Movie review - "The Chase" (1946) *** (re-watching)

 Beautiful photography. Great turns from Peter Lorre and Steve Cochran. Nice atmosphere. Robert Cummings is interesting. So is the film. It hops around. The "it's all a dream" stuff is silly but writer Yordan makes it work by turning it into PTSD. Michele Morgan is weak. The film builds to a tragic ending and whimps out by being happy.

Book review - 'The Creative Producer" by David Lewis (1993)

 Lewis is best known as the boyfriend of James Whale. He also produced a number of films. Has some excellent credits at Warner Bros and MGM in particular. He struggled later in the 1950s - films like Raintree County and what not.

His memoirs are fascinating - a different insight from the Golden Age. Like everyone his memoirs are self serving - takes credit for things like coming up with the insanity angle for Kings Row rather than incest with Casey Robinson. But we hear different takes on films like Kings Row but also Each Dawn I Die, Four's a Crowd, Camille.

Interesting views of people like Irving Thalberg, Hal Wallis, Jack Warner, Dore Schary, Sam Wood, etc.

Movie review - "Beach Party" (1963) ***1/2 (re-watching)

 Kind of taken for granted but all the stuff is there -  the bright tone, the meta nature (Dorothy Malone telling Bob Cummings "AIP will buy the film rights", Vincent Price's cameo), the various subplots (Cummings studying kids, Frankie and Annette making each other jealous, bikers as a threat), colourful characters (Lembeck and his bikers, Morey Amsterdam's cafe owner, Jody McCrea's dumb friend, Eva Six's blonde bombshell, Dorothy Malone's sexy older woman, Cummings' anthropologist, Candy Johnson's dancing, John Ashleyh's more cynical friend). 

The tunes are very good - "Beach Party Tonight", "Don't Stop Now", "Surfin".

There is variety in the female roles - Funicello is a good girl, but there's also a man hungry Rhoda (who can't understand why Annette doesn't want to have sex with Frankie), the shimmying Candy Johnson, Eva Six, Dorothy Malone.

The musical numbers are done with tremendous verve.

Cummings was 53 (32 years older than Annette) but still looked good at the time - that would change within a year or so eg The Carpetbaggers.

Analysing John Ashley's role in this film - it's clear he's a kind of alpha in the group, suggesting Frankie dump Annette and also being the one not Frankie who entices Cummings on to a surf board (maybe this was to protect Frankie? Or Avalon may not have been available.)

The action screeches to a halt when Annette sings her ballad 'Treat Her Nicely'. But I liked how she was so protective of Cummings. (Also there's a moment where her character seems willing to sleep with Cummings, which is interesting. As is the implication that Frankie has slept with Eva). Because Funicello's character wants to be married an acts old she kind of matches with youthful (ish)Cummings.

Dorothy Malone doesn't have much to do but I liked her and she's sweet shimmying along to 'Tell It to the Moon'.

Movie review - "Lucky Me" (1954) **

 Bob Cummings appeared in a few musicals, usually playing light comedic leading man duties and not being involved in any singing or dancing. He plays a songwriter here so he has to warble a tune or two. -well, he's dubbed, not very well. Still he handles light comedy stuff as adept as always. Doris Day is the lead and she's very winning.

It's a dim story. It feels like one of those scripts that they kept putting writers on to work on it and never did much good since the central concept was weak. Doris and her mates (including Phil Silvers) are struggling performers, Cummings is a top composer. There's a scene where he pretends to be a mechanic to woo her - people were always faking their identity to romance Doris Day but it's not funny here.

Martha Hyer is the fake love interest.

Movie review - "Heaven Only Knows" (1947) **

 Angel fantasy which had more potential - Bob Cummings is an angel sent down to reform Brian Donlevy who has grown up bad as a scowly saloon owner in the old West when he's meant to be good. Cummings is ideal as a breezy angel and Donlevy as a baddy and the Western setting had potential because it's full of violence.

