Monthly Archives: May 2016

The Girl Can’t Help It
Directed by Frank Tashlin
Written by Frank Tashlin and Herbert Baker
1956/USA
Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation
First viewing/YouTube

Barry the paperboy: [after Jerri Jordan walks by] If that’s a girl, then I don’t know what my sister is!

Tom Ewell plays the same nebbish as in The Seven Year Itch, this time opposite Jayne Mansfield as the blonde.  It’s a cartoonish comedy enlivened by many fantastic rock and roller’s of the 50’s.

Gangster Fats Murdock (Edmond O’Brien) is engaged to blonde bombshell Jerri Jordan (Mansfield).  He feels like he can’t marry a “nobody” so he wants to turn her into a star.  He hires alcoholic agent Tom Miller (Ewell) to make her one, almost solely because he has the reputation of keeping his hands off his female clients.  It turns out Jerri is with Fats only from gratitude for getting her father a lighter prison sentence.  Jerri’s big dream is being a wife and mother but she is willing to play along with aiming for stardom.

Of course, Tom and Jerri develop feelings for each other and Fats gets suspicious.  Fats also gets involved in the project  by coming up with a silly song about breaking rocks in prison.  One way or another, the film manages work in almost non-stop performances by the likes of Little Richard, Fats Domino, Gene Vincent, and Julie London.

I don’t ordinarily go for these leering type 50’s comedies but the music kept me riveted to the screen.

Trailer

clip – Little Richard sings “Ready Teddy” and “She’s Got It”

Don’t Knock the Rock
Directed by Fred F. Sears
Written by Robert E. Kent
1956/USA
Clover Productions
First viewing/Netflix rental

Arnie Haines: He seems to think that running around in my underwear or getting thrown out of my hotel is news. And does that sound like news to you guys?
Member of Applejacks: If you were Kim Novak, it might.

The story, the lead, and a lot of the acts are pretty dopey.  Little Richard and some dynamite dancing almost make up for it.

Alan Hale is a teen idol being managed by Alan Freed.  He gets sick of all the publicity hype so he and his band take a vacation in the farming community he hails from.  His mere presence causes a firestorm of controversy.  The mayor decides to build his re-election campaign on an anti-rock and roll platform.  An influential columnist is also on the scene to report developments.  Her daughter has a weakness for the new music.  So Freed brings in some big acts for a rock and roll dance in a neighboring town designed to demonstrate how harmless the music is.  Naturally, Hale falls for the columnist’s daughter and a jealous hussy tries to sabotage the proceedings.

As with most of these Columbia rockers, the story is built around convincing adults that rock and roll is wholesome.  Their problem is that good rock and roll is dangerous!  Little Richard clearly was.  Thus he is the bright light amid a lot of dweebish acts and a formulaic plot.

It looks like this film was the first to include a song by Burt Bacharach and Hal David – “I Cry More” performed by Alan Dale.  Little Richard sings “Tutti Frutti” and “Long Tall Sally”.

Clip – Little Richard rocks out

Bill Haley covers Little Richard (if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em!)  + some fantastic jitterbugging

The Eddie Duchin Story
Directed by George Sidney
Written by Samuel A. Taylor; story by Leo Katcher
1956/USA
Columbia Pictures Corporation
First viewing/Netflix rental

Eddy Duchin: What I want to know is why! Why do they have to destroy a man twice? You work and work and just when you get… everything. When it gets too good they take it away.

Today is Little Richard Day at FlickersinTime.  The movie I review here illustrates just how big the gap was between the mainstream and rock and roll in 1956.

This is a fictionalized biopic.  Eddie Duchin (Tyrone Power) has been attending pharmacy school while playing piano in the college orchestra.  Band leader Leo Reisman attended one of their sessions and complemented Eddie on his playing.  Eddie took that as a job offer and shows up at the Central Park Casino where Reismann’s band plays.  Riesman and his manager Lou Sherwood (James Whitmore) disabuse Eddie of his mistake.  He goes out and plays the piano for his own amusement and is heard by Marjorie Oelrichs (Kim Novak).  She likes him and his playing and decides Eddie will play while the band is on break.  Eddie is so good that the people keep dancing after the band stops playing and in pretty short order he has a job with Riesman.  Soon Sherwood becomes Eddie’s manager.

Eddie is very clearly driven by a thirst for money and status.  Marjorie comes from a very wealthy family (in reality the niece of Averall Harriman, then governor of New York) but is fiercely independent and manages the casino.  Eddie eventually forms his own orchestra and works on the side at society parties.  Gradually, Eddie and Marjorie fall in love and marry.  She becomes pregnant but tragedy strikes when baby Peter is born.

Eddie is inconsolable and goes on a long tour leaving the boy with Marjorie’s aunt and uncle the entire time.  When WWII breaks out, he joins the Navy almost hoping to be killed. But he survives and now feels the need to become a father to Peter.  This is easier said than done.  Peter is not easily won over and Eddie must also vie for authority with his pretty young governess Chiquita.  Just when things are looking up, a second tragedy strikes.

