I'll Take Sweden

I'll Take Sweden
June 18, 1965
United Artists
Comedy, Musical, Romance
VHS
B-

If it's Tuesday, this must be Sweden.  Or maybe Big Bear.  In Hope & Weld's answer to Take Her, She's Mine, we have to take the mountains of California for the mountains of Sweden.  Somehow that seems appropriate in this movie that is on the surface much less topical than THSM, yet underneath shows the tensions of the growing generation gap.  Sandra Dee as a college student was interested in protest, but Weld (as Jojo) just cares about the Watusi and her unemployed musician boyfriend Kenny (Frankie Avalon).  Hope (as Bob Holcomb, a very Danza name) lies and schemes to separate the two of them when marriage is a possibility, but he later decides that a wholesome American boy like Kenny is a better bet than the "Scandinavian Svengali" who tries to seduce Jojo.  Although the movie is as L7 as Bob H., it does address the double standard, especially when Bob falls for a Swede of his own (Dina Merrill, not Swedish).  There are at least three lines that show that the worry is not only that Jojo will lose her virginity out of wedlock, but that she'll become an unwed mother.  The irony of this will be great when we get to Hope's How to Commit Marriage, but that will be four years later, in a decade of change too fast for mainstream movies like this to keep up with.

The movie is sometimes intentionally funny, if in a corny way.  ("I can't sleep at night."  "You should talk to my doctor.  He can't sleep either.")  There's a third-rate, secondhand Marx Brothers connection, since director Nat Perrin wrote The Big Store.  And Bob Fisher and Arthur (son of Groucho) Marx would also cowrite Hope's Cancel My Reservation.  (Seven years from this movie, and definitely showing weariness with changing times.)

I'll note that Frankie sings three songs in this one, but doesn't seem to be breaking completely free of his AIP image.  (Bob calls him "a poor Beatle.")  Frankie's work here did have an impact on our next movie, How to Stuff a Wild Bikini, but I'll get to that in its place.

John Qualen, who's Olaf here, was Berger in Casablanca.  This is the last of my movies with Bert Stevens (he died the previous December); here he's a bistro patron, and he was in Citizen Kane among many others.  Hotel guest Jack Shea was a police officer in Palm Springs Weekend.  Rosemarie Frankland, here Marti, was a showgirl in A Hard Day's Night.  Christopher Riordan, a student here, would join the AIP Beach Party crowd shortly.  Beverly Hills (yes, you read that right) plays Electra here and would be Mary Ann in Speedway.

Some Like It Hot

Some Like It Hot
March 29, 1959
United Artists
Comedy, Historical, Musical, Romance
DVD
A

Probably my all-time favorite movie (as well as the top comedy on the AFI list), this is hilarious, clever, sexy, warm, sweet, romantic, cynical, dark, light, wise, silly, gay-friendly, and remarkably well-timed.  That last quality really struck me on this viewing, how not just the wisecracks but everything, from sound effects to exits and entrances, is Swiss-watch-like.  The script by Wilder and Diamond is top-notch, from running jokes like "Type O" to plot twists to its justly famous curtain line to double entendres .  (This time I caught "cherry tarts.")  The three leads were probably never better than they are here: Curtis, playing "heel" Joe, prissy Josephine, and Cary-Grantesque Shell Oil Jr.; Lemmon as insecure Jerry and unsinkable Daphne; and Monroe, still lighting up the screen as she did at the beginning of the decade in All About Eve, here more vulnerable but also more fun-loving as Sugar Kane.  They're well-supported by the rest of the cast, especially the veterans, with "satchel-mouthed" Joe E. Brown priceless as Lemmon's suitor.  Although the film is not a musical per se, it does use music very effectively, not just the jazzy background themes and incidental music, but Marilyn's three very different songs.  (Needless to say, far more memorable than poor Jayne Mansfield's ditties in The Sheriff of Fractured Jaw.)  The costumes, Marilyn's especially, are just right, and the movie is definitely an argument for the beauty of black & white.  (In fact, on their anti-Colorization program, Siskel & Ebert showed a clip of Marilyn teasing and being teased by the shadows and lights during "I Wanna Be Loved by You.")  The comparisons to the farce of the Marx Brothers don't seem overblown, and in fact there's a great improvement on the "crowded compartment" scene of A Night at the Opera.

So why not an A+?  Well, I could say something about perfection, but I think it's that the gangster plot doesn't quite work.  Don't get me wrong.  It provides some great moments, especially when George Raft (Spats) and Pat O'Brien face off, or when we see how stupid and crude Spats's henchmen are, and it doesn't bring the movie too far down, as the gangsters do in The Girl Can't Help It.  But when the mob, or rather mobs, show up in the last half hour of the movie, it takes away some of the sunny bubbliness of the Florida setting.  Still, the two wrong-for-each-other-yet-so-right couples manage to go off into the horizon, on their way to a yacht, and there is that lovely end-line.

