gimhoff Reviews

London Has Fallen (2016)

Completely competent action-packed thriller

[7/10 · 2 December 2016]

The many negative reviews of London Has Fallen are politically motivated,and have little to nothing to do with the quality of the film- making. A movie isn't bad because it's pro-American, nationalist, or anti-terrorist. Those are just political arguments.

An action movie isn't bad if it has little character development or little memorable dialogue aside from the obligatory quips in the middle of violent scenes. It's bad if it's dull or if the fistfights, gun battles, and explosions are clumsily staged, and neither of those is true of London Has Fallen. It would be a shame if Babak Najafi's career suffered because of he dared to do a pro-Western anti-terrorist film that was attacked because of its politics.

Play for Today: Rumpole of the Bailey (1975) Season 6, Episode 10

Rumpole at sunrise

[1 January 2010]

The Rumpole of the Bailey series is largely a comedy, primarily because of the antics of Horace Rumpole's colleagues at 3 Equity Court and Rumpole's usually successful efforts to frustrate their schemes. But this introduction to Rumpole is a sadder, more melancholy, short play that doesn't show his life in chambers, but that takes Rumpole's dysfunctional family life a bit more seriously. Rumpole's legal philosophy is already fully formed even before the beginning of the series -- the true crime isn't being a criminal, but imprisoning criminals. However, his wife Hilda ("She Who Must Be Obeyed") hasn't found that awkward balance she has in the series between loving and loathing Rumpole, between being frustrated by him and fearing that every woman he meets is attracted to him. She's really unhappy in her marriage. Rumpole's son, who in the series loves and appreciates his father, has a much more difficult relationship with him here.

It's well worth seeing for those who love the Rumpole series and stories. It's unfortunately not included in the complete series collection, but it is available as a stand-alone DVD.

Sally Hemings: An American Scandal (2000)

Plantation romance, not history

[5 June 2009]

The belief that Thomas Jefferson had a long-standing sexual relationship with his slave Sally Hemings rests on four grounds: 1) the contemporaneous charges of journalist James Callendar, who smeared members of both political parties, sometimes truthfully and sometimes not, as his allegiances shifted. Callendar's charges were made in viciously racist terms, and they were never directly addressed by Jefferson. Callendar is strikingly portrayed as a snake by Rene Auberjonois in this film. 2) The claim of Madison Hemings, one of Hemings' sons, who first wrote that he and Hemings' other children were fathered by Jefferson in a newspaper interview and then in a short memoir, both written in the 1870's, when he himself was in his seventies, and nearly fifty years after Jefferson's death. 3) DNA testing of the lineal descendants of Eston Hemings, Sally Hemings' youngest child, that showed a familial link to a male Jefferson, but not specifically to Thomas Jefferson. 4) Timetables that show that Thomas Jefferson is the only male Jefferson who can be proved to have been at Monticello around nine months before the births of all of Sally's children. If we make the assumption that all of Sally Hemings' children had the same father, that would tend to show that Jefferson was the father of all of them. Each of these, by itself, proves nothing; even taken together they aren't conclusive proof. But they certainly are suggestive.

What is more important in judging stories about Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson is that we know practically nothing about the nature of the relationship between them. Hemings left no papers; Jefferson wrote nothing about her. Madison wrote that Sally went to France as a companion to Jefferson's daughter Maria when he was the US ambassador; that she and Maria stayed eighteen months, during which Sally became pregnant with Jefferson's child. "She was just beginning to understand the French language well, and in France she was free, while if she returned to Virginia she would be re-enslaved. So she refused to return with him. To induce her to do so he promised her extraordinary privileges, and made a solemn pledge that her children should be freed at the age of twenty-one years. In consequence of his promise, on which she implicitly relied, she returned with him to Virginia." He wrote that these promises were kept: "He (Jefferson) was not in the habit of showing partiality or fatherly affection to us children. We were the only children of his by a slave woman. He was affectionate toward his white grandchildren, of whom he had fourteen, twelve of whom lived to manhood and womanhood." He also wrote that, "We were permitted to stay about the 'great house,' and only required to do such light work as going on errands. Harriet learned to spin and to weave in a little factory on the home plantation. We were free from the dread of having to be slaves all our lives long, and were measurably happy. We were always permitted to be with our mother, who was well used. It was her duty, all her life which I can remember, up to the time of father's death, to take care of his chamber and wardrobe, look after us children and do such light work as sewing, and Provision was made in the will of our father that we should be free when we arrived at the age of 21 years."

