Acteurist Oeuvre-view – Dorothy McGuire – Part 9: OLD YELLER (1957) and THE REMARKABLE MR. PENNYPACKER (1959)

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Our Dorothy McGuire episode this week is guaranteed to give you mood whiplash. We begin with Disney classic and Boomer phenomenon Old Yeller (1957), the most hellish depiction of the war of all against all in nature we’ve seen since King Kong, with a moving central performance by Tommy Kirk as a boy ungracefully slouching toward manhood with the indispensable assistance of a good dog and a seraphic mother (McGuire). After imbibing its gnostic wisdom, we turn to the very different problems facing The Remarkable Mr. Pennypacker (1959), a comedy about an early 20th century progressive businessman who adopts bigamy as part of his forward-thinking program but forgets to tell his wife (McGuire). McGuire’s wife and mother roles continue to give her a wide range of things to play, while drawing on her cool efficiency in a crisis – whether that’s a dog who’s been torn up by hogs or a husband with a secret second family. 

 

Time Codes:

0h 00m 45s:         OLD YELLER (1957) [dir. Robert Stephenson]

0h 38m 06s:         THE REMARKABLE MR. PENNYPACKER (1959) [dir. Harry Levin]

0h 55m 34s:         Listener Letter from Andrew

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* 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! 

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Hollywood Studios Year-by-Year – 20th Century Fox – 1943: STORMY WEATHER & THE GANG’S ALL HERE

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In this extra-special 20th Century Fox 1943 episode, we stare agog at a couple of dazzling musicals: Stormy Weather, whose all-black cast is headlined by Bill Robinson and Lena Horne and boasts an embarrassment of geniuses; and Busby Berkeley’s The Gang’s All Here, a Technicolor psychedelic extravaganza that’s the pinnacle of Fox’s signature variety-style musical. We try to sketch out some of the complex representational issues attending Stormy Weather, and our reasons for thinking that the movie itself has an awareness of them and is attempting to be progressive and sophisticated in certain ways. Turning to The Gang’s All Here, we focus on its exhibition of sometimes jarring self-reflexivity and the way it perfects the typical romantic and comedic storylines of this era of Fox musical. But if all of that sounds too dryly academic, don’t be afraid – we want to play!

 

Time Codes:

0h 00m 45s:      STORMY WEATHER [dir. Andrew L. Stone]

0h 51m 53s:      THE GANG’S ALL HERE [dir. Busby Berkeley]

 

Studio Film Capsules provided by The Films of 20^th Century-Fox by Tony Thomas and Audrey Solomon  

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

                                   

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* 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! 

 

 

 

 

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Special Subject – Silent Vidor Sampler – THE SKY PILOT (1921), PEG O’ MY HEART (1922), WILD ORANGES (1924), and LA BOHEME (1926)

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Our June Special Subject samples the surviving silent cinema of Dave’s favorite director (now revealed!), King Vidor. We tease Vidor’s auteur preoccupations out of these four early films—The Sky Pilot (1921), Peg o’ My Heart (1922), Wild Oranges (1924), and La Bohème (1926)—and find a common focus on the successful, frustrated, or warped self-realization of his heroines. We explore the way Vidor articulates this theme through sometimes eccentric versions of a variety of genres: Western, comedy, Gothic melodrama, woman’s picture. And if that doesn’t tempt you, there are graphic and brutal fist fights, random storks, demonic dogs, milk-loving dogs, dangerous stunts, and Lillian Gish going that extra 10 miles for her art long before De Niro and Day-Lewis. (10 miles, dragged along the cobblestones, in fact.) 

 

Time Codes:

0h 0m 45s:           King Vidor, Transcendentalist        

0h 13m 05s:         THE SKY PILOT (1921) [dir. King Vidor]

0h 34m 38s:         PEG O’ MY HEART (1922) [dir. King Vidor]

0h 44m 03s:         WILD ORANGES (1924) [dir. King Vidor]

1h 01m 29s:         LA BOHEME (1926) [dir. King Vidor]

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* 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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Acteurist Oeuvre-view – Dorothy McGuire – Part 8: TRIAL (1955) and FRIENDLY PERSUASION (1956)

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We continue last week’s theme of Hollywood’s attitude toward the Soviet Union as our Dorothy McGuire Acteurist Oeuvre-view episode takes us beyond not only the Popular Front era but just a shade beyond the heyday of McCarthyism. We also find that we spoke too soon about McGuire entering her mom-roles era, as in this episode’s movies she embodies an unmarried professional woman with a liberal attitude toward sex and a shady political past in Trial (1955, directed by Mark Robson, based on the novel by Don Mankiewicz), as well as a Quaker minister (and wife and mother) whose family’s pacifist views are put to the test in William Wyler’s Friendly Persuasion (1956). McGuire brings her particular mixture of the soothing and the astringent to not very committed Communism and very committed pacifism, proving that her range encompasses both the ultra-worldly and the otherworldly. 

Time Codes:

 0h 0m 45s:      TRIAL (1955) [dir. Mark Robson]

0h 30m 25s:      FRIENDLY PERSUASION (1956) [dir. Wiliam Wyler]

 

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* 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 – Warner Brothers – 1943: MISSION TO MOSCOW & EDGE OF DARKNESS

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Our Warner Brothers 1943 episode is a very special one, a Popular Front anti-Nazi double feature, the Stalinist propaganda film Mission to Moscow (directed by Michael Curtiz) and Lewis Milestone’s drama about Norwegian resistance to the Nazi occupation, Edge of Darkness. We attempt (as complete non-experts!) to lay out the stakes involved in the case made by Mission to Moscow and discuss the circumstances of the film’s production and the impact it made on Hollywood. Then we move on to Milestone and screenwriter Robert Rossen’s depiction of what it takes to form a successful resistance movement—in this case led by a subdued Errol Flynn and a steely Ann Sheridan. Come to find out how Dave and Elise would have felt about living through Stalin’s Five-Year Plans, stay to find out whether or not they would have been quislings.

Time Codes:

0h 00m 45s:      MISSION TO MOSCOW [dir. Michael Curtiz]

0h 45m 43s:      EDGE OF DARKNESS [dir. Lewis Milestone]

 

Studio Film Capsules provided by The Warner Brothers Story 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!

Read Full Post »