Tom Kennedy (not the game show host), who plays a bouncer here, was in the Marxes' Monkey Business.  Jack Gordon was in It's a Wonderful Life.  Carl Sklover was in Abbott and Costello Go to Mars.  Billy Wayne was in The Girl Can't Help It.  Bert Stevens was in Citizen Kane and Auntie Mame, the latter with Arthur Tovey.

Joe Palma and Joan Shawlee (Sweet Sue) would be in The Apartment.  Tiger Joe Marsh would do Beware! The Blob.  Dave Barry (not that Dave Barry), who is Beinstock here, would be in Spinout.  Mike Mazurki, one of Spats's more memorable henchmen, would appear in The Magic of Lassie.  George Raft would play himself in Sextette, while Tony Curtis would chew a lot of scenery as one of the many ex-husbands (the Russian one) of Mae West's character.  Nehemiah Persoff, who's Little Bonaparte, would have a completely different role as Yentl's papa in the Streisand movie.

Auntie Mame

Auntie Mame
December 27, 1958
Warner Bros.
Comedy, Historical
DVD
B-

This is based on the Patrick Dennis novel, by way of the hit stageplay that Rosalind Russell starred in.  (My review of the book is here
http://rereadingeverybookiown.blogspot.com/2012/06/auntie-mame-irreverent-escapade.html.)  It's much more sentimental, and much more of a star vehicle than the book, with Patrick often offscreen and the focus, sometimes literal, on Mame.  (Many scenes end theatrically, with the spotlight on Mame.)  The movie also isn't as racy as the book, as seen with the most outrageous word on Patrick's vocabulary list being "heterosexual."  Still, for its time it's pretty out there, and it's interesting to contrast the almost casual "unwed" pregnancy of Agnes Gooch with the coyness of the handling of Trudy Kockenlocker's dilemma in Miracle of Morgan's Creek about fifteen years earlier.  The timeline is somewhat different in AM-the-movie than AM-the book, including mistakenly starting things off in 1928 and having the Crash happen a few weeks later.  Still it's a reasonably faithful adaptation and author Patrick Dennis himself approved.  (His good friend Cris Alexander has a small role in the film and apparently played many roles in the stage production.)

I will admit to sometimes finding the 1974 movie musical Mame, with an offkey too old Lucille Ball, more fun because of it's so-bad-it's-goodness, but I'll discuss that when we get there.

Adolph Faylauer, who plays the sleeping audience member at the play, was part of an onscreen audience more than twenty years earlier, in A Night at the Opera.  Margaret Dumont allegedly plays the noblewoman in the play, but I didn't notice her.  (And IMDB is sometimes wrong.)  Frank McClure was in His Girl Friday and Citizen Kane.  Sam Harris was also in Citizen Kane.  Thomas Martin was in All About Eve.  Rand Harper was in Sabrina.  Lee Patrick (Mrs. Upson) was in There's No Business Like Show Business.  I'm pretty sure Colin Kenny and Carl M. Leviness were in some of my earlier movies, although I don't know which ones offhand.

Bert Stevens was in Citizen Kane and would appear in Some Like It Hot.  Harold Miller would be in Please Don't Eat the Daisies, Willard Waterman (Mr. Upson) in The Apartment, Peter Bourne in I'll Take Sweden, and Louise Land in Dear Brigitte.  Fred Clark was in Sunset Blvd. and would do Sgt. Deadhead, among other movies.  Peggy Cass, who plays scene-stealing Agnes, would be a very different mother in Gidget Goes Hawaiian.

The Band Wagon

The Band Wagon
August 7, 1953
MGM
Musical, Comedy, Romance
DVD
C-

This is the last of the movies on the four-pack I bought only for Singin' in the Rain.  (Hereafter, abbreviated as SitR.)  I found The Band Wagon alternately irritating and boring, if not so bad as Minelli's Meet Me in St. Louis.  Cyd and Fred have no chemistry, except maybe as friends.  (The 22-year age difference is alluded to in the movie, but it doesn't help that Fred always looks older than he is.  The 20-year age difference between Gene Kelly and Debbie Reynolds in SitR is much less obvious.)  The supporting cast doesn't really contribute anything.  The play-within-the-movie (also called The Band Wagon, for unclear reasons in both cases) fails to be so-bad-it's-fun, in the way that The Dueling Cavalier is in SitR.  (Or much later, Elephant! in The Tall Guy.)  The revamped play isn't any better, although I sort of like the "Triplets" song, the only memorable tune besides "That's Entertainment."  (Not only is the latter a classic, but I thought it was noteworthy that Nanette Fabray could sing the word "sex.")  The romance aside, the plot makes no sense, including why they want the dramatic (in every sense) director to take charge of a musical.  The use of color is mostly good, even if one of the rooms is so red it would be a bit much in a brothel.  The eleven-minute "Girl Hunt Ballet" is much better than the "Broadway Melody Ballet" in SitR, but then there's no momentum for it to break up.