While the film has good moments, notably Majorie Reynolds as a saloon gal taken by Cummings and the death of Edgar Kennedy with a sobbing boy, the film never quite works. It takes itself too seriously when it needed to be lighter. It could've lent into the Western tropes more. There's a dull pastory in the town and the action screeches to a halt when boring school teacher Jorja Curtright (the future Mrs Sidney Sheldson) had scenes with Donlevy. Like, give her some life and fun.  The whole movie could've been more fun. More matchmaking from Cummings, more Donlevy-Cummings by play.

I was confused by the mum giving up the kid at the end - so he's meant to die? She gives her kid up to die? I was just a little confused.

Movie review - "Tell It To the Judge" (1949) **1/2

 One of Rosalind Russell's many comedies of remarriage and she's excellently teamed with Bob Cummungs who is in superb form, as is she. They are so terrific and the film full of possibilities and some strong support (Gig Young) that it's frustrating the filmmakers couldn't cobble it together.

Rosalind Russell is up for being a judget and is getting over the divorce from her ex Bob Cummungs. That's promising as are other bits - Cummings giving testimony from gangster's moll Marie McDoanld who gangstes are to get, Gig Young romancing Russell being a suave possible criminal.

Why don't they use the gangsters? Why don't they have life and death stakes? It would justfiy the lying. Why not have MacDonald love Cummings?

So many dumb ideas like Rusell being continually upset about MacDonald when there's a perfectly good reason for him to be with her, and Cummings not wanting Russell to be a judge in the first place, and not using gangsters, and MacDonald being scared all the time and Cummings fobbing her off.

Have Cummings as a prosecutor, Russell an co worker becoming a judge, make the blonde more Machiavellian and less trust worthy, have Cummings under strict instructions to lie to Russell, have Russell applied to the case, have people trying to shoot them, use the gangster, have Young be either super virtuous or super villainois.

So frustrating. Nice photography.

Movie review - "The Bride Wore Boots" (1946) **

 A comedy of remarriage that shoud've been a romantic comedy. Because they split up for dumb reasons so I didn't care, and it's so contrived keeping them apart. It's a dumb script.

The set up would've worked as a rom com. Barbara Stanwyck is a horsey outdoorsy woman who falls for booking Robert Cummings who writes about the Civil War. Both can play comed and would be ideal casting - Stanwyck looks physical Cummings can play nerds. But this central conflict isn't dramatised. It's mostly Cummings having literary groupies particularly Diana Lynn who tries to kiss him all the time and Stanwyck eventually sues for divorce. It makes everyone an idiot. Break them up for a solid reason. I mean they've got two kids one of whom is Natalie Wood.

Classy cast includes Robert Benchley, Willie Best. Patrick Knowles is dull as a rival for Stanwyck.

Movie review - "Charlie McCarthy Detective" (1939) ** (warning spoilers)

 I've heard some radio shows with Charlie McCarthy the dummy - he was very funny, and could have transferred to films if in the right vehicle. This isn't it. It has some funny momens but is far too gloomily shot - director Frank Tuttle seems to be in noir mode.

The cast is very strong - Constance Moore, Bob Cummings, Louis Calhern. There's not enough Charlie though - why was this? Too many brooding actors. Not enough comedy. Wrong director? Wrong producer?

I did like that Cummings was guilty, that was different.

Movie review - "The Under Pup" (1939) ***

 All I really know about Gloria Jean is that she was Universal's back up Deanna Durbin but this debut starring vehicle is a charming tale, perhaps to be expected from producer Joe Pasternak (Richard Wallace directed).

It's a decent story - Gloria is a plucky 11 year old from a poor background with colourful uncles (including C Aubrey Smith) who wins a chance to go to summer camp. There's plenty of bitches but some nice sones too as well as pleasant counsellors Robert Cummings (his follow up to Three Smart Girls Grow Up) and Nan Grey.

The cast is full of familiar faces like Dickie Moore, Beulah Bondi, Billy Gilbert and Australia's own Cecil Kellaway. Cummings' part is quite small - he does get a funny scene where football fan Jean gives him some sass (heis character is a footballer). The subplot about a lonely girl and her divorcing parents getting back together is sweet.

Aubrey Smith does well enough listening to Jean warble. Cecil Kellaway does too at the start - he'd just done that in Mr Chedworth Steps Out.

