Daily Archives: July 23, 2016

Raintree County
Directed by Edward Dmytryck
Written by Millard Kaufman from a novel by Ross Lockridge Jr.
1957/USA
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
First viewing/Netflix rental

[box] Susanna Drake: Johnny, I had to come back. I’m going to have a baby.[/box]

Epic-length melodramas aren’t my thing. This one is just tedious despite Liz Taylor’s Oscar-nominated performance as a crazy lady.

It is the 1850’s in Raintree County, Indiana.  As the film begins, a high school class is graduating.  The professor makes a speech about a magical rain tree that has the answers to all the questions of life. Idealistic John Shawnessy (Montgomery Clift) decides he will go off and find it.  His sweetheart Nell (Eva Marie Saint) is a kindred spirit.  But John meets Southern belle Susanna Drake (Taylor) by chance and is overcome by her beauty.  They have a tryst by the river.  She goes back home and John takes up with Nell once again.  Susannah returns to announce she is pregnant and John marries her.

The twists and turns of this plot are too many to relate.  Suffice it to say that Susannah proves to be not a little insane, with a deep dark secret.  She doesn’t mesh well with John’s abolitionist views either.  Her initial pregnancy turns out to be a lie but John sticks with her and they eventually have a son he dotes on.  Meanwhile, Nell remains a spinster and becomes a journalist.  When Susannah returns South several years into the Civil War, John joins the Union army.  With Lee Marvin as John’s friend and rival.

Taylor is at her most lovely and her performance isn’t bad.  For me, though, Lee Marvin was by far the best thing about this movie.  The plot, while full of incident, got old before it ever really took off and the big reveal of the secret was an anti-climax.

Montgomery Clift suffered his disfiguring automobile accident early in the shooting of this movie.  His appearance varies throughout.  While he was still presentable his lost beauty in his only Technicolor outing is sad to see.

Raintree County was nominated for Academy Awards in the categories of: Best Actress; Best Art Direction-Set Decoration; Best Costume Design; and Best Music, Scoring.

Trailer

Tammy and the Bachelor
Directed by Joseph Pevney
Written by Oscar Brodney from a novel by Cid Ricketts Sumner
1957/USA
Universal International Pictures
First viewing/Netflix rental

[box] Tambey ‘Tammy’ Tyree: Just think, Miss Renie, that same moon that’s shinin’ down on me this very moment, is shinin’ down on Pete’s tomatoes![/box]

“Cute” is a good one-word review for this romantic comedy.

Tammy Tyree (Debbie Reynolds) is a seventeen-year-old backwoods girl who associates mostly with her moonshiner Grandpa (Walter Brennan) and pet goat.  One day, the two learn of a plane crash in the area and go out with hopes of salvaging some valuables. They find a survivor as well, Peter Brent (Leslie Nielsen) and nurse him back to health.  He goes back to his family in ten days, but not before Tammy has fallen in love with him.  He thinks of her as a child, however.

When Grandpa is put in jail for his illegal manufacturing, he sends Tammy to the Brents. There she discovers that Pete comes from a swanky Southern family that lives in an Ante-Bellum plantation mansion.  Appearances are deceiving though, and the Brents are land poor.  Pete has hopes of making the place pay by developing a superior type of tomato. Progress in this effort is slow.

All the Brents except Pete and eccentric Miss Rennie (Mildred Natwick), look down on Tammy and on Pete’s desire to be a farmer.  They want him to marry Barbara and join her family’s advertising business.  Three guesses as to how this all plays out.  You will only need one of them.

This is a well-made trifle that goes down easily.  Reynolds is charming as a hayseed.  It has some of the sit-com feel that befits a movie that spawned several sequels and a TV series.

The title song was nominated for an Oscar for Best Music, Original song.

Trailer