Daily Archives: September 2, 2014

You Were Never Lovelier
Directed by William Seiter
Written by Michael Fessier, Ernest Pagano, and Delmer Davies from a story by Carlos Olivari and Sixto Pondal Rios
1942/USA
Columbia Pictures Corporation
First viewing/Netflix rental

[box] Lita Acuña: Just think papa, you’ve been married longer than we’ve lived!

Eduardo Acuña: I consider that a very fortunate coincidence, my dear.[/box]

The plot could not be more inane but the songs and dances are very nice.

The irascible nightclub owner Eduardo Acuña (Adolphe Menjou) has four daughters.  He intends to strictly inforce the family tradition that the girls will marry in order by age. Unfortunately for the two youngest girls, who both have longtime fiances, their older sister Maria (Rita Hayworth) has never met a man who captured her imagination.  Acuña himself starts to send Maria anonymous love letters and boxes of orchids every day to get her in the proper mood.

In the meantime, dancer Robert Davis (Fred Astaire) has gone broke playing the ponies and tries desperately to get an audition with Acuña who takes an instant dislike to him. Robert grabs the orchids one day and delivers them to the house.  When Maria spots him it is love at first sight.  Glad that Maria is in love but disgusted by her choice, Acuña bribes Robert with a job at his club to disillusion the girl.  Needless to say, Acuña is stuck with a son-in-law not of his choosing instead.  With Xavier Cougat and his orchestra.

The film is blessed with a couple of great standards (“I’m Old-Fashioned” and “Dearly Beloved”) and other good songs, fantastic dancing, and beautiful sets and costumes. Musical lovers need no more for an entertaining romp.  Unfortunately, the movie has one of those “idiot” plots that would fall apart like a house of cards if even one of the protagonists acted like a normal human being for five minutes straight.  It’s also the kind of story where love turns on and off on a dime that I find particularly irritating.  I enjoyed the film any way.

You Were Never Lovelier was Oscar-nominated for Best Sound, Recording; Best Music, Original Song (“Dearly Beloved” by Jerome Kern and Johnny Mercer); and Best Music, Scoring of a Musical Picture (Leigh Harline).

Fred Astaire sings “Dearly Beloved”

Saboteur
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock
Written by Peter Vertiel, Joan Harrison and Dorothy Parker
1942/USA
Frank Lloyd Productions
Repeat viewing/Netflix rental

Charles Tobin: Very pretty speech – youthful, passionate, idealistic. Need I remind you that you are the fugitive from justice, not I. I’m a promient citizen, widely respected. You are an obscure workman wanted for committing an extremely unpopular crime. Now which of us do you think the police will believe?

This is easily Hitchcock’s most political and patriotic movie.  It doesn’t particularly help the suspense.

Barry (Robert Cummings) works at a defense plant.  One day his friend bumps into the unfriendly Fry who drops a lot of letters and a hundred dollar bill.  Barry notes the man’s name so he can return the money.  Soon afterward the three men are together again watching a fire that has broken out.  Barry and his friend decide to try to fight the fire.  Fry hands the friend a fire extinguisher that causes the flames to explode into a huge fire ball, killing the friend.  The extinguisher was filled with gasoline.  Barry becomes the prime suspect in the sabotage.  His case isn’t helped when no employee by the name of Fry is on the payroll of the plant.

Barry flees the police.  He heads for the address on the envelopes he saw drop from Fry’s pocket.  There he meets affable wealthy rancher Charles Tobin (Otto Kruger).  Tobin’s little granddaughter unwittingly reveals another stack of letters that proves Tobin to be a Fifth Columnist.  Tobin turns Barry over to the police but he miraculously escapes.  Now he is on the run from both Tobin’s gang and the police,

Barry is caught in a downpour and takes shelter in the cabin of a sympathetic blind man.  The man’s niece Pat (Priscilla Lane) arrives and spots Barry’s handcuffs.  She is a patriot who wants to turn him over to the police.   But Barry takes her as a kind of hostage and the rest of the film plays out remarkably like the story of The 39 Steps.

My favorite part of this film is Otto Kruger’s perfomance.  He is so deliciously evil!  The final set piece on the Statue of Liberty is memorable.  Aside from being a highly patriotic affair with much speechmaking, it is also interesting that wealth is clearly associated with Nazism by the writers.  Bigger stars or better actors in the leads might have helped this film but the speechifying probably would have dragged it down any way.  Not bad but not a standout in Hitchcock’s cannon.

Trailer