Assuming this is all true (and the movie doesn't stick to even this much) everything else about their relationship is invented. Were Sally and Thomas tender and loving partners over several decades, was Thomas a mean and ruthless exploiter of a vulnerable slave, or did they both have what was just a practical arrangement? Nobody knows, so we all bring to their relationship our own prejudices, wishes, and hopes. It's a mirror, and what we see in it is ourselves, not any historic fact. What is written and filmed about them is a "plantation romance," whether it is of the whips and chains variety like Mandingo and parts of this movie, or whether it is more hopeful that love could overcome the institution of slavery, as are other parts of this movie.

As to the movie itself, it has a serviceable script and is well filmed by TV mini-series standards, and its four-hour length doesn't seem too long. Its main advantages are that Neill and Ejogo provide two good lead performances and that Ejogo is a world-class beauty. Its only distracting flaw is the excessive and quite noticeable make-up jobs on all the actors who are supposed to be elderly. In sum, it's worth watching if you're interested in the subject and don't think that movies tell the truth about historical characters.

Dirty Gertie from Harlem U.S.A. (1946)

Dirty Gertie

[3 June 2009]

Dirty Gertie drinks, flirts heavily, and takes expensive jewelry from men. She's the heroine of the movie, but she's tarnished, and her doom is foreshadowed many times. The movie has the structure of many black musical films, leading up to a big revue in a nightclub at the end, but those expectations are frustrated. The revue consists only of the dancing of the chorus line, credited as "6 Harlem beauties," and a short dance number by July Jones and Howard Galloway.

Even more frustrating is that Francine Everett, though she was known as a singer and dancer, doesn't sing at all in the movie. She dances only a few steps early in the plot, and in the nightclub revue she only sways a bit as she removes her over-the-elbow gloves at the start of a sadly interrupted striptease.

The oddest thing in the movie, however, is director's Spencer Williams' casting of himself in a cameo role as "Old Hagar," the crystal-globe-reading fortune teller. Williams plays the role in drag, dressed in a house dress and head wrap, but he wears his mustache and speaks in a deep, masculine voice. He doesn't play it for comedy, yet it's hard to say he's playing it straight. Did Williams just step in for an actress who didn't show up for filming that day (that's the sort of thing that happened in making very low budget black movies), or is the explanation something stranger?

Ask the Dust (2006)

A good film that fails by aiming too high

[7 May 2009]

Most of the comments are right on point: the cinematography, set design, costuming, and recreation of California of the thirties are wonderful; Hayek is beautiful and Farrell good-looking. The problem with the movie is that not just the plot but also the script is true to its period. The dialogue and spoken narration are from the thirties -- the overwritten, wordy, Broadway-influenced, "literary" scripts of Clifford Odets, Robert Sherwood, Eugene O'Neill, and so on. Towne has an excuse for part of Ask the Dust's script, since he's writing about a writer who's obsessed with and intoxicated by his own words, but the style spills over into the rest of the script. A talky, "literary" movie can have its own charms for sympathetic viewers, but most of the audience will dismiss it as stagy and pretentious.

To the Last Man (1933)

Landmark Western

[4 May 2009]

This is a standout early-30's western because of the extraordinary talent that participated in it: director Henry Hathaway, writer Jack Cunningham (who collaborated with Hathaway on six pictures in 1933-34), original novelist Zane Gray, and a cast of stars and future stars who were in Hathaway's stock company at the time: Randolph Scott, Barton McLane, Buster Crabbe (who in two-shot close-ups looks as though he were born to play Scott's brother), Noah Berry, and Jack LaRue. Even in brief and minor roles, Hathaway gets memorable performances, such as a shaved Fuzzy Knight in a serious rather than comic-relief role and Eugenie Besserer as a fierce grandmother crying out for Biblical vengeance. Esther Ralston is a revelation in the lead female role, as an unpolished and touchy backwoods girl who yearns to be a lady but who is fully capable in the climatic scene of fighting desperately to save her man's life.

