Category: Television (Page 14 of 23)

I really enjoyed this week's set of movies for various reasons. What a refreshing reset from the depressing war movies last week.

His Girl Friday (1940) – I've been hearing about this movie for years but had never watched it. I've been telling everyone how great it is since Saturday. Rosalind Russell plays the ex-wife of Cary Grant and she's getting ready to marry Ralph Bellamy (who you will remember as Randolf Duke in Trading Places). Cher, dressed in a suede Indian inspired outfit complete with turquoise and feathers, describes loving the quick dialogue, the Robert Altman-esque talking over one another, commenting "You can't beat it with a stick." Cher said, "a lot of actors, and I'm one of them, couldn't memorize all that dialogue."Cher talks about the technological difficulties in catching all the dialogue with a boom and how nobody was better or more graceful, ironic, sharp, sweet and vulnerable than Cary Grant. Robert Osbourne says he never showed he knew how great he was.

The pace of the movie is exciting (still to this day) and I loved seeing Russell excel in her job as a cut-throat journalist who all the boys admired for her skill. She's really good at what she does but longs for human agency. Instead of being treated as a piece of meat sexually, she's treated like a piece of meat vocationally. Cary Grant winning back an ex-wife is a joy to watch (see The Philadelphia Story) and Russell works hard to outsmart his corrupt machinations.

The dialogue is tight, witty and layered with strategy and narrative. Fear of communism drives the corrupt politicians who engage in trying to manipulate the press and make a hilarious attempt to bribe the governor's messenger. The movie also shows the role of a newspaper in saving people's lives and how cavalier and cynical newspapermen can be about it. At one point Grant, the publisher of the paper Russell is working for, is scrapping headlines but says, "Leave the rooster story. That's human interest." All the newspapers in town are covering a trial and execution but they are all telling radically different stories. So little has changed. The prisoner scene will remind you of Silence of the Lambs and there's a meta moment when Grant describes how to locate Ralph Bellamy telling someone, "He looks like Ralph Bellamy, that fellow in the movies."

Robert and Cher lament that Rosalind Russell gives up her independence at the end. I find it ironic that independence for her means quitting her job and becoming a "real woman," a housewife. Grant's sabotage of her plan feels just as oppresive as if he had refused to let her go to work in the first place. Grant's character doesn't evolve much sadly and Russell finds herself in the same inadequate situation from which she started. Still, a must see movie.

Woman of the Year (1942) – In college I used to frequent a video store attached to Schnucks grocery store. Unlike Blockbuster, where they tried to make you pay 3 dollars for everything, Schnucks rented older movies for 2 dollars and had a big classic section for 1 dollar a night. I watched every Bette Davis and Katharine Hepburn movie they had which included most of the Hepburn/Tracy movies.

I loved seeing this movie again and was surprised that my sympathies had changed this time around. When I first watched it, I hadn't been in a long-term relationship and I sided more with the Tess Harding character. I resented Sam Craig's stomp on her flowery personality. I had the opposite reaction this time, seeing Sam's point of view. He's a hapless outsider in their marriage and Harding never makes the basic sacrifices he is willing to make to spend time together. She never considers him with the same deference that he considers her. Ultimaely she reads as self absorbed. Craig is fighting for equality and not dominance. But through the lens of the 1940s, this means Harding will at some point try to make him breakfast. This plays out in the movie's most famous scene. Inspired by the film, I made Mr. Cher Scholar eggs the next morning, saying "See? Aren't I being wifey?"

Cher and Osbourne talk about stylized acting, how Hepburn never changed her style for a role, how Cher's favorite Hepburn movie is "Out of Africa" (Mine are "Holiday" and "On Golden Pond" which is cheesy but I will defend it in a long essay if I have to). They talked about chemistry between Tracy and Hepburn. Cher commented that chemisry was unquantifiable, like having "it." 

The movie slightly skirts issue of class and highbrow vs lowbrow pursuits, Harding's column of politics and her knowledge of other cultures and languages versus Craig's work as a sports columnist. Craig makes fun of foreign languages because he's "All American." Harding has a male secretary (who reminds me of Project Runway's Tim Gunn) and who is represented as subtly emasculating. Reading his character with my 2013-eyes, I found him to be very funny.

