Winter of Fairbanks: Sinbad the Sailor. Not even my crush on Fairbanks Jr. could get me through this one.

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn classic movie impressions, Movie Impresssions, Winter of Fairbanks Jr.5 Comments

This week for Winter of Fairbanks Jr. I watched Sinbad the Sailor.

Oh my, readers.

I watched this one with a face you make after you’ve taken gross tasting medicine.

Not even my crush on Fairbanks Jr. could get me through this one.

What was I even thinking? I really should have read up on it more or watched a preview first.

Cheesy? Check.

Sort of disrespectful to other cultures? Check.

Horrid, garish colors and really bad makeup jobs complete with darkened skin and dark eyeliner? Check.

A red-haired Irish woman who is supposed to be a Middle Eastern princess? Check.

There were so many yikes with this one, I just couldn’t wait for it to end. I wasn’t sure if it was supposed to be in the adventure or slapstick comedy genre. I found myself singing “It’s Sinbad the Sailor man” to the tune of Popeye’s theme song throughout much of it.

We’re supposed to believe this American man wearing blue eye shadow and dark eyeliner is a Muslim from Baghdad? Oh be still my horrified heart.

There is nothing like hearing a thick Irish accent say, “I am Shireen, Princess of Baghdad” to really emerse you into a movie about a middle-eastern folklore hero. *facepalm*

That darkened skin? They apparently got bored of using it about 15 minutes in because everyone miraculously appeared white again for a scene or two. No idea what that was about because a few scenes later they were dark again. I think there might have been only two or three actors in this movie who were actually not white. Anthony Quinn was one of them but not even he was middle-eastern since he was born in Mexico.

*I just want to add a clarification here (that wasn’t in here when I originally posted this): I do not mean to imply that the people making this movie or starring in it were racist at all. I just mean that it jarred me out of the story to have them be so clearly pale, American, and Irish, or with horrible makeup. I don’t think any ill-will was meant toward any culture. It was common in the early days of movies just to want to make something fun and not really think about how they might be slighting cultures. I am not excusing that but I also don’t think that movie makers set out to be offensive.

Another thing that always puzzles me about these old movies — couples meeting each other one day and already kissing each other that same day.

What was with that anyhow?

I’ve done my share of ranting about the movie so far so how about a little plot for you as presented by an article on TCM.com:

“Surrounded by friends, charming storyteller and adventurer Sinbad (Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.) regales his audience with a tale of his derring-do in exotic lands. In this particular adventure, his ocean journey with sidekick Abbu (George Tobias) pauses in the remote Daibul where nefarious auctioneers commandeer his ship. A bidding war erupts between rightful owner Sinbad and the feisty Shireen (Maureen O’Hara), resolved only through a bit of Sinbadian sleight of hand.”

“Meanwhile the powerful Emir (Anthony Quinn) notices Sinbad’s attentions towards the headstrong Shireen, who saves the sailor’s life before being captured by the Emir. This time salvation arrives in the form of Eastern sailor Melik (Walter Slezak) who enlists the couple’s aid in tracking down the elusive treasure of Deryabar, located beneath the palace of Alexander the Great. Loyalties and vows shift as the trio races to the treasure with the furious Emir hot on their heels.”

The film was shot in Technicolor so it is way out there with crazy colors from the paint on the ship to Maureen’s gaudy dresses.

TCM says Douglas was “famously ignored by his father as a child” but still wanted to make the movie in honor of his father’s swashbuckling movies. It was the first movie that Douglas Jr. made after returning from voluntarily serving in the United States Navy during World War II.

The writer of the article on TCM, Nathaniel Thompson, did have an “obsession” (as I’m sure many did) with what he called Maureen’s “exquisitely endowed bosom.”

He wrote, “which she was wisely but discreetly at pains to exploit and which I, ever an untiring student of such anatomical addenda, discreetly admired.”

Writing in his autobiography, A Hell of A War, Fairbanks wrote that he knew no one in a lead in the movie was Arab at all.

“After all, I was not exactly a typical Arab any more than Walter Slezak was even remotely (with his taped-up blue eyes) Oriental.”

 And I guess none of them really saw a problem with that. Sigh.