Movie review - "And One Was Beautiful" (1940) **1/2

 Odd melodrama with two sisters in love with the same guy - sophisticated Jean Muir and "homey" Laraine Day with Robert Cummings as the gyy. Muir and Cummings go to a party he gets wasted and insists on driving - but then she does it, she runs over and kills someone. He takes the fall. That's not a bad drama set up.

The film stacks the deck against Muir - who actually had my sympathy. She lies, Cummings goes "no I'd remember running someone over" which isn't true, Day instantly suspects her sister... A little more work and this could've been a lot better.

Day is sweet, Muir good and Cummings charming - the acting is a reasonable standard. And it's got MGM gloss. Cummings seems remarkably chipper the whole time for someone who is up for murder. He's chipper in prison, and chipper when he finds out he's innocent. The family of the guy Muir kills are forgiving - plucky stock working class types.

The film covers a lot of ground.

Movie review - "Free and Easy" (1941) **

 Interesting collection of elements. The feature directorial debut of George Sidney. An MGM cheapie so it's still pretty glossy. C Aubrey Smith. Based on an Ivor Novello play. Still feels English. Bob Cummings and Nigel Bruce are son and dad (?), fortune hunters - they love each other which is sweet. Cummings strikes up a nice relationship with Judith Anderson who is rich but falls for Ruth Hussey who he thinks is rich but is poor. Bruce gets gambling debts so Cummings gets engaged to Anderson. It's resolved too quickly.

It clocks in at 55 minutes. Maybe it needed songs. Hussey has no charisma no chemistry with Cummings who has to do all the heavy lifting. There is warmth in the Cummings-Anderson scenes and the Cummings-Bruce scenes.

Movie review - "The First Time" (1952) ***

 Frank Tashlin's directorial debut (as a feature) is a comedy about new parents Barbara Hale and Robert Cummings. Its a series of small vignettes - waiting for the baby to come, she gives her will in case something goes wrong during the birth (not unreasonable at the time), scenes of grandmas and mid wives ripping babies out of mum's hands, struggle to get sleep, worries about finances which prompts Cummings to take a job he doesn't like.

Tashlin's vision arrived pretty formed. There's lots of his touches, like jokes about sex (Cummings collects a hooker/floozy thinking she's a baby sitter), animation references (the family watch a cartoon).

I feel a third main character would have helped more - there's a nanny but even she's a little thinly drawn.

Still this is charming and sweet.

Movie review - "The Great American Beauty Contest" (1973) ** (warning: spoilers)

 Classic Spelling-Goldberg television movie - high concept, lots of starlets, some old time-y stars. It focuses on a beauty contest, run by Robert Cummings and Eleanor Parker (a former beauty queen and actress with a Secret). 

There's a heap of plots: Louis Jourdan blackmails Parker into getting help for Susan Darnonte to sleep with him; Darnonte has a neglectful dad; one of the contestants is black, Tracy Reed; Farrah Fawcett has a boyfriend (Larry Wilcox) who doesn't want to be ignored; Joanna Cameron plans to make a feminist protest. I'm surprised there wasn't a killer out to get them.

The film is silly but it moves along at a fast clip (75 minutes!) and does tackle some issues, such as racism, feminism and soon. But the film loses a lot of points by having Parker scold Tracy Reed about racism and have Cameron win and not be feminist at the end.

Dwayne Hickman Top Ten

In honour of his passing.

1) The Boy With Green Hair (1948) - Hickman was a child actor. In this one he plays a boy who doesn't have green hair. (You know, contrast.)

2) The Bob Cummings Show (1955-59). This sitcom ran for 179 episodes with basically the one storyline: Bob Cummings was a photographer who tries to score with hot, willing models but is constantly cockblocked his sister, housekeeper (Alice from The Brady Bunch) and nephew... played by Hickman.

3) The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis (1959-63). Hickman's starring vehicle. 147 episodes of Hickman as a teenager who cockblocks himself. Cockblocking was very big on TV in the 50s. Tuesday Weld and Warren Beatty had guest roles on this.

4) Cat Ballou (1965) - Jane Fonda became a star as a gal turned outlaw... Lee Marvin won an Oscar playing a drunken gunman... everyone forgets Hickman and Michael Callan are in this as brothers, and quite good.