Like His Girl Friday, I enjoyed watchign Hepburn as a woman at work and doing a bang-up job, eventually becoming Woman of the Year. The movie showcases Tracy and Hepburn at their best: flirty and explosive. The bar scenes are great. There's an interesting scene when Craig first comes home with Harding and the taxi driver asks if he should wait. There's an uncomfortable hesitation before Harding rescues him with, "You can get another cab later."

Soon after Harding is named Woman of the Year (hurting her husbands feelings by telling reporters the award is the most wonderful thing that has ever happened to her), all her insiders start to question her choices to some degree, her Aunt, her husband, her adopted son. The movie, in 1940s fashion, skates over the line a little, asserting that Harding isn't a real woman at all (how can you not be a woman as a woman?). She's too much of workaholic and not maternal enough. But in the end, the movie asks only that she lead a well-rounded life.

Tender Comrade (1942) – Here is a Ginger Rogers movie about the wives of soldiers who become roommates to save money during World War II. Although Ginger Rogers is adorable as always (Cher has completely won me over on this point), this is more of a war movie than a working girl movie. There is one short collage of scenes early on where we see the women at working as drivers and welders at Douglas Aircraft in LA. The rest of the scenes are flashbacks showing the courtship of Rogers and her husband and scenes of the girls in their rented house, all of which is interesting but I loved the theme of the night: seeing women handling work situations.

That said, I did appreciate seeing this movie in the context with which Cher and Osbourne described it, as being overly patriotic and one of the movies President Roosevelt requested Hollywood to make during the war, but the one movie that got the brunt of anti-communist criticism afterwards, during the McCarthy era, for its title and its director and writers being accused of sneaking in communist propaganda into the film.

I watched the movie with that in mind. Ginger Rogers and her friends decide to run the house "like a democracy." Everyone has a vote. They meet their future housekeeper who talks to them about how "they're all in this together" and the women decide to pool their money for expenses and give the rest to the housekeeper as a wage. To crazed, paranoid anti-communists, I can see how this could be misconstrued as a commune, a communistic relinquishing of profits and property. But really, what an afront to free speech in the end. The movie finishes with the most patriotic speech by a war widow you can ever imagine, Rogers crying over her baby, telling him that his father died in battle "so you could have a better break than he had." (The baby's going to grow up in a commune.)

But the movie is a nice slumber party, good for funny phrases like "Holy Mackerel" and "Judas Priest!" The title Tender Comrade actually comes from a Robert Louis Stevenson poem called "My Wife." The LA landmark restaurant on Hollywood Boulevard, The Pig and Whistle, is also mentioned in the movie.

Cher talked about loving Ruth Hussey in the film and told the story about how her mother originally had Marilyn Monroe's part in Asphalt Jungle. Cher said her mother loved old movies (which weren't so old when Cher was little) and has watched them with Cher since Cher was about 3 years old.  Robert thanked Cher for instigating the Friday Night Spotlight series.

The Devil and Miss Jones (1941) – So of course when I try to find pictures of The Devil and Miss Jones (1941), I pull up a bunch of Internet photos of The Devil in Miss Jones (1973), which is incidentally the first porn movie my high school friends and I ever got a hold of. So it was nice to see the movie who's title inspired it. Gene Arthur and Charles Coburn play co-workers in the shoe department of a department store. Cobern is actually a spy, the owner of the department store and the richest man on earth. He's trying to repress a budding union movement there.What a pleasant choice considering Cher's twitter activism and the history of the 99 percenters.

Cher didn't mention any political reasons for choosing the movie but said she loved all the actors in it, liked the love story between the older actors (Charles Coburn and Spring Byington) and loved Jean Arthur's voice. Incidentally, we just saw Coburn playing David Niven's very funny father in Bachelor Mother. The chemistry between Arthur and Coburn carries the movie. A good story to watch in driving home the point, again, that we're fighting all the same battles we were in the 1940s.

At the end of the night, Cher talks about the TCM conventions and their boat cruise and how she has the channel on 24/7. It's fun to hear Cher talk about what she's a fan of.

