Hollywood Studios Year-by-Year – Paramount – 1943: THE PALM BEACH STORY & NO TIME FOR LOVE

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For our Paramount 1943 episode, just a couple of typical comedies, as far as John Douglas Eames is concerned: Preston Sturges’ The Palm Beach Story, starring Claudette Colbert and Joel McCrea, a comedy of remarriage in which the screwballs are no longer the central couple, and Mitchell Leisen’s cross-class comedy with a number of twists, No Time For Love, with Colbert and Fred MacMurray. We try to figure out what these movies, coming at the end of the screwball comedy cycle, have to say about love, sex, class, wealth, and gender in America in the early 1940s. And in our Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto segment we discuss Merian C. Cooper’s relentlessly vicious King Kong (1933) as a kind of unconsciously Verhoevian nightmare “family film”.

Time Codes:

0h 00m 45s:      THE PALM BEACH STORY [dir. Preston Sturges]

0h 41m 21s:      NO TIME FOR LOVE [dir. Mitchell Leisen]

1h 07m 23s:      Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto:  King Kong (1933) by Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B Schoedsack

 

Studio Film Capsules provided by The Paramount Story Paramount Story John Douglas Eames

Additional studio information from: The Hollywood Story by Joel W. Finler

                                   

+++

* Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s

* Intro Song: “Sunday” by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive)

* Read Elise’s latest film piece on Preston Sturges, Unfaithfully Yours, and the Narrative role of comedic scapegoating.

* Check out Dave’s new Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist’s 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project! 

Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy

Write to us at therebuggy@gmail.com

 

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Special Subject – Produced by Joan Harrison, Part 2 – RIDE THE PINK HORSE (1947), ONCE MORE, MY DARLING (1949), YOUR WITNESS (1950), and CIRCLE OF DANGER (1951)

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In the second part of our Joan Harrison: Producer Special Subject, we look at Harrison’s Robert Montgomery years and her final film made before turning to television. which include both known and overlooked gems: Ride the Pink Horse (1947), Once More, My Darling (1949), Your Witness (1950), and Circle of Danger (1951). We identify the various themes and concerns that unite films within this group, with particular attention to the way Harrison makes political progressivism serve dramatic ends. And in our Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto segment, we take a quick look at two silent films written and directed by Mikio Naruse, Flunky, Work Hard! and Apart From You, that we will be watching for a dedicated episode later this year.

Time Codes:

0h 0m 45s:        Preamble on the Harrison-Montgomery partnership

0h 7m 00s:        RIDE THE PINK HORSE (1947) [dir. Robert Montgomery]

0h 36m 06s:      ONCE MORE, MY DARLING (1949) [dir. Robert Montgomery]

0h 49m 54s:      YOUR WITNESS (1950) [dir. Robert Montgomery]

1h 04m 08s:      CIRCLE OF DANGER (1951) [dir. Jacques Tourneur]

1h 29m 24s:      Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto – Mikio Naruse’s Flunky! Work Hard (1931) and Apart from You (1933)

1h 33m 51s:      Letter from Simon!

 

+++

* Listen to our guest episode on The Criterion Project – a discussion of Late Spring

* Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s

* Intro Song: “Sunday” by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive)

* Read Elise’s piece on Gangs of New York – “Making America Strange Again”

* Check out Dave’s Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist’s 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project! 

Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy

Write to us at therebuggy@gmail.com

We now have a Discord server – just drop us a line if you’d like to join! 

Check out this episode!

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Hollywood Studios Year-by-Year – Universal – 1942: THE MAD DOCTOR OF MARKET STREET & SABOTEUR

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For our Universal 1942 episode, a very odd pairing: The Mad Doctor of Market Street, a mad scientist/ocean liner comedy/island adventure movie directed by low-budget noir auteur Joseph H. Lewis, and Alfred Hitchcock’s first fully American movie, Saboteur, a fugitive-on-the-run thriller. We dissect the depiction of the fictional islanders in The Mad Doctor of Market Street and the movie’s deconstruction of the science/magic dichotomy, before moving on to Saboteur‘s leftist take on fascism in the United States. And in our Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto segment, we talk about Ozu’s A Hen in the Wind and Curtiz’s Angels with Dirty Faces, which have nothing in common but very emotional endings. 

Time Codes:

0h 00m 45s:      THE MAD DOCTOR OF MARKET STREET [dir. Joseph H. Lewis]

0h 24m 05s:      SABOTEUR [dir. Alfred Hitchcock]

1h 03m 52s:      Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto:  A Hen in the Wind (1948) by Yasujiro Ozu & Angels With Dirty Faces (1938) by Michael Curtiz

 

Studio Film Capsules provided by The Universal Story by Clive Hirschhorn

Additional studio information from: The Hollywood Story by Joel W. Finler

                                   

+++

* Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s

* Intro Song: “Sunday” by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive)

* Read Elise’s latest film piece on Preston Sturges, Unfaithfully Yours, and the Narrative role of comedic scapegoating.

* Check out Dave’s new Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist’s 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project! 

Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy

Write to us at therebuggy@gmail.com

 

We now have a Discord server – just drop us a line if you’d like to join! 

 

 

 

 

Check out this episode!

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Acteurist oeuvre-view – Dorothy McGuire – Part 5: MISTER 880 (1950) & CALLAWAY WENT THATAWAY (1951)

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For this week’s Acteurist Oeuvre-view episode we watched two romantic comedies (sort of), Mister 880 (1950) and Callaway Went Thataway (1951), in which Dorothy McGuire assumes a role we haven’t seen from her before: the character through whom we register the pathos that the movies explore via the respective plights of Edmund Gwenn’s elderly counterfeiter and Howard Keel’s TV cowboy impersonator. We focus particularly on Mister 880, a very unusual comedic drama directed by the great Edmund Goulding, with a screenplay by Robert Riskin, that in certain ways anticipates Umberto D., and try to grasp the essence of its elusive moral. In just what way does Gwenn’s character embody an admirable form of life? 

 

Time Codes:

0h 0m 45s:        MISTER 880 (1950) [dir. Edmund Goulding]

0h 35m 50s:      CALLAWAY WENT THATAWAY (1951) [dirs. Melvin Frank & Norman Panama]

 

+++

* Listen to our guest episode on The Criterion Project – a discussion of Late Spring

* Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s

* Intro Song: “Sunday” by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive)

* Read Elise’s piece on Gangs of New York – “Making America Strange Again”

* Check out Dave’s Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist’s 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project! 

Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy

Write to us at therebuggy@gmail.com

We now have a Discord server – just drop us a line if you’d like to join! 

Check out this episode!

Read Full Post »