Monthly Archives: August 2014

American entry into World War II  created a new breed of Hollywood movies with war themes.  The first of these was Wake Island, which dramatized the unsuccessful defense of the U.S. garrison on that Pacific Island following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Many other war films and morale-boosters were to follow.  The Office of War Information (OWI) stated that film makers should consider seven questions before producing a movie, including: “Will this picture help to win the war?” The War Production Board imposed a $5,000 limit on set construction. Wartime cloth restrictions were imposed, prohibiting cuffed trousers and pleats. Klieg-lit Hollywood premieres were prohibited.  Disney’s wonderful send-up of Nazi Germany “Der Fuehrer’s Face” won the Academy Award for Best Short Feature, Cartoon.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LYD0Fzf1LU

I love this so much!

While numerous actors and directors enlisted those left State-side did their bit too.  An early casualty was Carole Lombard, who was killed at age 33 with her mother and twenty others when the plane bringing them back from a defense bond campaign crashed outside of Las Vegas.  The Hollywood Canteen was founded in 1942 (by Bette Davis, John Garfield, and others) to provide free entertainment (food, dancing, etc.) to servicemen by those in the film industry. It operated for just over three years as a morale booster. 

In the U.S., mobilization for war converted most industry from consumer products to weapons manufacture.  On February 2, President Roosevelt signed an executive order directing the internment of persons of Japanese descent, aliens and citizens alike. About 120,000 people were sent to “relocation camps”.  It was not until 1988 that the U.S. Goverment apologized for this injustice and authorized (partial) reparations to camp survivors.

On May 6, the last American and Filipino forces surrendered to the Japanese on Corregidor.  General Douglas MacArthur had escaped to Australia in March to become Supreme Commander of the war in the Southwest Pacific.  On arrival, he said “I came through and I shall return.”  In late 1942, Allies started to turn around the war in the Pacific with major offensives at Midway and the Coral Sea.

In Germany, the Reichstag met for the last time, dissolving itself and proclaiming Adolf Hitler the “Supreme Judge of the German People”, granting him the power of life and death over every German citizen. Nazis at the Wannsee conference in Berlin decided that the “Final Solution (Endlösung) to the Jewish problem” was relocation, and later extermination. Anne Frank made the first entry in her diary on June 12, her 13th birthday.  Her family went into hiding above her father’s office in Amsterdam on July 6.

The Battle of Stalingrad began in August.  Marked by house-to-house combat, it was among the bloodiest battles in the history of warfare with over 1 million civilian and military casualties.

The 1942 Oscar winners set to “White Christmas”

We arrived in Maui on Tuesday afternoon only to find that Hurricanes Iselle and Julio were not far behind.  We stocked up on supplies and waited out the storm/s in our rented condo.  It turned out to be something of a non-event.  Iselle lost steam as it passed over the Big Island of Hawaii and Julio took a track a couple of hundred miles to our north.

Iselle did some damage on the Big Island.

The weather was mostly just wonderful.  People kept complaining about the heat.  They don’t know from heat …

The hurricane did have the side benefit of introducing me to this guy, which I spotted in a parking lot (not my picture).  I think he must have been blown over from the Big Island, which is his usual home in Hawaii.

Back with some movies soon!

We are going to take a break from the heat on Maui, Hawaii from August 5-15.  1942 will begin when I get back.

Blossoms in the Dust
Directed by Mervyn LeRoy
Written by Anita Loos and Robert Wainwright
1941/USA
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
First viewing/Warner Archive DVD

[box] Edna: There are no illegitimate children. There are only illegitimate parents![/box]

I thought this well-made biopic was just OK.

The story is a dramatization of the work of Edna Gladney (Greer Garson) who ran an orphanage in Texas and pressed for repeal of laws including the designation “ïllegitimate” on birth certificates.

As the story opens, we meet Edna (Greer Garson) and her adopted sister (?) Charlotte as they happily discuss their impending weddings.  But Edna met a rude young man at the bank.  The man, Sam Gadney (Walter Pidgeon) took one look at her and told her she would be his wife.  He crashes the girls’ engagement party and tells Edna to see him off at the station from where he is returning to Texas the next day.

When Charlotte’s prospective in-laws discover that she was a nameless “foundling”, they call off the wedding.  Charlotte is so distraught she kills herself.  Charlotte’s death seems to torpedo Edna’s wedding as well and after some correspondence she marries Sam.  At the birth of her son, she learns she can no longer have children.  She eventually mends her breaking heart by starting an orphanage and honors Charlotte by campaigning to reform the law on illegitimacy.  With Felix Bressart as a kindly doctor.

There is nothing exactly wrong with this movie and Garson is always charming.  It didn’t grab me, however.

This was the first of eight pairings of Garson and Pidgeon.

Blossoms in the Dust won the Academy Award for Best Art Direction-Interior Decoration, Color and was nominated for Academy Awards in the categories of Best Picture, Best Actress (Garson), and Best Color Cinematography.

Trailer

Lady Be Good
Directed by Norman Z. McLeod
Written by Jack McGowan, Kay van Ripper, and John McLain
1941/USA
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
First viewing/Warner Archive DVD

[box] The last time I saw Paris/Her heart was young and gay/No matter how they change her/I’ll remember her that way — lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II [/box]

This is a pleasant enough musical featuring a score full of standards by Gershwin, Kern, and more.