The plot mixes returning Civil War veterans, hill country family feuds, and Western rustling action, and ties these threads neatly together. The film is only a little over an hour long, but it packs a lot of action and plot into that short running time.

Lassie: Peace Patrol (1959) Season 5, Episode 36

Savings Stamps and the Peace Patrol

[10 March 2009]

The Lone Ranger's Peace Patrol was a program designed to get children to buy Savings Stamps, low-cost stamps (25 cents to a dollar in value) that could be traded in for a $25 United States Savings Bond when they reached a total of $16.75. This episode centers on a national contest in which public schools compete to sell stamps, and Timmy is the captain of the school's team. Of course there are complications, including the theft of the money box, but in the end Timmy's school is one of the winners in the contest, the Lone Ranger and Silver visit the school in person, and Lassie is made the second animal member of the Peace Patrol, just after Silver. The episode is notable for the crossover meeting of two children's television icons.

Reet, Petite, and Gone (1947)

Musical with a wisp of a plot

[14 January 2009]

Louis Jordan was a singer, saxophonist, and band leader who specialized in upbeat jazz -- comic, novelty, and good-times songs. The plot of this movie is just as unsubstantial as those of most of Jordan's movies, since the plot is only an excuse for Jordan and his Tympany Five to perform their recent hits. Jordan does eleven songs in this movie, and three of his female costars -- June Richmond, Bea Griffith, and Mabel Lee -- do one song each.

The plot, for those who care, is that Jordan's father had a brief romance with Bea Griffith's mother, and his dying wish is for Jordan to marry Griffith. The family's crooked lawyer tries to substitute an altered will to cheat Jordan out of his inheritance, and also tries to sabotage the new show that Jordan is opening.

What makes Reet, Petite, and Gone different from other Jordan movies is that in addition to music it has many uncredited showgirls, the predecessors of today's video vixens, in daring scenes. Four or five pretty girls in short skirts will stand behind Jordan swaying a bit and doing a little dancing. A line of showgirls in swimsuits will step up to have their measurements taken. There's even a scene in which Bea Griffin sits in a black bra and panties and puts on her stockings -- hot-cha-cha. The highlight of the movie, however, is the strikingly pretty uncredited girl who sits on Jordan's piano and pantomimes her amusing reactions to his accusations of infidelity in "I Know What You've Been Putting Down."

I Ain't Gonna Open That Door (1947)

Musical answer to "Open the Door Richard"

[25 July 2008]

Comedian Dusty Fletcher was best known for his comedy sketch, "Open the Door Richard," in which he played a drunk trying to get into his apartment, futilely begging his roommate Richard to, "open the door, Richard." That routine was recorded in a 1945 short in which Fletcher performed it on a nightclub stage set. Richard is never seen in that short.

This musical short, really just one song, is the answer to that routine. Stepin Fetchit plays Richard, and Dusty Fletcher doesn't appear. Fetchit lies in bed, and he talk-sings his reply, "I Ain't Gonna Open That Door," to the accompaniment of Earl Bostic's band. The public domain version doesn't include all the opening credits, but there are also two attractive actresses who appear briefly.

The Last Mile (1932)

Sentimental about killers

[13 September 2007]

Kindly, sympathetic, upstanding convicts who are on Death Row for no good reason that we ever learn (except that we know Dick Walters has been wrongfully convicted)are put to death by prison guards who vary from indifferent to mean, while the Warden agonizes over what good capital punishment does and the meaning of it all -- until an attempted prison break turns him into the most bloodthirsty of all.

The one-set stage play is opened up a little bit by scenes showing the crime for which Walters has been convicted and the discovery of the criminals who really committed the crime. Good performances are turned in by Preston Forster as Killer Mears, the one prisoner who shows a mean streak that may have landed him on Death Row; and by Daniel L. Haynes, who had starred in Hallelujah three years earlier, as the token black singing prisoner.

Anti-death penalties dramas haven't become more balanced or less simplistic; if anything, the thumb on the scale is even heavier in The Green Mile's recounting of the execution of angelic Michael Clarke Duncan. But today more realistic depictions of prison life and prisoners abound in cable television documentaries, and the misplaced sentimentality of The Last Mile toward its misunderstood convicts isn't easily swallowed. It does, however, have Killer Mears' bravado line at the end of the prison break: "I think I'll go get a little air."