Cher's Second Week of TCM: War Movies
Cher's First Week of TCM: Motherhood
Cher's first set of TCM Movies in September of 2011, links to my reviews of The Big Street, Follow the Fleet, Hobson's Choice, and Lady Burlesque.

Last weekend was our second week of Cher co-hosting Friday Night Spotlight on Turner Classic Movies. The theme was war movies. I have to say, four war movies in a row sent me right into a funk, especially when they only highlight how far we have not come 60 years later. Humans are still doing the same stupid shit and they probably always will. For this reason, I don't usually watch war movies, but in light of the fact that Cher is so supportive of our U.S. vets and due to the staggering fact that 22+ soldiers and vets are comitting suicde EACH DAY, I feel these movies deserve our attention. As Rachel Maddow writes in her book, Drift, Americans are disconnected from the wars our countrymen are involved in.

So Proudly We Hail (1943) – stars Claudette Colbert (to the left in a foxhole), Paulette Goddard, Veronica Lake, George Reeves and Sonny Tufts as my favorite character, Kansas. Cher remarked how she doesn't usually like Colbert in movies but likes a lot of movies Colbert is in. I feel this way about Tom Cruise. Cher likes Colbert in strong woman movies and here she is equal to a man and given respect, by being competent and not playing sexy and cute. In this story of U.S. nurses serving in the Philippines, the women all get separated from their new servicemen beaus as they move from one treacherous locale to another. Veronica Lake is great here as a surly nurse but she exits
too soon and some of the movie's tension flags. Lake's look reminded me so much of a cross between Julia Duffy in Newhart and Juliette Lewis in Cape Fear. The leaders preach "faith to innocent young men" and the movie has both its nationalistic moments and its racist ones. When one of the girls talks to an Asian soldier in pigeon English he replies, "I'm Chinese not Indian" which is insulting to the Chinese and Indians. Veronica Lake's character is hell-bent to kill "Japs" but her monologue about her dead lover describes the very gory aspects of war, "Sixty bullets and his face was gone."

The bombing scenes are well done and tense. Colbert has an interesting line about "until we make he world a descent place to live in" and this was supposedly what the "war to end all wars" was going to achieve. Similar to modern US soldiers, these women are embarrassed to be called heroes. One says, I guess that means we're still alive. We never find out what happens to my favorite characer, Kansas. 

After the movie, Robert Osbourne commented that Claudette Colbert and Paulette Goddard didn't get along during the making of the movie and asked if Cher ever had tension with her co-stars. Cher said she likes harmony and isn't sure if she could work in a situation with tension, that she wouldn't feel safe or free to make mistakes and do a good performance.

Since You Went Away (1944) – Another Claudette Colbert movie, co-starring Jennifer Jones, Shirley Temple and Joseph Cotton, about a mother left on the homefront during World War II and how a family struggles after they lose their income earner and money is tight. Hattie McDaniel has a refreshingly interesting black maid character and Agnes Moorhead does what she does best. Cher loved the fact that Colbert played a mom holding everything together, how Jennifer Jones progressed from teen to adult nurse, and the performance of Joseph Cotton as the grouchy boarder, who at one point surmises with disgust, "I guess we have to have a Navy." I agree about Cotton. He was adorable. At first Jennifer Jones didn't want to take in a boarder, claiming, "Boarders! It's Communism!"

Cher also loved how the movie showed each generation's struggle with the war. This is an epic movie, 3-and-a-half hours long. Heck, the overture itself felt like 30 minutes had gone by. The card introducing the movie said this would be a story about "the unconquerable fortress–the American home" which you can't help but consider with irony all these years later. This movie had its own nationalism (our cause is just) and "Jap humor" complete with a parody of squinty eyes that is still offensive.

The movie had several scenes of party chatter, or overheard dialogue collaged together and the comments were like found poems, very poignant and well-done. We also saw an honest depiction of the struggles of rations, soldiers dying quickly in accidents, coming home without limbs, and the terror of dealing with having loved ones missing in action. The love relationship between Jane and Bill also showcases he pressure couples in the military suffer to experience what "precious time" they have to be together. I also enjoyed every scene with the family dog, who kept breaking the fourth wall by staring into the camera.

