performer. By the time Evergreen was pitched as a film, there could be no one else but Matthews in the role.


The Gaumont British Picture Corporation, maker of this film, was the largest motion picture company in the UK in the 1930s, according to its official website. At the time, Jessie Matthews was its most famous star with international appeal, according to Sarah Street,  author of Transatlantic Crossings. American studios came a-courting the popular Miss Matthews, but no contract was to her liking across the pond.
 
According to Steve Chibnall, author of the biography J. Lee Thompson, Fred Astaire was originally set to star in this this film opposite Mathews, but could not due to contractual obligations with RKO Studios.

Look for a small speaking role as a barmaid from Norma Varden. (She plays Lady Beakman in Gentleman Prefer Blondes.)

A respite from the breakneck pace of modernity

Despite its name, Evergreen, is anything but, and that's ok. Ultimately, in being so modern, the film has become less evergreen itself and is instead a lovely time capsule of its era. It does well in big numbers, but one can also enjoy the smaller, more intimate times, like when Thompson and Harriet drink a cup of tea.