Flying Devils (1933)

Early aviation thriller

[4 July 2007]

This is a competent, tidy, short action film and romance from the time when pilots were daredevils. Law student Eric Linden, "Bud," wants to join his older brother Bruce Cabot, "Ace," as a barnstorming stunt pilot with Speed Hardy's Flying Circus. Cabot thinks it is too dangerous a job for his brother, especially with a second-rate group like Speed's. (The group's symbol, which they wear on their jackets, symbolizes their luck; it's a black cat.) The other two pilots with Cabot are Speed Hardy (Ralph Bellamy), the boss, and Cliff Edwards, "Screwy," who is perpetually drunk. But the most dangerous thing that Bud does is not his parachute jumps, or even his two-person parachute jumps; it is falling in love with Arline Judge, Speed's wife, because Speed is seriously jealous.

The plot, dialogue, and acting are just serviceable, but there are plenty of thrills from the ample footage of biplanes flying in formation, twirling and corkscrewing, crash landing, and just crashing.

The Lady and the Mob (1939)

Fast, fun little comedy

[27 June 2007]

This tidy, short little comedy starts with a romantic comedy premise: beautiful and young Ida Lupino (at the beginning of her career) has to visit her prospective mother-in-law from Hell, strong-willed Fay Bainter (at the height of her career and fame), who had broken all of her son's previous engagements. Bainter immediately begins treating Lupino as a secretary. But when Bainter learns that her dry cleaner, Henry Armetta, is being shaken down by a mob protective association, Bainter becomes determined to break the mob herself, and recruits her own mob to fight them. It's fast and funny, and has a delightful cast of character actors playing their tough-guy roles with their tongues firmly in their cheeks; its tone is captured in the telegraph Young sends to her fiancée, Lee Bowman, "Is there insanity in your family? Return at once."

Black Hooker (1974)

This isn't a blaxploitation movie

[15 March 2007]

This is really a successor to the one-man, low-budget productions of Oscar Micheaux in the 1920's and 1930's, rather than one of the blaxploitation movies of the 1960's and 1970's.

Blaxploitation movies were urban. They were action movies with karate, knife, and gun fights; they pitted black heroes (sometimes good guys but often criminals themselves) against bad white guys (usually politicians and cops). They had pounding rhythm and blues scores and pimp style, and most of them were produced by major film studios, though on relatively small budgets.

The black-audience shoestring independent productions of Micheaux and his colleagues, on the other hand, most frequently had rural or small-town settings. Their characters were rarely involved in crime, and there was minimal violence. There was also little conflict between blacks and whites; the conflict was intraracial, and the movies usually had a religious, moral, or social message.

Under either title, "Black Hooker" or "Street Sisters," this movie markets itself as a blaxploitation movie, but its main elements are all from the earlier genre. It's the drama of a conflicted family, with a grandfather who is a crazed preacher; a grandmother who is the earthy family peacemaker; their daughter, the title character, who is more like the fallen woman in the earlier films than like the flashy, assertive whores of the later ones; and the daughter's son who is light enough to pass for white (and passing is a common theme of the earlier movies).

It's also, unfortunately, just as clumsily plotted and directed as the Micheaux movies.

I Wonder Who's Killing Her Now? (1975)

There's a mystery about this comedy

[15 March 2007]

The mystery is how it could be so bad. The cast is a great collection of comic character actors of the 1970's. The writer has a top-notch resume filled with wonderful comic scripts, including his collaborations with Woody Allen (the early movies, when Woody Allen movies were funny), and the director isn't incompetent. There are even some good lines in the script. (One attempt on Joanna Barnes' life is introduced by a shot of a shark in a swimming pool, with a sign by the pool reading, "Acme Shark Rentals." Bob Dishy's psychiatrist is confined to a straight-jacket; Dishy asks him why, and the psychiatrist replies, "We can't all be fashion-plates.") But the result is a mess. The actors and the director seem to have responded to what they knew was a failing movie with desperation -- "maybe if we play this broader, louder, quirkier, more over-the-top, we can make it funny." They can't, and they don't.

So what went wrong? The temptation, this having been a product of Hollywood in the 1970's, is to wonder who was on what drugs. If that isn't the explanation, I'd love to hear what was.