Cher said her favorite scene was when Jennifer Jones "drew down" on Agnes Moorhead. Cher said she always has these movies on for background noise while she's working, that she considers them her friends. Which is how I feel about The Mary Tyler Moore Show episodes.

The White Cliffs of Dover (1944) -Gee, I do love it when my obsessions converge. Today I was able to talk about this movie on my blog Big Bang Poetry. This movie
is about an American (Irene Dunne) living in England during World War I and
World War II and is a movie I've only ever heard of because it was one of Elizabeth Taylor's first appearances. The movie was based on a
poem (or a "verse novel" as Poem
Hunter calls it) by Alice Duer Miller called "The White Cliffs." The narration of the film starts out with Irene Dunne reciting the first
stanza of Miller's poem and then flips over to poetry written for the
film by Robert Nathan, who published 50 books of poetry and fiction in his day. Alice Duer Miller's original poem was influential in many ways. According to Poem Hunter:

The poem was spectacularly successful on both sides of the Atlantic,
selling eventually a million copies – an unheard of number
for a book of verse. It was broadcast and the story was made into the
1944 film The White Cliffs of Dover, starring Irene Dunne. Like her
earlier suffrage poems, it had a significant effect on American public
opinion and it was one of the influences leading the United States to
enter the War. Sir Walter Layton, who held positions in the Ministries
of Supply and Munitions during the Second World War, even brought it to
the attention of then-Prime Minister Winston Churchill.

Alice Duer Miller was also influential as a suffragette:

She became known as a campaigner for women's suffrage and published a
brilliant series of satirical poems in the New York Tribune. These were
published subsequently as Are Women People?. These words became a
catchphrase of the suffrage movement. She followed this collection with
Women are People! (1917)

The movie stars Irene Dunne, Alan Marshal, Gladys Cooper and both C. Aubrey Smith and Frank Morgan (none other than the Great Oz himself) as dueling old men fighting over the future of Irene Dunne. Cher loved the expanse of time covered in the movie. She and Robert Osbourne discuss a brief appearance by Van Johnson and a car accident he had just been in. Cher and Osbourne also admired the huge MGM sets in the movie and Cher loves Gladys Cooper who can play a nice or bad character with the same demeanor. The movie is actually a good commentary on the differences between American and British culture. Dunne is all-American and struggles with English customs. She resents their digs on Americans like, "She's such a nice little thing; not a bit like an American." Again, nothing has changed with Europe's perception of Americans as rude and boorish. The royal party scene is legitimately exciting and afterwards, John Ashwood takes her to where William Wordsworth once stood looking out over London.

Mostly the first half of the movie is a love story. We descend into tear-jearking tragedy as soon as the wars begin.The movie also co-stars Roddy McDowall who plays the young, charming son (left) who flirts with a baby Elizabeth Taylor, who looks very much like Lindsay Lohan and you can see, from watching this, why they cast her to play in Taylor's recent TV-biopic.

They're all just looking for "a peace that will stick" says Dunne and at the end she cries out that, "God will never forgive us if we break faith with the dead." Depressing.

Cher and Robert talk about how Irene Dunne could sing, do drama or comedy. Cher said back then "everyone got to stretch." Throughout the night Robert Osborne always introduces Cher as "Oscar-winning actress" and Cher says she never gets tired of hearing that. They talk about all the great actors who never won Oscars, like Cary Grant. Robert Osbourne notes that Grant was never even nominated for one.