5) Ski Party (1965) - AIP take the Beach Party formula to the snow, and rip off Some Like It Hot in the bargain with Hickman and Frankie Avalon playing Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis. This film is fun. I mean, c'mon, Lesley Gore sings 'Sunshine Lollipops and Rainbows' and James Brown sings 'I Feel Good' in a sweater.

6) How to Stuff a Wild Bikini (1965) - Hickman replaces Avalon in the 6th instalment of the Beach Party series, easily the worst one. It feels all wrong him romancing Annette Funicello, who was pregnant at the time and is constantly covering her stomach with buckets of KFC. Everyone is in this: Buster Keaton, Brian Donlevy, Mickey Rooney, Elizabeth Montgomery... The green room would've been awesome. The film, not so much.

7) Dr Goldfoot and the Bikini Marchine (1965) - genuinely entertaining sci fi comedy spoof with marvellous Vincent Price in the title role but Hickman and Avalon doing a very good buddy act.

8 ) Doctor You've Got to be Kidding (1967) - one of the many comedies that helped kill Sandra Dee's career. The actors are better than the material - they include Bill Bixby, Mort Sahl, George Hamilton, Celeste Holm (!) and Hickman.

9) High School USA (1983) - does anyone else remember this film? I remember loving it as a kid. Combined the latest stars (Michael J Fox, Nancy McKeon, Anthony Edwards) with boomer stars (Tony Dow, Hickman).

10) Designing Women - Hickman wasn't in this but later in his career he became a TV executive and he was responsible for this show for many years, which was a handful. He writes about it in his entertaining memoir, Forever Dobie.

Movie review - "Stagecoach" (1966) **1/2

Not bad. Nice colour and locations. Good cast. I wasn't wild about Alex Cord as the Ringo Kidd. Ann Margaret is ideal as a hooker. Mike Connors is fine as John Carradine. Stefanie Powers is the pregnant lady Louise Platt. Robert Cummings is better than Barton Churchill. Van Heflin is ideal as George Bancroft. Bing Crosby is very good as Thomas Mitchell. I liked Keenan Wynn as the baddy. I could've taken or left Red Buttons.

The direction, by Gordon Douglas, lacks the poetry of John Ford but is competent. It doesn't have the emotional connection and warmth of the first. But it isn't bad and it is in colour.

Movie review - "Promise Her Anything" (1966) **

 After making a series of arty movies Warren Beatty decided to do something popular. He had developed What's New Pussycat? then turned it down at the eleventh hour - so picked something similar: a frantic comedy set in Greenwich Village about a man surrounded by beautiful dames. There's even a Bacharach-David theme song sung by Tom Jones.

The central idea though is more Doris Day/Shirley MacLaine/Norman Krasna: Leslie Caron plays a single mother who arrives in the big city to nab a husband for her son. She chases after Robert Cummings, doing a fun riff on Dr Spock as a child rearing expert who hates kids, and is loved by her neighbout Beatty, who makes nudie films.

The film doesn't lean into its concept. It needed Norman Krasna to do a pass. William Peter Blatty wrote it - after his other dud John Goldfarb Go Home. This was called The Babysitter and was shot in London because Caron couldn't take her kids out of the country (her affair with Beatty led to divorce from Peter Hall).

For a while this was pleasantly enjoyable. Beatty was animated and clearly trying in a Jim Hutton style part. Caron was cute, her kid was a lot of fun, I laughed at the baby stumbling into nudie cutie shots. Donald Sutherland is in it briefly (as mentioned, this was shot in London).

Robert Cummings, an actor I like, was looking too gaunt by this stage to play a threat to Beatty. The plotting is frantic as is the direction (Arthur Hiller). It started to grate half way and only got worse as it went on.

Movie review - "How to be Very Very Popular" (1955) **

 Betty Grable's last movie suffers under the leaden direction of Nunnally Johnson. Johnson wrote and produced How to Marry a Millionaire which also starred Grable, but directing these things are harder than they look.

It doesn't help that it's not a musical when it should be, or that Marilyn Monroe turned down the lead and they used Sheree North, who is no way near the same class.