The story uses the framing device of the second divorce trial of songwriters Dixie (Ann Sothern) and Eddie Crane (Robert Young).  We move into flashback to see them teaming up when greeting card poet Dixie supplies the words to a song Eddie has been struggling to finish.  Dixie’s voice turns Eddie into a hit-maker and they marry.  But success goes to Eddie’s head and he starts partying, stops writing, and treats Dixie like a secretary/housekeeper.  She reluctantly divorces him.

The couple can’t seem to help inspiring each other though.  Awakened from his torpor, Eddie starts working again and Dixie is on hand the words.  They re-marry but end up in the divorce court a second time.  Dixie’s roommate Marilyn starts scheming to bring them back together yet again.  With Lionel Barrymore as the judge, Red Skelton as Eddie’s buddy, and the Berry Brothers doing a tap routine.

Although Sothern and Young are game, the plot kind of drags the movie down and we are left with long interludes between musical numbers.  Some of these are just odd – the Berry Brothers, deadpan singer Virginia O’Brien – but others are spellbinding, e.g. the finale with Eleanor Powell tapping to “Fascinating Rhythm”.

Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II won an Academy Award for Best Music, Original Song for “The Last Time I Saw Paris.” I don’t know that it was the best movie song of 1941 — and it was not original to the film —  but you can’t fault those who saw the Nazis occupying Paris from thinking so.  Kern himself lobbied the Academy to limit the category to songs written for the film in which they appeared.  He said he voted for “Blues in the Night” on his Academy Ballot.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2c9cVfIov4

Ann Sothern sings “The Last Time I Saw Paris”

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
Directed by Victor Fleming
Written by John Lee Mahin based on the novel by Robert Louis Stevenson
1941/USA
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Repeat viewing/Amazon Instant Video

[box] Dr. Henry Jekyll: [as Mr. Hyde] The World is yours, my darling, but the moment is mine![/box]

The Code watered down this version of Stevenson’s story from the more powerful 1931 Mamoulian version and apparently satisfied no one.

Dr. Jekyll (Spencer Tracy) is whatever the equivalent of a psychiatrist/psychologist would be in Victorian Engand.  He wants to spend all of his time experimenting on distilling the evil in every one in order to eliminate it.  (It is as unclear as in the previous version how this was supposed to work.)   This meets the violent objections of the very proper father (Donald Crisp) of Jekyll’s fiance Beatrix (Lana Turner).  He takes Beatrix on an extended trip to the Continent and leaves Jekyll to run amok in his lab.

A friend persuades Jekyll to take an night off from his experiments and he rescues Ivy Pearson (Ingrid Bergman) from ill treatment by a man she is walking with.  He resists her efforts to seduce him.  However, when his experimental potion turns him into the bestial Hyde he seeks her out and begins to terrorize her.  With Ian Hunter, Barton MacLane, C. Aubrey Smith, and Sara Allgood in supporting roles.

This film was a notorious critical flop and Tracy’s own least favorite performance.  It takes place in one of those movie Londons where everyone speaks with a different accent. Tracy is convincing as Hyde but no one could buy him as an upper-crust Harley Street doctor.  I thought Bergman was miscast as the streetwise Ivy.  There is something so sensual about Lana Turner’s mouth that I thought that she would have made a better bar maid, if she had the acting chops.  Apparently the film makers originally thought so too as Bergman had to persuade them to switch her with Turner in the Ivy part.  All that said, it’s not a terrible film and it’s nice to see Mr. Hyde without the ape-like make-up used in the 1931 version.  The Waxman score is effective.

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde was nominated for Academy Awards in the categories of: Best Cinematography, Black and White; Best Film Editing and Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic Picture (Franz Waxman).

Trailer – cinematography by Joseph Ruttenberg

1941 was a fantastic year for songs.  Here are some clips.  (I’ve included different versions where possible if I already included the movie clip in my review.) You can pick your favorite!

“The Last Time I Saw Paris” by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II from Lady Be Good – performed by Kate Smith (the Academy’s choice)

“Baby Mine” by Frank Churchill and Ned Washington from Dumbo – sung by Bette Midler and set to clips from the film

“Be Honest with Me” by Gene Autrey and Fred Rose from Ridin’ on a Rainbow

“Blues in the Night” by Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer from Blues in the Night – sung by Dinah Washington

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2s8sqyiccLY

“Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy of Company B” by Hugh Prince and Don Ray from Buck Privates – as performed in the Oscar-nominated cartoon of that name

“Chatanooga Choo Choo” by Harry Warren and Mack Gordon from Sun Valley Serenade – as sung by Frances Langford in The Glen Miller Story

“Dolores” by Louis Alter and Frank Loesser from Las Vegas Nights – as performed by Frank Sinatra and the Tommy Dorsey orchestra in 1941

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azYpWgnt5OQ

“Out of the Silence” by Lloyd B. Norlin from All-American Co-Ed – as sung by Frances Langford in the film

“Since I Kissed My Baby Goodbye” by Cole Porter from You’ll Never Get Rich – as performed by The Four Tones in the film (with Fred Astaire tap dancing)