Three Came Home (1950) – This is a gritty Japanese prisoner of war movie starring Claudette Colbert and Sessue Hayakawa. Cher says she was very touched by Hayakawa's performance and Robert talks about how the injury Colbert received during this film's rape scene cost her the lead in All About Eve. Again Cher loved the strength women showed during their harrowing prisoner experiences. Based on a book depicting the true events of the lead character, the movie follows Colbert while her family is stationed in Borneo working for the British. This is another tear-jerker. When the British colonists are left stranded, the Japanese inter them in prisoner camps. Although Colbert keeps her hairstyle, makeup and false eyelashes intact throughout the ordeal, the movie is surprisingly brutal and harrowing. There are long suspenseful scenes that broke me and I had to get up and make fudge rather than look to see what was going on (the sneaking out the meet the husband scene, the scene with the Australians, the reunion scene). At the end Hiroshima is referenced and the brutality of war deemed senseless for both sides. Colbert connects with her captor through their common love of their children. At the end of the movie, I felt compelled to remember the lyrics to "Russians" by Sting:

How can I save my little boy
from Oppenheimer's deadly toy?
There is no monopoly in common sense
on either side of the political sense.
Mr. Khrushchev says he will bury you.
I don't subscribe to this point of view.
It's such an ignorant thing to do
if the Russians love their children too.

Cher talks about her non-fandom of Claudette Colbert despite picking three Colbert movies in one night and how she prefers Ginger Rodgers and Ingrid Bergman. I have to agree after seeing her in all these movies. She's alright but a bit prissy and stiff. But of all these movies, I would recommend Three Came Home the most for it's ability to jerk you around in a reasonable amount of time.

All the TMC lists online included the movie The Best Years of Our Lives" on Cher's lineup so I taped it but Cher and Robert Osbourne did not discuss that movie. So I'll save that one for later. I'm depleted and depressed at this point. Again I'm left with the feeling that no matter how much things change, nothing changes. I'm looking forward to this Friday's set of movies on women at work. Like Loretta's grandfather commaned in Moonstruck, "Someone tell a joke!"

Read about Cher's First Week of TCM: Motherhood.

Cher did her first guest host stint on Turner Classic Movies in September of 2011. Here are links to my reviews of The Big Street, Follow the Fleet, Hobson's Choice, and Lady Burlesque.

Last Friday, Cher and Robert Osbourne launched her month-long program of guest hosting in April starting with a theme of Motherhood. I have to say all these movies were winners for me. I watched three of them Saturday and the last one this morning.

Mildred Pierce (1945) was the first movie in the lineup starring Joan Crawford in a hit after she had been dropped off the MGM roster. Cher liked that fact about this movie saying, "That's very me" and Robert (or Robby as Cher calls him) added that like Cher, Crawford was "a great survivor." Cher liked Jack Carson playing friend Wally and they talked about how Carson started out in comedies and ended up playing very mean (passive-aggressive, Cher said) characters. They both also loved Ann Blyth playing the evil daughter Veda and Eve Arden as Joan's sassy confidant and co-worker in the restaurant. Kids my age will remember Arden's as Principal McGee from Grease. Cher talked about how Arden's timing was so good and how hard it is to be a character actress as you have to "fight for your positioning." Cher loved how Crawford underplayed her performance and Osbourne said she won her Oscar for this "fair and square."

This is a black and white whodunit murder story that takes place in Los Angeles by the beach. Although I found it hard to identify or root for any in this bunch of manipulative characters (even Mildred manipulates Wally from beginning to end), I loved how this movie was shot, the special effects (the cigar smoke over Crawford's face in Wally's pier-side restaurant), the sound effects (the police station clock), the lighting (the fireplace in the beach house), the interrogation room architecture of the movie (I love those), the script was excellent, understated, interesting. Amusing moments included Crawford doing ladder work in a long skirt, Monte Beragon's hilarious swimsuit/sweater ensemble, and dated movie lovetalk like Crawford's saying, "You make me feel…I don't know…warm." My favorite line is from Veda refusing a hug from her mum: "I love you too but let's not be sticky about it."

Two of these movies had single mom situations and three of them dealt with women trying to be upwardly mobile in some sort of way. Mildred Pierce is a mother-daughter struggle where the daughter is the one trying to move up socially at any cost.

Stella Dallas (1937) was another good mother-daughter story, except this time the relationship was a loving one and the mother was the social climber in Boston, although she stopped for some reason with the party set. But these two movies are still about bad mothers of one sort or another. But like Cher and Robby warned us, this one is a real tearjerker. I counted four sob scenes at least: the sad, sad birthday party scene; the sad, sad train scene; the sad sad scene with Helen Morrison; and the sad, sad wedding scene). Barbara Stanwyck plays Stella with great pathos and verve. For some reason these first two movies have giggly silly black maids.

