Cancel My Reservation

Cancel My Reservation
September 21, 1972
Naho/Warner Bros.
Comedy, Mystery
VHS
C

Louis L'Amour wrote the novel that this Southwest mystery was based on, with the less Hope-ful title of The Broken Gun.  I can only imagine what Dominic Frontiere would've done with that, since he sings the Jackson-5ish "Cancel My Reservation" over both opening and closing credits.  Bob H was pushing 70 at this point, but his character is supposed to be 42, and he's paired with 48-year-old Eva Marie Saint, who looks stunning.  (And she shows off a lot of skin for a middle-aged woman, including in hot pants.)  The two of them are unhappily married because she's a women's libber whose "own thing" is becoming co-star on his talk show.  (They interview a pre-Happy-Days Pat Morita as a karate expert.)  Even though he doesn't seem to like children (he says that two rude autograph-seekers, one played by the director's daughter, at the airport are a good argument for the Pill), she blames herself that they haven't had any kids.  The happy ending, after he's several times arrested and they both come close to dying, before he finally solves the mystery, is she's pregnant and can leave the show.  Even though she told "Crazy" (Anne Archer) that she hated being stuck at home while her husband went off to work, she seems pleased about this.

As for the mystery, it includes Forrest Tucker and Ralph Bellamy as villains, some Indian land rights, and a few murders.  Keenan Wynn plays the local sheriff, and Chief Dan George a really old Indian.  I haven't read the book, so I don't know how much of this was added by co-adapters Bob Fisher and Arthur Marx, who'd teamed up for I'll Take Sweden.  I am fairly sure though that the joke, "I'll come back for my stomach later," when Bob is on the back of a motorcycle is a direct self-steal from Sweden.  And I suspect L'Amour did not include a rape joke.  (Eva MS, upon finding out that the Indian girl Bob H is accused of killing wasn't raped, says, "And that gets you off the hook with me.")  The movie is of course sexist and racist, although I suppose it could be worse.  It's incredibly dated, even for its time (the Twiggy joke for instance), and the cameos of Bing, John Wayne, Johnny Carson, and Flip Wilson are only slightly better than those in Birds Do It.  (At least they're given lines, although not good ones.)  Oh, and this time Herb Vigran plays Roscoe Snagby.

The movie isn't dreadful but it doesn't even have the camp appeal of Hope's '60s comedies.  It's just sort of there.  I guess see it if you're curious and/or a completist.

This is somewhat the chronological midpoint of this project, since I started with 1929 and I'm unlikely to finish before next year.  At the moment, I don't own any movies from after 2012, but that will probably change before I'm through.

Points for correct use of "whom"

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.