Anyhow…if you want to watch this movie simply to see how much you can cringe in 1 hr and 57 min (I felt like this movie would never end and fast forwarded a couple of times to get there), I would recommend it.

Holy eyeliner, Batman!
Have you been playing with your mother’s curtains again, Douglas? Don’t lie…

I am hoping my next choice, The Rise of Catherine The Great (1934), is a bit better. It is streaming for free on YouTube. At least in the United States.

After that I am watching  The Sun Never Sets (1939). It is available for free on PBS and I also found it here: https://archive.org/details/sun.-never.-sets.-1939

You can find my impressions of previous movies in the series, as well as other classic movies here: https://lisahoweler.com/movie-reviews-impressions/

Classic movie impressions: The Stranger (1946)

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn classic movie impressions, everyday musings, Movie Impresssions9 Comments

A few weeks ago, my husband suggested we watch an Orson Welles movie. Since I’ve liked other movies by and starring Orson, I agreed to it.

The Stranger was released in 1946 and tells the story of a war crimes investigator who tracks a high-ranking Nazi fugitive to a small Connecticut town.

Welles both directed and co-wrote the film but was uncredited for the writing, which was most likely part of the many concessions he made for the opportunity to direct it. This is a movie that some call his most conventional. It’s also one he wasn’t as fond of because so many changes were made to the final cut without his consultation.

The movie stars Welles, Edward G. Robinson, and Loretta Young.

The creepy undertone throughout the entire movie left me always waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Nazi fugitive, Franz Kindler (Welles), has done his best to assimilate into American society. He’s even about to marry the daughter of a justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.

Edward G. Robinson, playing war crimes investigator Mr. Wilson, follows one of the recently released followers of Kindler to the town, hoping he’ll lead him to Kindler. The man suddenly disappears though, and Wilson is certain he’s been murdered by Kindler, but still doesn’t know who Kindler actually is. Only that he is somewhere in the town.

We the viewer, know all along what happened to the man and who made it  It happens about 15 minutes into the movie, but Robinson has to spend much of the movie trying to figure it out and once he does figure it out, he spends the rest of the movie trying to make Kindler admit who he really is. The only thing Robinson’s character really knows when he comes to the town is that Kindler had an almost unhealth obsession with old clocks.

It’s a fantastic, stressful game of cat and mouse that had me literally biting my nails part of the time.

The music of the movie is very interesting – mixing in a creepy violin-based humming, with happier melodies to try to show the contrast between an innocent, happy world being infiltrated by pure evil.

It always amazes me how quickly movies were made back then. Filming for this movie took place from September to November of 1945 and was released July 2, 1946.

Originally the film was going to be directed by John Husten, but he entered the military and Welles begged producer Sam Spiegel (also called S.P. Eagle at the time) to let him direct the film. Spiegel agreed as long as Welles agreed to several concessions and to be let go as director if he stepped out of those perimeters. Welles would still have to continue on as the lead actor, even if he was let go as director, however.  

Welles agreed. He needed the job if he wanted to continue in Hollywood. Five years earlier Welles had been essentially backlisted with the release of Citizen Kane, which won 9 Academy Awards, including Best Director, Best Movie, and Best Actor for Welles. This should have made Welles a sought-after director and actor. Citizen Kane was based on the life of one of the most powerful men in the world at the time — William Randolph Hearst, a newspaper publisher and owner — though and Hearst wasn’t happy. In fact, he was furious. He made life very difficult for Welles and anyone else associated with the making of the movie, which is now considered the greatest movie all time thanks to its innovative filmmaking techniques, complex story, and influential impact on cinema history.

“In September 1945 Welles and his wife Rita Hayworth signed a guarantee that Welles would owe International Pictures any of his earnings, from any source, above $50,000 a year if he did not meet his contractual obligations,” an article on Wikipedia states. “He also agreed to defer to the studio in any creative dispute.”

This became a challenge when Editor Ernest J. Nims was given the power to cut any material he considered extraneous from the script before shooting began.

“He was the great supercutter,” Welles said, “who believed that nothing should be in a movie that did not advance the story. And since most of the good stuff in my movies doesn’t advance the story at all, you can imagine what a nemesis he was to me.”

