Films That Matter
By the Skin of Your Teeth
Originally meant to be a satire... though of a film very few have ever seen nowadays, the Norman Z. McLeod western comedy The Paleface (1948), written by Frank Tashlin about 1929's Virginian, infuriated the man in how it was directed (as a more generic spoof of the western)... but funnily enough, despite the screenwriter’s opinion, until Blazing Saddles (1974) came out, it was the highest grossing western parody of all-time and spawned a sequel in Son of Paleface (1952), while it was also remade as the Don Knotts vehicle The Shakiest Gun in the West (1968). After government agents tasked with tracking down an illegal gun smuggling ring turn up dead, the infamous Calamity Jane (Jane Russell) is secretly broken out of jail by Gov. Johnson (Charles Trowbridge) with the hope that she will take a pardon for going undercover to get to the bottom of this rebel-rousing (similar to rabble-rousing) gang in the frontier land.
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Wise Gals
Three Wise GirlsSeptember 13, 2024It’s funny how things have changed so much over the years, but at the same time, human beings seem to have changed so little. Single men complain about women, while single women complain about men just as much... something discussed quite frequently in the romantic dramedy Three Wise Girls (1932), directed by William Beaudine and based upon Wilson Collison’s novel “Blonde Baby”. Cassie Barnes (Jean Harlow) is a small town soda jerk... and with her shapely body and platinum blonde locks, she attracts all the wrong kinds of men. Having had enough of the lecherous men back home, she makes the move to New York City, quickly finding work (and a whole new crop of creeps) while working the ice cream and soft drink game.
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Comedy Team, Female Style
Let's Do ThingsCatch-As Catch-CanMarch 3, 2024With the massive success of Laurel and Hardy, who producer Hal Roach had paired together after signing them separately in 1926 (they would remain with his studio until 1940), the man had the bright idea of creating a female counterpart duo, bringing together Zasu Pitts and Thelma Todd. The team would make seventeen popular shorts from 1931-33, their first two, Let’s Do Things and Catch-As Catch-Can, looked at here today. Like all good comedy teams, you have two very different character types. Zasu comes across as the slightly depressed, nervous and fretful brunette, while Thelma is a much more vibrant and colourful blonde dame. . . the former’s desperation often dragging her more put together friend into rather unorthodox situations. In Let’s Do Things, they find themselves as employees selling music for a giant department store... while looking for a way out of their dead-end jobs.
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Wartime Blonde Bombshell
My Favorite BlondeFebruary 22, 2024Comedic war-tinged movies were all the rage in Hollywood during World War II... a way to ease the tension while keeping morale up. Think Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator (1940), Abbott and Costello’s quasi trilogy of Buck Privates, In the Navy, and Keep `Em Flying (all of which were released in 1941), Ernst Lubitsch’s To Be or Not to Be (1942), as well as today’s feature, the Sidney Lanfield directed, Bob Hope starring My Favorite Blonde (also 1942). A wartime crime caper woven within a Bob Hope vehicle, Karen Bentley (Madeleine Carroll – The 39 Steps), is a British secret agent who is given the unenviable task of delivering a cipher after her partner is murdered by a ruthless group of German spies led by Madame Stephanie Runick (Gale Sondergaard – who was also in The Cat and the Canary, Never Say Die, and Road to Rio with Bob Hope).
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Flying High!
Keep 'Em FlyingJanuary 30, 2024If you’ve ever seen anything from the comedy team of Abbott and Costello, you’ll know that it is rather rare to find anyone who will take up the screen as much as good old funny man Lou... that is, unless he’s paired with comedienne Martha Raye – there’s a reason she’s known as “The Big Mouth”. In Keep `Em Flying (1941), they would share the silver screen for the first and only time... but Lou had his work cut out for him, as she plays twins. The team’s fourth starring movie released in just ten months (and the third military movie to keep spirits high during World War II), all four were manned by Arthur Lubin (their next film, Ride `Em Cowboy would be his last with the duo), a steady hand that helped keep the boys in line.
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Virtue Signaling
VirtueDecember 18, 2023A Pre-Code romantic crime drama from Columbia Pictures, 1932's Virtue, directed by Edward Buzzell, got off to a bit of a bumpy start... for when star Carole Lombard (on loan from Paramount) met studio president Harry Cohn (known to be blunt, opinionated, and rather colourful with his language), he told her that her hair was too white – making her look like ‘a whore’. Lombard, no shrinking violet, promptly responded with: “if anyone would know a whore it would be you”. Though the two would soon earn each other’s respect (something that would last for the rest of their lives), this really is a perfect story that exemplifies the edgy themes and style found in these Pre-Code movies. Opening with a black screen that hides the visuals of a criminal sentence, a Judge rather kindly orders several prostitutes to vacate the city, but if they return, they shall be punished to the full extent of the law.
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The Price is Vice
Vice RaidNovember 23, 2023With working titles such as Woman Confidential, Pleasure Girl, and The Blonde in 402, each should give you a decent idea about what 1959's Vice Raid is all about. A B-movie with some bite, director Edward L. Cahn brings scandal, racketeering, and corruption to the forefront of this late era film noir crime feature. Meet Sgt. Whitey Brandon (Richard Coogan), an officer that is akin to a dog on a bone. Desperate to get to the root of a massive prostitution ring run by best dressed mobster Vince Malone (Brad Dexter), he and partner Ben Dunton (Joseph Sullivan) seem to constantly get ohsoclose, yet so very far from getting a true lead.
