Monkey Business (1952)

Monkey Business
November 7, 1952
Fox
Comedy, Sci-Fi
DVD
C-

At the time I reviewed the Marx Brothers' 1931 movie, I didn't yet own this one.  A friend gave it to me recently, and I just now watched it for the first time in about thirty years.  I consider the film a disappointment, and I won't be keeping it.  How did so many great talents produce such mediocre results?  I mostly blame the inane script by I.A.L. Diamond (Some Like It Hot), Charles Lederer (His Girl Friday, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes), and Ben Hecht (Front Page, which inspired His Girl Friday), as it would've embarrassed Sherwood Schwartz.  At least Schwartz knew how to make crap fun, while Howard Hawks (the director and also opening narrator) just seems to have told everyone, especially leads Grant and Rogers, to act big and frantically, after the sedate beginning.  Poor Marilyn is stuck playing a simple (in every sense) curvy blonde, without the nuances she'd have in Gentlemen Prefer and Some Like, and none of the dizzy charm of her small plum of a role in All About Eve.  (As for Hugh Marlowe, he's no great shakes as an actor anyway, but at least in Eve he had more appealing things to do than get "scalped" by Grant and a gang of children.)  I'd recommend the Merlin Jones movies over this misfire, because even the monkey is pathetic here.  Still, I won't give it a lower grade, since it's not terrible, just meh.

Kathleen Freeman and Forbes Murray were in Singin' in the Rain.  Melinda Plowman was Susie Kettle in Ma and Pa Kettle.  George Eldredge was in MaPK at the Fair.  Esther Dale, here playing Ginger's mother, is Birdie Hicks in the MaPK series.  Faire Binney would be in MaPK at Waikiki.  Roger Moore (no, not that Roger Moore) would be in Gentlemen Prefer, as would Charles Coburn, Henri Letondal, and gravel-voiced little George Winslow.

His Girl Friday

His Girl Friday
January 18, 1940
Columbia
Comedy
VHS
B+

The '40s portion of my movie collection starts with a bang: this funny, fast-paced, smart, still controversial film.  Is the movie feminist or anti-feminist?  Is it racist or anti-racist?  And where does it stand on the death penalty?  It's tempting to say that it's not meant to be a message movie, that its ethics are no purer, its concerns no higher, than those of Walter Burns (Cary Grant), the charming but unscrupulous newspaper publisher who thinks a story about a rooster is "human interest," while "the European war" can be moved off the front page.  (And, yes, this is based on the play The Front Page.)  I think it is a very entertaining movie with a dark side that it hints at without fully exploring.  The reporters, even Hildy (played by Rosalind Russell), think a big story is more important than people.  The movie mocks them but also celebrates them.

Grant and Russell are wonderful together, with Ralph Bellamy as the never-a-real-challenge third side of the triangle, who gets taken advantage of because, well, he looks like Ralph Bellamy.  There are other third-wall-breaking jokes, like Grant's remark about "Archie Leach" and his calling someone a "mock turtle" (his role in the very odd 1933 version of Alice in Wonderland).  Grant and Russell ad-libbed a lot, and director Hawks encouraged them.  But other performers have their moments, mostly funny, although sometimes sad, as with Helen Mack as Mollie Malloy.  I would say, don't watch this expecting a perfect comedy-- it was #19 on the AFI list of 100 best comedies-- but give it a chance, and watch it more than once to really appreciate it.

Frank Orth, who plays Duffy, was the diner chef in At the Circus.  Frank Jenks was in You Can't Cheat an Honest Man.  Warden Pat Cooley would go on to The Bank Dick, Frank McClure to Citizen Kane.  Regis Toomey, who's Sanders, kept working into the 1980s, among other things playing a priest in Change of Habit (1969).

Design for Living

Design for Living
Dec. 29, 1933
Paramount
Comedy, Romance
DVD
B

"Immorality may be fun, but it isn't fun enough to take the place of one hundred percent virtue and three square meals a day."  So says stodgy Max Plunkett, played by the incomparable Edward Everett Horton.  But the threesome of Miriam Hopkins as Gilda (soft G), Fredric March as Tom, and, yes, Gary Cooper as George would disagree.  Something happens to Gilda that "usually happens to men."  She's fallen in love with more than one man.  She's a "nice" girl but she doesn't want to have to choose between them.  So they make a "gentleman's agreement" to swear off sex.  (This isn't quite the first movie I own to mention the word "sex," since there's a line in an International House song with "sex appeal," but the word and the idea are definitely more central here.)  Unfortunately, Gilda is no gentleman.  She becomes involved with first George and then Tom, and when forced to choose, ends up marrying Max.  She now has her feet on the ground, but she's bored out of her mind.  Until her two exes return for a surprisingly happy ending.

This is very much a pre-Code movie.  In fact, its certificate of approval was withdrawn the next year.  There's nothing crude or smutty about the film, but it has the Lubitsch touch of suggestiveness, mixed with the Ben Hecht sharp wit.  (All they took from Noel Coward was the general situation and one line.)  In the first scene, we're on a French train, and it seems the three passengers are French, until Gilda breaks into a very American "Oh, nuts!" of frustration at trying to communicate.  She's a commercial artist, while George is a fine artist, and Tom a playwright.  She's a very modern woman, and I don't entirely mind when she says that their work is more important than hers, because she's a very opinionated Muse and manager.  She may or may not be a virgin when she meets them, but when Max later "forgives" her for her past, she thinks there's nothing to forgive.  And she's right.

Hopkins has wonderful chemistry with both March and Cooper,who are great together as well.  (In the play, it was clear the men were bisexual, while here they've been best friends and roommates for eleven years.)  It is funny to see "bohemians" in suits and ties, but their tuxes when they're successful make the class differences clearer.  And Hopkins moves from businesswoman frocks to elegant gowns, particularly when she's a bored rich wife.

Edward Everett Horton might have been gay in real life, and he tends to play asexual characters.  Pangborn, in a briefer role than in International House, comes across as more obviously effeminate than Horton, underscored when Gilda tells him he'll like Goodnight, Bassington by Tom, because "it's a woman's play."  William Worthington, who plays a Theatre Patron here, was the Minister of Finance in Duck Soup.

I was tempted to give this movie a B+, but it is a bit slow-moving, which I attribute more to Lubitsch than Hecht, considering how fast-paced His Girl Friday (1940) is.  It's well worth your patience though, with its fine performances, writing, and direction.