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Daily Archives: June 12, 2015

The Barkleys of Broadway (1949)

Posted on June 12, 2015 | 10 comments

The Barkleys of Broadway
Directed by Charles Walters
Written by Betty Comden and Adolph Green
1949/USA
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
First viewing/Amazon Instant

[box] Ezra Millar: Thank you. I’m touched, the piano’s touched, and Tchaikovsky’s touched.[/box]

I can only imagine how this reunion of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers affected 1949 audiences. I was sad just to think I won’t be watching them dance together anymore in my chronological journey through cinema.

Josh (Astaire) and Dinah (Rogers) Barkley are a famous husband-and-wife song-and-dance team on Broadway. Josh directs their shows and Ezra Miller (Oscar Levant) writes the music. Despite their constant bickering, the couple is clearly in love. One of Josh’s favorite taunts is that he taught Dinah everything she knows.

Then a Frenchman who has written a play called “The Young Sarah Bernhardt” tells Dinah he thinks she could be a great tragic actress. This goes to her head and after some classic misunderstandings, Dinah leaves the team to appear in the Bernhardt play.

When Josh eavesdrops on the rehearsals, he finds things are not going well for Dinah. So he disguises his voice and telephones her with tips, pretending to be the French director. Ezra tries his best to broker a reconciliation. This happens when, unbeknownst to each other, the two show up for the same benefit performance and are asked to dance with each other, giving the movie audience an exquisite ballroom dance to “They Can’t Take That Away from Me”. With Billie Burke as a society hostess.

As usual, the plot is an excuse for a bunch of musical numbers, all of them part of various stage performances or rehearsals. While this doesn’t match up to the pairs’ 30’s films, I liked it a whole lot. We have several good numbers for Fred and Ginger and the famous “I’ve Got Shoes With Wings On” number in which Fred spectacularly dances with a bunch of dis-embodied dancing shoes in a shoe shop.

This was the last of the ten films the stars made together and the first since 1939’s The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle. The movie was originally intended as a rematch of Astaire and Judy Garland following the success of Easter Parade. Garland’s host of personal problems led to the studio hiring Rogers instead.

Harry Stradling Jr. was nominated for an Oscar in the category of Best Cinematography, Color for his work on The Barkleys of Broadway.

Trailer

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Posted in 1949

Flamingo Road (1949)

Posted on June 12, 2015 | 2 comments

Flamingo Road
Directed by Michael Curtiz
Written by Robert Wilder and Edmund H. North from a play by Robert and Sally Wilder
1949/USA
Michael Curtiz Productions/Warner Bros.
First viewing/Netflix rental

[box] Sheriff Titus Semple: Now me, I never forget anything.

Lane Bellamy: You know sheriff; we had an elephant in our carnival with a memory like that. He went after a keeper that he’d held a grudge against for almost 15 years. Had to be shot. You just wouldn’t believe how much trouble it is to dispose of a dead elephant.[/box]

I never know what I’m going to get with Joan Crawford. This one was pretty good, due largely to her supporting players, the director, and the visuals.

Lane Bellamy (Crawford) is a hooch-coochy dancer with a carnival. When the show flees its latest bill collector, Lane decides to stay put and figure out something else to do with her life. She meets Deputy Sheriff Field Carlisle (Zachary Scott) when he comes to serve a writ on the show. They quickly bond and he finds her a job as a waitress in the local diner/saloon.

Fielding is the protege of corrupt king-maker Sheriff Titus Semple (Sydney Greenstreet). He wants to put the weak Field up as a candidate for the State Senate. The first thing he needs to help his boy’s credentials is a wedding to a respectable local “name”. He picks out a girl that has been stuck on Field for quite awhile and orders him to marry her. Semple takes an instant dislike to the defiant Lane. When she refuses to leave town he has her arrested for soliciting and thrown in jail for 30 days.

Nothing is going to deter our feisty heroine, however, and she gets a job in a “road house” owned by a lady who takes orders from nobody. This happens to be where the local bigwigs hang out and make their nefarious deals. Lane is asked to look after their ring leader Dan Reynolds. He falls in love with her and they marry. She proves to be a devoted wife even as she is still obviously smarting from her rejection by Field.

The rest of the film follows Semple’s evil machinations and attempts to “break” Dan, Field, and of course Lane, whom he continues to hate. With Gladys George as the roadhouse owner.

This is a solid little film noir. I always like Scott and Greenstreet and they are both very good here. Scott is less weaselly and more pathetic than usual and Greenstreet does a pretty good job with a vaguely Southern accent and a character that is a bit out of the box for him. The film looks good as well.