Grable was getting a bit old and doesn't have a character to play - North isn't much of a performer, but doesn't have a character to play either. Compare it with Gentlemen Prefer Blondes a movie which has some similarities to this... two dames in a strange environment, meeting Tom Noonan and Charles Coburn. The lead gals were very different (Jane Russell would've been fab in this).

North does a dance towards the end and she's sensational - and you go "they should have had her doing that all the way through - just dancing".

And Johnson has no fun with the culture clash of showgirls at college. I mean, you think it would be obvious - show girls with street smarts clashing with boys with book smarts - but they do little with the situation.

Robert Cummings, normally made for this material, seems odd in a crew cut as a perenial student and there's no life in Tom Noonan.

Movie review - "Moon Over Miami" (1941) ***

 Ah, this is fun. It's in colour, it takes place in Miami, the leads are women out to nab a rich husband, they hang around a nightclub where there's production numbers

Betty Grable is very sweet and fun - too nice to be a genuine gold digger but since she's never going to actually be one it doesn't matter. Carole Landis is nice as her friend but she doesn't have a distinguishing character to play - she's just a blonde friend; it's a shame they couldn't have given her something individual to act.

Don Ameche and Robert Cummings are two of the best light comedians ever so the male department is well handled. Charlotte Greenwood and Jack Haley are the low rent third options - I think they were once famous.

The film stumbles a little in the third act - I think when Ameche pretends to be poor. But there's always a fun number. Greenwood is funny. Grable is a sweetheart.

Movie review - "What a Way to Go" (1964) **

This has a cute idea a little bit like Kind Hearts and Coronets  - Shirley MacLaine is a woman who dislikes money, keeps marrying poor men who then become rich and die, leaving her richer and richer.

The film took no chances at the box office, roping in Robert Mitchum, Paul Newman, Dick Van Dyke, Dean Martin and Gene Kelly to play husbands, with Robert Cummings thrown in for good measure.

How well you enjoy this depends on how much you like the stars. I'm not a massive MacLaine fan - Mitchum seemed irritating (sometimes I like him, sometimes he feels genuinely lazy and this was such a time), Dean Martin was... fine, Van Dyke was... fine, Newman was trying to be Funny (in a beard as a French artist). Cummings was fun as a nutty shrink who falls for MacLaine.

For me the best was Gene Kelly, in part because he does a few song and dance numbers - including one with MacLaine who does it terrifically. It made me wish this was a musical - at times it feels as though it was meant to be and had songs cut out or something. Because in those scenes you see the actors really trying as opposed to being a smart arse. That may be unfair but the rest of the movie felt like stars being smart arses - drenched in costumes and production value, pulling faces. But like I say if you adore those actors you might feel differently.

It was directed by J. Lee Thompson who actually made a few comedies in his career, people just didn't remember them. I'm actually surprised this wasn't turned into a stage musical or remade because of the concept.

Movie review - "Between Us Girls" (1942) *1/2

Deanna Durbin turned down this film and no surprise because the idea is stupid - it's about a 20 year old woman who pretends to be 12 so her mother's new boyfriend doesn't think mom is too old. Isn't he going to figure it out eventually? She keeps the deception going with the boyfriend's colleague Bob Cummings because.... um, fun?

The Major and the Minor had a girl pretend to be fun for a logical reason but here it's stupid. Durbin stepped out and Diana Barrymore stepped in. Presumably Universal figured the daughter of John Barrymore could handle it - indeed they throw in extra acting for her to go, by making her character an actor, and have her perform as Queen Victoria, Sadie Thompson.

Barrymore runs around and mugs and it's painful. She tries but she hasn't got it. It's a tough role but she isn't even pretty. Universal don't protect her - she carries the bulk of the action she's always the focus of scenes and she's hideous.

I mean there's a strong cast here otherwise - Cummings acts his arse off and does a good job opposite her - he's got a bit to do but Kay Francis (her mother) and John Boles (mother's boyfriend) are wasted as is Andy Devine (manager). The film bets all its chips on Barrymore and it's a bust.

Henry Koster's handling isn't bad - the blocking of the scenes and what not is fine. It looks handsome. But its so dumb and gets more and more painful. Amateurish Barrymore.