Although the movie is well made and acted, I wasn’t crazy about it.  The problem was the script.  There is a truly cringe-worthy deathbed scene and the melodrama is spread thick at all points.  In addition, Duchin’s piano playing sounded to me like lounge music, not my favorite.  I’m not sure what Duchin actually sounded like though because for some inexplicable reason what we are hearing is actually Carmen Cavallero, who apparently had a totally different style.

Trailer

Lovers and Lollipops
Directed by Morris Engel and Ruth Orkin
Written by Morris Engle and Ruth Orkin
1956/USA
Spire Production Company
First viewing/Amazon Instant

Nothing defines humans better than their willingness to do irrational things in the pursuit of phenomenally unlikely payoffs. This is the principle behind lotteries, dating, and religion. — Scott Adams

This is another one of the slice-of-life docu-fiction movies by Morris Engel and Ruth Orkin.  It is ok but not a match for their Little Fugitive.

Ann, a young widow, is raising her precocious seven-year-old daughter Peggy in New York City.  Peggy has been helping a photographer with a photoshoot at the zoo.  Larry, an old friend of Ann’s, returns from several years working in South America and visits her.  As their love blossoms, Peggy does everything in her power to get in the way.

This is cute and has a very sweet ending but is beset by slow parts.  One big plus is you believe Peggy 100%.  The use of amateur actors keeps things real.

Clip

Around the World in Eighty Days
Directed by Michael Anderson
Written by James Poe, John Farrow, and S.J. Perelman from the novel by Jules Verne
1956/USA
Michael Todd Company
Repeat viewing/Netflix rental

Princess Aouda: Mr. Fogg, why must you be so… so British?

Beautiful location shots, a cast of thousands and three hours add up to a whole lot of nothing.

The film begins with an oddly long (in keeping with everything else in the film) scholarly discussion about transportation past, present and future.  Then we move to Jules Verne’s story about Phineas Fogg (David Niven) and his bet that he can travel around the world in just 80 days.  He embarks with his faithful manservant Passpartout (Cantinflas) and they have various adventures all around the world as Fogg attempts to stay one step in front of the clock.

The continuing story involves a British detective (Robert Newton) who continuously attempts and fails to get Fogg arrested for a bank robbery and an Indian princess (Shirley MacLaine) whom Fogg rescues from certain death.  With too many famous actors to mention in cameo roles.

For me, the most fun was trying to identify all the cameo actors.  My heart thrilled to see my beloved Buster Keaton but there were many many more, including an almost unrecognizable Trevor Howard.  The film did not make me care whether Fogg won his bet or not.  This film is noteable, for better or worse, for launching many similar all-star blockbuster period comedies in the 50’s and 60’s.

Around the World in Eighty Days won Academy Awards in the categories of Best Picture; Best Writing, Best Screenplay – Adapted; Best Cinematography, Color; Best Film Editing; and Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture.  It was nominated in the categories of Best Director; Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Color; and Best Costume Design, Color.

Trailer

Anastasia
Directed by Anatole Litvak
Written by Arthur Laurents from a play by Marcelle Maurette and Guy Bolton
1956/USA
Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation
First viewing/Amazon Instant

Anastasia: The poor have only one advantage; they know when they are loved for themselves.

I liked this for the acting and was intrigued by the story.

The setting is Paris, 1928.  Nicholas II, the last czar of Russia, left a fortune in a bank in London that would go to any of his immediate survivors.  There have been several unsuccessful claimants to the inheritance already.  General Sergei Pavlovich Bounine (Yul Brynner), an ex-retainer to the Imperial Court, has organized a committee of fellow exiles to finance a search for the czar’s daughter Anastasia who is rumored to have survived the execution of the Czar’s family.  He and his co-conspirators are now on a tight 8-day deadline to come up with an heiress.  Sergei has been on the trail of one Anna Koureff (Ingrid Bergman), a young Russian woman who has been heard in several mental asylums to refer to herself as Anastasia.  Sergei actually believes Anastasia is dead and has been on the search for a credible, trainable substitute.

Anna herself is not certain who she is but has powerful memories that lead her to believe that she may be Anastasia.  She is a hit with the expatriate Russian community.  She makes a conquest of the princess’s cousin Paul.  She looks less likely to convince Anastasia’s extremely skeptical grandmother the Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna (Helen Hayes).  With Akim Tamiroff as one of Sergei’s partner’s in crime and Martita Hunt as a lady-in-waiting to the Dowager Empress.

I enjoyed this.  Parts reminded me a lot of Pygmalion and My Fair Lady without the humor.  Bergman was good, though I don’t know that I would have singled this performance out for an Oscar, and Yul Brynner proves himself to be more that a one-trick pony.  The film is lavishly produced.

Ingrid Bergman won the Academy Award for Best Actress.  Alfred Newman was nominated for Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture.

Trailer