Reading about all the cuts that were made from the script, and the final product helps me to understand why this movie feels so choppy at times. It feels like elements that would have helped to explain some of the plot better are missing.

What is really missing is building up Welles’ character and helping the viewer get to know who he is. As I read online, I found out that there were scenes removed from the beginning of the movie that would have given us more character development for Welles’ character.

I feel like Nims really overdid things and should probably be ashamed of chopping up Welles’ work.

I also thought that it was interesting that Welles wanted a female actress to portray the investigator.

“I thought it would be much more interesting to have a spinster lady on the heels of this Nazi,” Welles said. 

Welles would later say in interviews that nothing of The Stranger was his in the end. Biographer Frank Brady disagrees, “Welles has said, since the making of The Stranger—which he completed one day before schedule and under budget—that nothing in the film was his, this despite the fact that the unmistakable Wellesian moods, shadows, acute angles, and depth-of-focus shots are pervasive. Within the film is a second film, another Wellesian touch, consisting of snatches of documentary footage showing Nazi atrocities.”

One unique aspect of The Stranger is that it was the first commercial film to use documentary footage from the Nazi concentration camps.

Welles viewed Nazi Concentration Camps (1945), a film used as evidence in the Nuremberg Trials in early May 1945 as a correspondent and discussion moderator at the United Nations Conference on International Organization

One thing I didn’t remember until reading about it this week was that in the 1940s, many in the world simply couldn’t accept that the concentration camps were real.

Welles wrote about the footage in a column for the New York Post:

“No, you must not miss the newsreels. They make a point this week no man can miss: The war has strewn the world with corpses, none of them very nice to look at. The thought of death is never pretty but the newsreels testify to the fact of quite another sort of death, quite another level of decay. This is a putrefaction of the soul, a perfect spiritual garbage. For some years now we have been calling it Fascism. The stench is unendurable.”

Though the studio did not think The Stranger would be a success, it actually was and right out of the gate too. It cost $1 million to make and earned $2.25 million in U.S. rentals in its first six months. Fifteen months later had grossed $3.2 million.

I very much enjoyed the film, but I do wish that Kindler’s German accent would have come back as soon as his cover was blown. Having him keep the American accent he’s been using to keep his cover, even when under pressure, seemed unrealistic to me.

Despite that small issue, Welles is so deliciously evil in this. His excuses for his crimes against humanity were presented with a lecherous smile that sent shivers down my spine. The tension throughout the film is extreme. I never knew when Kindler would finally snap and reveal himself or worse — kill someone to keep his identity secret.

I found this one on YouTube for free, but it is also streaming in better quality on several streaming sites, including Amazon Prime.

Have you ever watched this one? What did you think?

Top Ten Tuesday: 10 books I never reviewed on my blog or social media

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn books and reading, top-ten-tuesday17 Comments

|| Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. ||

Today’s prompt is: 10 Books I Never Reviewed (Share the titles of books you never reviewed on your blog/tiktok/insta/etc. and if you liked them or not!)

This one was hard for me because I have actually reviewed most of the books I have read in the last two years. I had to search hard for those I had not reviewed in some fashion

  1. Anne’s House of Dreams by LM Montgomery.  – didn’t review and didn’t enjoy as much as other Anne books

2. The Saturdays by Elizabeth Enright — Loved this middle grade book but did not get around to reviewing it.

3. The Burning Issue of The Day (A Lady Hardcastle Mystery) by T.E. Kinsey – I liked this one okay but wasn’t really doing a lot of reviews at this time (2023) and didn’t like it as much as other books in the series.

4. The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien – really liked it but for some reason never reviewed in on my blog or social media

5. An Amish Inn Mystery: Murder Well Played by Rachel O’Phillips – I like this book. I have no idea why I never reviewed it.

6. A Highland Christmas (A Hamish Macbeth Mystery) by M.C. Beaton – I don’t remember ever writing a review for this book. I liked it okay. It was very cozy, but I don’t know if I am a huge fan of Beaton’s writing.

7. Sarah, Plain and Tall by Sarah MacLachlan — I very much enjoyed the middle grade book but for some reason never reviewed it.