Stella (her mom is played Marjorie Main whom we know as Ma Kettle) marries up in the class chair and she has a daughter but the marriage doesn't last. Stella hangs out with the wrong crowd and this affects her daughter socially. When Stella finds out how her gaudiness has ruined her daughter's chances at young love, Stella makes a grand sacrifice. This is the kind of movie many daughters and mothers would be able to relate to in terms of social awkwardness and affection. Totally recommend this one.

The supper club dress Stanwyck wears is awesome. In fact, this movie supplies Stanwyck with many interested and evolving looks.

At the beginning of the movie Cher and Robert Osborune talk about Stanwyck and her "dame" quality and Cher somehow forgets the name to the movie Lady Burlesque and Robert Osbourne reminds her, which seems odd considering that movie was one of the four in Cher's first set of TCM movies. Afterwards, Osbourne also asks Cher why she doesn't make more movies. Cher says she always thought she wouldn't make many movies. But she'd like to play something out of character, like a bag lady. (How about a villain?)

Penny Serenade(1941) stars Cary Grant and Irene Dunne and Edgar Buchanan as the crusty old sidekick. It's a story about newlyweds losing their baby in a sort of Japanese earthquake abortion, the dramas of adoption, and other tragedies of parenting. Cher was right, this movie has a great performance by Cary Grant (his monologue in front of the judge is notably good). The story is told through memories recollected from Julie Adams playing her old record albums after her particularly sweet marriage breaks up (how would an iPod change this story?). The opening scene at the record store (when records were 78s and sold in books) reminded me of my first job at Camelot Records at Chesterfield Mall in St. Louis. It was 1986 and there was not a single Cher album or cassette tape to be found in the entire store except that odd cassette compilation called Half Breed.

Anyway, I liked how many scenes of this movie were shot through doorways (train doors, bedroom doors, stairways), and how this was a weird alternate universe where somehow older children were harder to adopt than newborn babies. I appreciated seeing Dunne's normal lips on an actress. The movie also had funny new parent scenes and Grant and Dunne had good chemistry.The Christmas play scene was toots adorable.

Cher said this movie takes you to beautiful places and that the death of a baby is a hard thing to pull off and come back from. Cher and Osborne commented on how much older the actors looked and Cher said life was harder then and you couldn't look as good for as long. Osborne said people also acted and dressed their age. He said this without any seeming irony and Cher took the opportunity to laugh at herself self-deprecatingly.

Bachelor Mother (1939) was my favorite movie of the night and the one I least expected anything from (judging by the title). My husband watched this one with me this morning while he worked on his thesis papers. We both laughed out loud throughout the funny storyline. Ginger Rogers and David Niven had lovely chemistry and I appreciated seeing Niven in a character that wasn't a British lothario. Cher says she can't turn this movie off if she comes across it. This must be like for me with Along Comes Polly–don't ask! Robert Osborne and Cher talked about how this wasn't a screwball comedy because as Cher says, it's too fast to be screwball.

I would definte it as more like snowball comedy, that is like a snowball, working off very interconnected and complicated misunderstandings.

Osbourne and Cher also talk about how great Ginger Rogers is without Fred Astaire. Cher says Rogers is her favorite female tap dancer because other women are too cloddy. This movie was directed by Garson Kanin and is about a single woman who happens upon a baby everyone assumes is hers. I was struck by how willing all the characters were to push a woman into single motherhood back then. Refreshingly, Rogers wants nothing to do with any upward mobility and her pride is stronger than any designs on marrying the rich department store owner's son, although the story does deal with the clash of class.

I love that it's a big fat baby at the center of everything. One of my favorite lines was, "Is it hard for a girl to get in the Navy?"

Cher and Robert Osborne talk about how this film got lost under all the great movies of 1939. And they're right, there's a Wikipedia page dedicated to the movies of 1939, which included two of the most famous movies ever, Gone with the Wind and The Wizard of Oz and many other classics like Dark Victory, Goodbye, Mr. Chips, Love Affair, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Ninotchka, Of Mice and Men and Stagecoach.