The Manipulator (1971)

Highly successful acting exercise; miserably failed film

[1 March 2007]

Everyone who has commented on this film to date has been right. It is a terrible, nearly unwatchable movie, directed by someone who has seen too many avant-garde short films by Stan Brakhage and Maya Derren and who mistakenly believed that a 90-minute commercial movie could be made using their techniques.

But it is also a filmed actors exercise, an extended acting class in which someone said to Mickey Rooney, "Let's test your chops, and explore the limits of your acting range." Viewing the movie that way, it is a triumph for Rooney. His acting talent is incredible, and in two- or three-minute bites his performance can be mesmerizing. He takes a mess of a script, an insane and unsympathetic character, and crazy lines, and comes off not just as believable but as affecting. You really don't want to see this movie, but if someone showed you a few short clips from it you would gain a new appreciation for Rooney's abilities.

Luana Anders holds her own as Rooney's captive, but it is Rooney's show.

Anna Lucasta (1958)

Watch it for its cast

[9 September 2006]

At the core of Anna Lucasta is a creaky plot that isn't seen often today -- the decent man who falls in love with the irresistible prostitute (see also The World of Susie Wong, Breakfast at Tiffany's, The Owl and the Pussycat, etc.). However, instead of focusing on the man's dilemma, Anna Lucasta focuses on the prostitute's family and friends. The screenplay is by a distinguished playwright and screenwriter, Philip Yordan, who based it on his own Broadway play, so it does have its moments -- an occasional good line, striking monologue, or clever exchange of dialogue. But it remains stagy, and the director's infrequent attempts to "open up" the play with cinematic devices don't work well.

However, the movie is valuable because it preserves performances by prominent black stage actors who for the most part rarely appeared on screen, certainly not in major, non-stereotypical roles. Nearly every actor and actress in the film is given a moment to shine, and they all acquit themselves well, with the possible exception of the great actor Rex Ingram, who sometimes chews the scenery as Anna's drunken and vengeful father. The beautiful Isabel Cooley, in a small role as Anna's sister, is a revelation here.

Eartha Kitt always plays Eartha, but her Anna more than adequately shows many facets -- on the edge of hard-bitten, but still yearning to be accepted as innocent and sweet, attracted to the fast life, but hurt and wounded and feeling unloved. And Sammy Davis' performance is much better than the reviews he received when the movie was released or on IMDb. He plays Anna's other suitor, who loves her in his own fashion, but who wants her as a companion for good times and partying, not as a wife. He's shallow, but he has a core of decency and concern for Anna, and Davis portrays both sides well. (Think of Sammy as Sportin' Life in Porgy and Bess, whom he would portray in the same year, but with depth.)

The Savage Girl (1932)

Cut-rate adventure, but fun on its own terms

[20 July 2006]

African explorer Jim Franklin is hired by perpetual drunkard and eccentric millionaire Amos P. Stitch on a whim, to capture animals to stock a private zoo on his Westchester estate. On the way to Africa they pick up a London cabbie and his cab to drive Stitch on the safari, and in Africa they hire Alex Bernouth, a German jungle guide, and Oscar, a Harlemite who wants to get back to New York.

Their expedition is observed by The White Goddess, a white jungle girl who warns the animals against being captured and releases the animals they do capture. They catch her by luring her with a shiny object -- a hand mirror -- and the expected complications ensue. Meanwhile, Stitch conducts an experiment with an imported white mouse to see whether elephants in the wild are really afraid of mice.

Low-budget writer, director, and producer Harry L. Fraser worked on a number of similar jungle, gorilla, and white-orphans-raised-by-animals pictures from the 1920's through the 1940's, but none of the others had Rochelle Hudson swinging from vines. This may have been a cut-rate, opposite-sex version of Tarzan the Ape Man, which was made the same year, but it's fun on its own terms.

The White Gorilla (1945)

Perils of Jungle Movies

[17 July 2006]

Harry L. Fraser, the writer and one of the producers of this movie, was also the writer of Perils of the Jungle, the 1927 serial from which he took the archive footage. The serial did have good animal scenes, so it's hard to fault Fraser for finding a way to recycle what would otherwise be badly outdated and unusable silent footage. The problem, as every other commentator has noted, is the impossibility of integrating the two films smoothly, and the terrible plot -- if there is a plot -- of the new footage.

