Gentlemen Prefer Blondes

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
August 1953
Fox
Comedy, Musical, Romance
DVD
A-

A sometimes giddy, always fun, musical that has little to do with the book it's based on (it's probably more like the intervening stageplay), and improves on it in every respect.  (My review of Loos's novel is here http://rereadingeverybookiown.blogspot.com/2012/04/gentlemen-prefer-blondes.html)  The movie is chockful of people who'd done other movies (see below), but basically I watch it for the two leads, smart-when-she-wants-to-be Lorelei played by Marilyn Monroe and cynical-but-romantic Dorothy played by Jane Russell.  They both look gorgeous in Technicolor, but they're also screamingly hilarious.  And it's hard for me to think of another musical with such a great soundtrack.  My favorite number is "Ain't There Anyone Here for Love?", where Russell sings of her sexual frustration to a bunch of Code-teasing possibly gay athletes.  She also becomes one of the first Marilyn impersonators when she does a burlesque (in a double sense) of "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend."  Marilyn's own version is fabulous, although the set there does contain a very BDSM chandelier.  (It's the most twisted thing I've seen done to chorus girls since Flying Down to Rio.) 

Charles Coburn comes across as more harmless-seeming but more actually more dangerous (in the sense of getting the girls in trouble with the law) than his dirty old man character in Monkey Business, while seven-year-old George Winslow has much better lines as Henry Spofford III than he did as one of the kids in MB.  Tommy Noonan (he fitting what Marilyn's Sugar would say about men with glasses in Some Like It Hot) and Elliott Reid are OK as the romantic interests, but it's really a girl-buddy movie (a sismance?), with Russell and Monroe loyal, if bickering, friends throughout.

Rolfe Sedan was in The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle.  George Dee, Arthur Dulac, and Leo Mostovoy appeared in Casablanca.  Steven Geray was in All About Eve.  Harry Carey, Jr., Henri Letondal, Ray Montgomery, Roger Moore (still not that Roger Moore), and Robert Nichols were in Hawks's Monkey Business.  Ed Fury played a muscleman in Abbott and Costello Go to Mars as well.  Jack Chefe and Alphonse Martell were in Ma and Pa Kettle on Vacation.  Jean De Briac was in both Casablanca and MaPK on Vacation.  A. Cameron Grant was in Singin' in the Rain.  Herman Boden, Joan Collenette, Jack Dodds, Colin Kenny, Matt Mattox, Frank Radcliffe, Jack Regas, Roberta Stevenson, and Marc Wilder were all in The Band Wagon.  Judy Landon and Shirley Lopez were in both.

Aladdin (no, not that Aladdin), George Chakiris, Stanley Hall, Alvy Moore, and Charles Tannen would be in There's No Business Like Show Business with Marilyn.

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).