While this is far from the worst imaginable movie Astaire could've made, it is a letdown.  Luckily, his reputation doesn't rest on this (or Easter Parade).  Maybe in the '50s the Astairish character he's playing was a has-been and his movie costumes were being sold off for pennies, but time would be kind to Astaire's reputation.  He's certainly more of a legend than Ava Gardner, who has a cameo as herself.  (And by the '80s, movie props and costumes were doing much better at auctions.)

Helen McAllister also danced in Flying Down to Rio, twenty years earlier.  Judy Matson also sang in The Big Store.  Al Hill was in The Bank Dick.  Frank McClure was in His Girl Friday and Citizen Kane.  Jack Gargan and Harlan Hoagland were also in Citizen Kane.  Herschel Graham was in It's a Wonderful Life.  James Conaty was in All About Eve.  Fred Aldrich was in Sunset Blvd.  Manuel Paris was in Ma and Pa Kettle on Vacation.  Brick Sullivan was in a few of my earlier movies, most recently Abbott and Costello Go to Mars.  Donald Kerr also appeared in Go to Mars.

Dee Turnell was in Copacabana and SitR.  Bobby Watson was the diction coach in SitR (and often portrayed Hitler in movies).  Madge Blake played Dora Bailey (and is probably best known for her TV role as Aunt Harriet on Batman).  Jimmy Thompson was the singer of "Beautiful Girl" in SitR, while Fred Datig, Jr., played an usher, as he does here.  Lyle Clark, Marion Gray, Peggy Murray, Charles Regan, and Joette Robinson were also in SitR.  

Judy Landon and Shirley Lopez were in SitR and would be in Gentlemen Prefer.  Herman Boden, Joan Collenete, Jack Dodds, Colin Kenny, Matt Mattox, Frank Radcliffe, Jack Regas, Roberta Stevenson, and Marc Wilder would all be in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.  Helen Dickson was in It's a Wonderful and would be in Ma and Pa Kettle at Waikiki.  Ann McCrea was in SitR and would be in Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?  Bert Stevens was in Citizen Kane and would go on to Mary Poppins.

Herb Vigran, one of the men Astaire eavesdrops on on the train, would go on to a bunch of TV guest shots, as well as the voice of Lurvy in Charlotte's Web (1973).  The other man is Emory Parnell, who's Billy Reed in many of the Ma and Pa movies.  Loulie Jean Norman would be part of the chorus for Heidi's Song.  Sue Casey would be in A Very Brady Sequel.  (She'd have a larger role in Catalina Caper, as Anne Duval, but I'm saving that movie for when I do MST3K on my eventual television blog.)

We swear, it's entertainment!

Copacabana

Copacabana
May 30, 1947
United Artists
Comedy, Musical
VHS
B-

This is Groucho's most entertaining movie in a dozen years, although he's not the funniest person in it.  No, it's not Carmen Miranda, although she has her moments.  No, the one who made me laugh the hardest was "Andy Russell, the voice of romance."  Like many people in the movie, he's playing a version of himself, but he's so damn goofy that I don't see how he could ever have been taken seriously as a crooner.  Both Groucho and Carmen have dual roles, she as "Carmen" and the nonexistent "Mademoiselle Fifi."  (When he says there's no woman in the world like Fifi, I thought of Capt. Tuttle on M*A*S*H.)  Groucho mostly plays Lionel Q. Deveraux (the Q stands for his father's love of pool), but he also shows up in the old greasepaint and frock coat, as a rising young talent, to sing "Go West, Young Man," a Kalmar & Ruby ditty that I assume was written for Go West and left out for some reason.  The Medved brothers picked Groucho & Carmen as one of the worst screen couples ever, but I think they're sort of cute together, even if she smooches three or four other guys rather than him, and he spends a lot of time hitting on other women, all of whom sass him.  One of them, the cigarette girl, was played by Kay Gorcey, who was then married to Groucho.  (She was Leo Gorcey's ex.)

There's also a subplot that Groucho remarks is about either the boss in love with the secretary or the secretary in love with the boss.  It seems to be the latter, with Gloria Jean as the secretary, six years after she played W. C. Fields's niece "Gloria Jean" in Never Give a Sucker an Even Break.  She, on Andy's advice, tries to serenade her boss, but like George in It's a Wonderful Life when Mary tries to sing to him, he thinks she's not feeling well.  It turns out that he's crazy about "a little chick who likes Andy."  All the confusion, including the "murder of Fifi," is untangled in the end, and the Hollywood agent thinks it would make a great picture, so we end with a mini-film within a film.  Well, maybe not a great picture, but give it a chance.

William H. O'Brien was in A Night at the Opera.  Bert Stevens was in Citizen Kane.  Dick Elliott, who plays the hotel manager, was the man on the porch in It's a Wonderful Life, the one who says, "Youth is wasted on the wrong people."  Cy Schindell was a bouncer in Wonderful Life as well as this movie.  Kenner G. Kemp and Dee Turnell would go on to Singin' in the Rain, Mari Blanchard to Abbott and Costello Go to Mars.  Columnist Earl Wilson would also play himself in two of my '60s movies, Beach Blanket Bingo and Where Were You When the Lights Went Out?