8. The Darling Buds of May by H.E. Bates — This book was super weird and full of possible references to incestual attraction. That’s all I gotta say about that one.

9. Death Without Company (A Walt Longmire Mystery) by Craig Johnson — I enjoy this series but rarely write book reviews for them. I am not sure why.

10. At Home In Mitford by Jan Karon — Despite being one of my favorite books and book series, I have never shared a review of this book on my blog or social media, that I can remember anyhow.

A bonus: And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie. Read it. Liked it. Never reviewed it and I don’t know why.

How about you? What books have you never reviewed? Maybe you are a reader who doesn’t even do reviews and that’s totally fine too. This list shows that I really don’t review every book. I do have fun writing reviews and telling other readers about the books I read though.

Sunday Bookends: More cold weather and switching back and forth between books

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn everyday musings, Sunday Bookends18 Comments

It’s time for our Sunday morning chat. On Sundays, I ramble about what’s been going on, what the rest of the family and I have been reading and watching, and what I’ve been writing. Some weeks I share what I am listening to.

The weather is so cold in our area that we are doing our best to conserve heating oil by dressing in layers, wrapping ourselves in blankets, and using microwavable rice packs to warm our feet and laps. This might sound dystopian to some, but I have actually been having fun with it and enjoying my little blanket nests and my warm rice packs. Check back after our planned arctic cold snap this week and see if I still see this all as an adventure. Of course, my attitude will also plan on whether or not I need to go out in the cold on any of the days that the weather is supposed to be so cold.

I talked a little about what else has been going on in our world in my Saturday Afternoon Chat yesterday.

I’ve been switching between The Tuesday Night Club (Miss Marple) by Agatha Christie and Every Living Thing by James Herriot.

I read Miss Marple during the day, usually, and James Herriot right before bed.

I am enjoying them both, but Herriot’s a bit better. Both are a collection of short stories with some connections, such as characters. I am not a huge fan of Christie’s writing style at times and this format, which involves people sitting around and telling each other stories, is a bit dry to me. The stories are good but it does get repetitive for every story to feature someone telling a story they supposedly don’t have an ending to, Miss Marple to solve the case, and then the person telling the story to go, “Actually, I do know what really happened. Let me tell you.”

It’s all a bit tedious but there are some humorous moments and quotes from Miss Marple so I am pushing through.

I also just started Nancy Drew: The Sign of the Twisted Candles by Carolyn Keene.

I am itching for a good novel after these two, which I will finish this week, so I am planning to start A Fatal Footnote by Margaret Loudon, which is a cozy mystery.

I am listening to Frankenstein while doing my dishes.

Little Miss and I are also reading Sign of the Beaver by Elizabeth George Speare.

She is reading (here and there) Harry Potter: Prisoner of Azkaban.

The Husband is reading Starter Villain by John Scalzi.

This past week The Husband and I watched the first part of Going Postal on Peacock. I watched a lot of Victorian Farm and more All Creatures Great And Small (even going back to the beginning for fun).

I also watched Angels Over Broadway from 1940.

Last week on the blog I shared:

Now It’s Your Turn!

Now it’s your turn. What have you been doing, watching, reading, listening to or writing? Let me know in the comments or leave a blog post link if you also write a weekly update like this.

This post is linked up with The Sunday Post at  Kimba at Caffeinated Reviewer, The Sunday Salon with Deb at Readerbuzz, and Book Date: It’s Monday! What are you reading hosted by Kathyrn at The Book Date.

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In addition to my blog, I write fiction, and you can learn more about my books here: https://lisahoweler.com/my-books-2/


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Saturday Afternoon Chat: Small town newspapers and small town vets

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn Saturday Afternoon Tea10 Comments

Tuesday morning, I watched my neighbor drive by my house and less than two minutes later drive back again.

He and his wife run our little county newspaper and Tuesdays are their publication day.

In a few minutes, he came back again with his white newspaper van (which we jokingly call the kidnapper van). I’m not sure if he forgot it was the day to pick up and distribute the newspapers or what, but it was somewhat funny to watch.