Frank Merrill, the hero of the 1927 serial, did play Tarzan in two later movies, Tarzan the Mighty and Tarzan the Tiger, but he was playing a different and unrelated character in Perils of the Jungle.

Crash Corrigan, the hero of the new wrap-around movie, made a specialty of playing gorillas, and he often played other roles in the movies in which he donned the gorilla suit, but I believe this may be the only movie in which his human character directly confronts his animal character.

One Rainy Afternoon (1936)

Charming romantic comedy well worth watching

[2 January 2005]

When a European setting was considered necessary for a "sophisticated" romantic comedy and a "prestige" production, "One Rainy Night" delivered not only the setting, but also the European screenwriters and even the European lead -- Francis Lederer doing a passable Maurice Chevalier-like singing turn. The main plot is a trifle, as is appropriate for romantic comedy. Lederer plays a stage actor who accidentally kisses a stranger (Ida Lupino) in a darkened movie theater, when he thought he was kissing his married lover (billed as Countess Liev de Maigret). Lederer is prosecuted as a masher at the insistence of a public morality committee. At trial, he can't tell the true reason he kissed Lupino, so he says he was overcome by her beauty; the trial makes him a popular celebrity and his stage play a hit, and it starts a romance between Lederer and Lupino.

Lederer is a charming romantic lead and Lupino is radiant in an uncharacteristic early role as a sweet, innocent girl. Unfortunately, they have little chemistry between them, which is the weak point of the movie. But the supporting cast, including the always reliable Roland Young, Hugh Herbert, Donald Meek, Eric Rhodes, and Mischa Auer playing their usual characters, are all given either extended scenes or bits of business that keep the movie light, sparkling, and enjoyable. And Rowland Lee's direction is up to his usual high standard.

Thoughtcrimes (2003 TV Movie)

Action programmer notable for its star

[17 October 2004]

Thought Crimes is a serviceable action programmer -- not bad, but nothing special -- notable mainly for giving its attractive star, Navi Rawat, her first leading role. Rawat plays a telepathic girl overwhelmed by the cacophony of voices in her head and wrongly hospitalized as insane. Psychiatrist Peter Horton rescues her from the hospital and trains her to control her powers, quiet and focus the multiple voices, and become a powerful mind reader. But he doesn't tell her he works for a government intelligence agency that wants to use her in its investigations, and when she learns that she distrusts him and flees. Misunderstandings are overcome; she works with Joe Flanigan, her new partner at the agency, to detect and prevent a terrorist assassination plot; and she is eventually reconciled with her estranged sister, Jocelyn Seagrave.

The film plays as though it is a pilot for a television series, and it would function well to set up Rawat and her supporting characters for continuing thought crime adventures. The best and most adventuresome thing about it, however, is the casting of Rawat and Seagrave in non-ethnic, non-"exotic" roles.

Broadway Limited (1941)

Little-known gem among screwball comedies

[9 August 2004]

The Broadway Limited is much funnier, and more consistently funny, than many better-known screwball comedies of the period. Its plot builds on several interlaced misunderstandings. A movie star (Marjorie Woodworth) is pressured by her scheming, tyrannical Hollywood producer (Leonid Kinskey) to pretend to adopt a baby for publicity purposes. The producer's assistant (Patsy Kelly) turns to an ex-boyfriend, a railroad engineer (Victor McLaglen), to borrow a baby for the stunt, but the baby he gets may have been kidnapped and the subject of a widespread police hunt. The movie star runs into her ex-boyfriend (Dennis O'Keefe), who thinks the baby really is hers. And the baby keeps disappearing and reappearing on a cross-country train trip.

As in many comedies, the romantic lead roles are blander and less interesting than those written for the character actors, who get all the best lines. Top-billed Victor McLaglen has a substantial role -- watch his underplayed reaction to the bratty kid who asks him, "Is that your real face?" But so does Leonid Kinskey, who has a ball and one of his biggest parts ever as the manipulative producer. Down-to-earth Patsy Kelly replaced dithering Zazu Pitts as Thelma Todd's partner in two-reel comedies, but this is the only film in which they appeared together. That's a shame, as they make a superb team, particularly when they share a bed with the baby (and a leaky hot-water bottle) between them.

