Please Don't Eat the Daisies

Please Don't Eat the Daisies
March 31, 1960
MGM
Comedy, Drama
VHS
C+

Welcome to the 1960s!  OK, it's very early in the '60s, so early that when there's a reference to "an ex-president," it can only be Hoover or Truman.  Still, you can see the cultural shift beginning, particularly with male-female relationships.  There are moments, like when Spring Byington (well cast as Doris Day's mother) gives advice, or when Day uses her "feminine wiles" on husband Niven, that you're not sure where things are going to land.  Is Niven's character right that he's always right?  Is Day really selfish?  Or is it the reverse?  And what's going on with the half-serious seductive actress?  Not to mention the butch doctor who answers a little boy's question of whether she's a man or a woman with "I'm a veterinarian.  That's in between."  Another sign of the times is that I noticed more black extras than in my earlier films (with the exception of It's a Wonderful Life), particularly in the scenes set at Macy's.

The movie is very, very loosely based on Jean Kerr's book, which I reviewed here: http://rereadingeverybookiown.blogspot.com/2012/06/please-dont-eat-daisies.html.   This has little wit in comparison, except for the semi-in-joke about Rock Hudson.  Day sings three songs, including the title song and her trademark "Que Sera Sera," but the only one that really works is her duet (with a heavyset woman) on "Any Way the Wind Blows."  There are four bratty kids, each with a different hair color (although two of them are supposed to be twins), and a big sheepdog, but they don't contribute much to the entertainment.  Patsy Kelly is welcome as always, although she's not playing to her strengths.

Charles Walters also directed Easter Parade.  Marina Koshetz was in Little Women.  Kenner G. Kemp was in Singin' in the Rain and some of my other movies.  Harold Miller was in Auntie Mame.  Hal Taggart might've been in one of my earlier movies, and he would definitely be in Mary Poppins.  Peter Leeds would appear in I'll Take Sweden.  Jack Chefe, who plays the Sardi's headwaiter, would be in Take Her, She's Mine.  Len Lesser, who plays another Sardi's waiter, would be in How to Stuff a Wild Bikini, which would also feature Marianne Gaba as Animal.  Milton Frome would do John Goldfarb, Please Come Home!  Frank Delfino would be in Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory and Americathon, but his best known role is probably as a Kaplutian on The Brady Bunch.  Irene Tedrow would be in Foul Play.

We're supposed to feel sorry for them that they bought this house?

The Moon Is Blue

The Moon Is Blue
July 8, 1953
United Artists
Comedy, Romance
VHS
B-

This movie was controversial six decades ago, for what we would now call "adult themes and language," although my guess is it'd get a PG if released today.  At the time, Otto Preminger couldn't get it approved by the Code and released it anyway, which was the very beginning of the end for the Code.  (The movie did fine at the box office.)  Watching it now, it's mildly amusing but not particularly shocking.  I was more offended by the lines that joke about violence towards women, but I think we're meant to be offended.  The view of television-- "We're years away from color!"-- is about as dated as the view of sex.  David Niven plays the middle-aged scoundrel, William Holden the young scroundel.  Gregory Ratoff (Max Fabian in All About Eve) has a small role as a taxi driver.

Thank You, Jeeves!

Thank You, Jeeves!
January 1, 1937
Twentieth-Century Fox
Comedy, Mystery
VHS
C+

The only things that this movie has in common with the Wodehouse 1934 novel of the same name are the main characters, the situation of Bertie Wooster playing a musical instrument and annoying the neighbors (thus planning a visit to the country), and unfortunately racism.  (http://rereadingeverybookiown.blogspot.com/2012/05/1934-1989-harper-row-edition-p.html)  This time Bertie has a rather elaborate drum-set, but before he can leave town, a mysterious blonde arrives on his doorstep, pretending to know him.  (I don't know if the writers get any points for being canonically compliant that Bertie doesn't have a brother.)  Soon he's tangled in a tedious mystery that not only is very un-Wodehouse but doesn't even work on its own terms.  (Why, if Marjorie is on the run, would she trust a stranger she meets at a inn?  Why are there torture devices in the basement?  Why are we misled into thinking that her cousin is her boyfriend, when there's no pay-off to this?)  The movie is not quite an hour long but still drags.

Along the way to the inn, shortly before a not bad chase scene, Bertie and Jeeves pick up a "colored" Dixieland saxophonist played by poor Willie Best, who in his earliest film roles was known as "Sleep 'n' Eat." (http://celluloidslammer.blogspot.com/2009/02/willie-best-life-remembered.html)  Here his character is "Drowsy," which isn't much better.  It's a very stereotypical part and adds nothing to either the plot or the humor of the movie.  (However, the scene of Jeeves conducting him in a rendition of "The March of the Hussars" almost works.)  Arthur Treacher, who would go on to the Wooster-less Step Lively, Jeeves and similar valet-or-butler roles, is somewhat well-cast, in that he's got Jeeves's dignity, but he's a much more peppery and brawny Jeeves than in the books.  David Niven is, as he almost always is, charming in his first major role, although he's too bright for Bertie, and the print-Jeeves would never stand for that mustache.  Niven and Treacher have a nice rapport, as when they sing together in the car, and I wish there had been more of them together.  The film doesn't hold a candle to the 1990s British television series with Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie, but it's not without interest, for the casting and other reasons.

The American boy who annoys Jeeves is played by Gene Reynolds (looking much younger than his thirteen years), and he went on to be a writer for My Three Sons, M*A*S*H, and other TV shows.  Joseph North, who plays a butler here, would be another butler in The Bank Dick.