Their little newspaper, by the way, is not who my husband works for. Their paper is more like a community announcement paper, with little to no hard-hitting news and not even names on most of the stories. It is a beloved staple in the community because of its simple presentation and has been around for probably 100 years. My neighbor’s dad and mom owned the paper before him.  His dad, Tom “Doc” Shoemaker was also the local vet and a wonderful man, as far as I know. I based a side character in my latest book on him.

In the book I share how the vet checks over Gladwynn and Lucinda’s cat and I drew on an actual experience we had with Doc Shoemaker when I was a child. My dad and I had taken one of our cats to see Doc Shoemaker because we had noticed blood in the snow when he went to the bathroom (I think that was the incident anyhow) and Doc wasn’t exactly rough, but he wasn’t exactly soothing either. He did speak to our cat — Zorro — in a fairly soothing tone but then he abruptly and quickly yanked Zorro’s tail up and inserted an old-fashioned thermometer right where the sun don’t shine.

Another time we took our pet dog to him, and he had to pull needles from a porcupine out of her snout. Poor, pup.

I have book here that Doc’s family self published and I really want to sit down and read it this spring. I think it will be a nice follow up the James Herriot book I am currently reading.

Poor cat. It was necessary though because it helped to determine that he had a UTI and needed antibiotics. Poor Zorro had bladder problems for the rest of his life, but lived until he was around 20-years-old. Longevity must be something which occurs with black cats because The Husband and I also had a black cat and she lived until she was 19.

She was so old that when we took her in at 17 the vet (not Doc Shoemaker because we were living an hour from where he had once practiced and because he was retired) asked if we had named another cat Squeek.

 Squeek was my husband’s cat and I said, ‘no’ that this was the cat he’d brought in some 15 years before after rescuing her on the street. The vet tech was shocked. Even more shocked, I’m sure, when we had to bring her in two years later to have her put to sleep after she had a stroke and could no longer walk.

As I write this I have a cat and a dog staring at me from my bed.

They are not staring at me because they want me to go to bed. They are staring at me because they want me to give them a sample of coconut oil. I don’t know why but they both love coconut oil. The only coconut oil brand they seem to like though is Better Body Foods.

One time I picked up some organic coconut oil from Aldi and they wouldn’t even look at it. They literally walked away. This makes me wonder what the difference between the two coconut oils is.

So yesterday we went grocery shopping in the store for the first time in probably a year. We did this because I had tried to place an order with Instacart to Aldi for pick up but was told I could not have my order at the time I had chosen. Instead, I could have it at some point but they had no idea when. That didn’t work for me since I had other things I wanted to accomplish today and didn’t want to simply wait at home for them to tell me when I could come get my order. I have to drive 30-minutes to get to an Aldi, or any large store, so I needed an actual time.

This was all even more irritating because something similar happened last week when we were supposed to pick up our groceries at 5 on Friday, but two hours before they sent me an email and said my pickup time had been moved to the next day.

That wasn’t convenient for us at all but there was no way to contact anyone and even Instacart didn’t help because when I did a chat with them via text on their app, they said they would move the time and did. It was changed right back, however, by the staff at our local Aldi (I guess) so we had to get it on Saturday.

The reason we do pickup is because I have a couple of weird health issues where some days I feel well and other days I deal with a lightheaded and weak feeling when I do something like shop at a grocery store. No idea what it is, other than being overweight, having hypothyroidism, and getting a bit old. A friend would like me to be checked for POTS, as I do have some symptoms of that, but I have not yet asked a doctor about it. Hopefully in March.

Plus, pick up keeps us from buying extra things we don’t need and it is simply faster. I did find today, though, that there seemed to be more options available in the store than on the Instacart app.

I am not sure what we will do about pickup next week now that we’ve had two weeks of Instacart issues.

The nice thing about yesterday, though, was that The Boy, my 18-year-old son, offered to do the shopping for me. In addition to my weird health issue, I’ve also been dealing with a very sore knee (or muscle by the knee really). Luckily it is so much better but a lot of walking isn’t yet in the cards. In The Boy and Little Miss did the shopping and I helped some by walking around the store some, but not all the way around.