Great Guy (1936)

Perhaps the only Weights and Measures tough-guy movie

[6 August 2004]

Two-fisted, crusading Deputy Chief of the Department of Weights and Measures Johnny Cave is out to smash short-weighting delicatessens, markets, and grocery delivery services and to expose the crooked businessmen who are behind the short-weighting racket and who pay off the aldermen and mayor who are on the take. The plot sounds like a parody of all the tough-guy G-Men and T-Men movies of the thirties, but it is played straight and it works.

The pleasures of the movie, aside from Cagney as Cagney, are that this is the third and final movie to pair Cagney with Mae Clarke and that several great character actors in the supporting cast, particularly Edward Brophy, James Burke, and Henry Kolker, are given plenty of opportunities to show off their characteristic acts.

The Road to Hollywood (1947)

Clips from early Crosby shorts for Mack Sennett

[4 August 2004]

Producer-director Bud Pollard was at this time primarily doing low-budget films with all-black casts, but the year before he had stitched together clips from three Educational Pictures/Mack Sennett short comedies starring Danny Kaye and released it as "Birth of a Star." Theaters could get the film as a cheap second feature, and use a big star's name on the marquee.

In this movie, Pollard did the same thing with four Educational Pictures/Mack Sennett shorts (two of them directed by Sennett himself) that Bing Crosby had done: "I Surrender Dear," 1934; "One More Chance," 1931; "Billboard Girl," 1932; and "Dream House," 1933. These were all two-reel comedies in which Crosby did physical slapstick comedy in the Sennett tradition (and did it very well) and sang his hit songs. Pollard himself appears on-screen to do a rather awkward narration that stitches the clips together, and ends the film with a short mawkish tribute to Crosby that nominates him for film-star sainthood.

Crosby fans and people who like silent and early sound slapstick comedies will enjoy this compilation, although the complete short films themselves would be better. Others won't be impressed.

Jigsaw (1949)

Crudely directed and edited political curiosity

[6 July 2004]

This little, low-budget noir mystery is marred by crude direction, cutting, and editing, reminiscent of and no more polished than most live television productions of the same period, and hampered by a heavy handed political script that leaves huge gaps in plot logic.

Its chief interest is as a rare curiosity. Its paranoid politics and style mirror the anti-Communist films of the period, but it was made by a group of primarily liberal and leftist New Yorkers (exemplified by the famous actors who contributed cameo appearances), who turned the usual premise on its head. Franchot Tone plays a liberal crusading "special prosecutor" who investigates a shadowy secret organization that is menacing and killing its own members, whom they think may expose them. But this organization isn't Communist or leftist; rather it's a vaguely racist group that is really just a financial scam, run only to collect membership dues and gather other profits. As a result, even the political statement turns out to be rather weak compared with films of the period that explicitly opposed discrimination, such as "Pinky," "Gentlemen's Agreement," "Crossfire," "Lost Boundaries," "No Way Out," and so on.

At War with the Army (1950)

Martin and Lewis become movie stars

[23 June 2004]

A decade earlier, Abbott and Costello became movie stars with a pair of World War II military films, "Buck Privates" and "In the Navy." Here Martin and Lewis march in their bootsteps during the Korean War. The plotted and scripted comedy framework for this film may not be anything special, but the Martin and Lewis set pieces remain great. With hindsight, you can see the grounds for the pair's breakup this early in their career. Martin is charming when he's allowed to sing or do a solo bit, but his character is an unsympathetic bully to Lewis' hapless fumbler -- Bud Abbott at his most brutal to poor Costello.

The glimpses of bits of their stage and radio act, however, are funny -- their byplay before a band; their imitation of Bing Crosby (Martin, of course) and Barry Fitzgerald (Lewis)in "Going My Way"; Lewis in blonde drag (with a hairy chest showing over the v-neck of his dress) singing a husky-voiced torch song to Mike Kellin, and Martin's underplayed double-take and mumbled, "No, couldn't be," as he passes by them.

One special highlight is Polly Bergen in an early brief part as Martin's girlfriend. (The movie's credits read "introducing Polly Bergen," but IMDb lists two previous roles for her, one just a voice part.) This is Bergen before she had an absolutely perfect face with an absolutely perfect nose, but still, as Martin sings "You and Your Beautiful Eyes" to her, she is given a lengthy, star-making closeup in which she smiles and becomes luminous, and her future career is assured.