The Mating Season was enough of a hit for Charles Brackett to devise another Thelma Ritter starring vehicle. Here she is a marriage broker who tries to set up various people.
Ritter is charming but a little of her goes a long way, and there's probably too much of her here. For me, Jeanne Crain was the true revelation - I've never liked her much in everything but here she was terrific, as a department store model who keeps dating married men, and winds up kind of adopted by Ritter. She has a romance with Scott Brady who's commitment phobic- although instead of exploring that he's really the standard unpleasant alpha from 50s Hollywood movies (I guess being an x ray technician is a little different), who tries to paw Crain, and only agrees to marry her when she won't put out. It's still the best work I've seen from Crain.
The main issue of this film for me was all the subplots - they're all over the place. Ritter has all these customers, but Crain isn't one, and his sister she's estranged from, and an old guy who's keen on her, and Michael O'Shea as a friend (who delivers this awful Capra-style speech to Crain about Ritter) who's hot for Ritter too (Ritter would've loved this film two blokes want to marry her). It is unique in celebrating romance amongst the less attractive including Miss Hathaway from Beverly Hillbillies and Zero Mostel. One of her clients, this Swedish guy at the beginning played by Frank Fontaine, seems mentally disabled. He's meant to be Swedish, I know, but he does not seem all there.
George Cukor directed.
3 comments:
Frank Fontaine was a singer-comedian who specialized in playing drunks and "mentally challenged" characters for laughs. He's probest remembered for playing Crazy Guggenheim opposite Jackie Gleason's Joe the Bartender on 1960s American TV.
Thank you I didn't now that. Maybe the mentally challenged thing played funnier in 1951 it made me a little uncomfortable.
Yes, it's a type of comedy that's generally out of style, for good reason.
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