Little Miss has always loved helping to shop and has been very disappointed that we haven’t been able to do it lately.  She even likes riding with me to get the pickup. It’s our mother-daughter time and we listen to audiobooks on the way. The Husband or my dad have been picking up our orders lately because we are currently down to one vehicle. I’m grateful we’ve been able to do the pickup as long as we have and hope that we can continue to do so.

Today we are supposed to get a freezing rain/snow mix, so we don’t have plans to go anywhere. I am sipping a cup of peppermint tea with honey and hope to spend most of the day reading.

Tomorrow we will be visiting my parents for a late Valentine’s Day lunch.

The upcoming week is going to be very, very cold so we probably won’t be going out much but I would really love to get to the local library at least one day. I am hoping that maybe Dad will need to take a trip out here to our tiny town for something and can give us a ride. I would love to be able to walk downtown to the library but…the aforementioned knee issue and right now absolutely freezing cold.

How was your week this past week? Did you do anything exciting? Or did you simply have a nice, relaxing week?

Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot. Come link up with us!

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn Weekend Traffic Jam6 Comments

Welcome to the Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot where we offer a place for bloggers to link up and get a fresh set of eyes on their posts. We also feature one blog a week, letting our readers know about the blog and providing a link so readers can learn more about them.

Look for the post to go live about 9:30 PM EST on Thursdays.

I hope that you will look through the links and click on some and find a new blogger or two to follow. First, I’ll introduce you to our hosts:

Marsha from Marsha in the Middle started blogging in 2021 as an exercise in increasing her neuroplasticity.  Oh, who are we kidding?  Marsha started blogging because she loves clothes, and she loves to talk or, in this case, write!  

Melynda from Scratch Made Food! & DIY Homemade Household  – The name says it all, we homestead in East Texas, with three generations sharing this land. I cook and bake from scratch, between gardening and running after the chickens, and knitting! 

Lisa from Boondock Ramblings shares about the fiction she writes and reads, her faith, homeschooling, photography and more. 

Sue from Women Living Well After 50 started blogging in 2015 and writes about living an active and healthy lifestyle, fashion, book reviews and her podcast and enjoying life as a woman over 50.  She invites you to join her living life in full bloom.


We would love to have additional Co-Hosts to share in the creativity and fun! If you think this would be a good fit for you and you like having fun (come on, who doesn’t!) while still being creative, drop one of us an email and someone will get back with you!

WTJR will be highlighting a different blogger each week this year! We invite you to stop by their blog, take a look around and say hello! This week we are spotlighting Nancy’s Fashion Style! https://nancysfashionstyle.com/

Thank you for linking up to Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot, Nancy!

Here are a few of my highlights for the week:

|| How To Make World’s Easiest Electrolyte Drink by Scratch Made Food for Hungry People ||

|| Jewelry: material – end pieces and dividers  by Moo Is Van Me ||

|| Five Valentine Activities Littles Will Love by Our Grand Lives ||

Thank you so much for joining us for our link-up! Please remember that this is a link-up where you can share posts from the previous week or posts from weeks, months, or years ago. All we ask is that they be “family-friendly”.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

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Classic Movie Impressions: Winter of Fairbanks Jr., Angels Over Broadway

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn classic movie impressions, Movie Impresssions, Winter of Fairbanks Jr.5 Comments

This winter I am watching movies starring Douglas Fairbanks Jr.

I had to switch movies for this week’s Winter of Fairbanks Jr. because I couldn’t find Chase a Crooked Shadow. Instead I chose Angels Over Broadway, which I found on YouTube.

It was a simple movie with a very sweet ending. It definitely had some plot holes and some vague back stories and some not great reviews online but I found it endearing.

Douglas (remember we are on a first-name basis now) plays a down-on-his-luck con man named Bill O’Brien who thinks he has found his way to fortune when he sees a man named Charles Engle (John Qualen) blowing cash left and right at a night club.

The issue is that Engle really isn’t loaded at all. He stole $3,000 from his business partner to make his wife happy and then his wife took the money to leave with another man.

Engle’s been confronted by his business partner and is ready to kill himself. Now he is spending one last night on the town before he ends it all.

Rita Hayworth is a lounge singer named Nina Barona who spots Engle and wonders if he might be a producer or director who can help her become famous.

O’Brien sees her and wonders if she might be someone that he can pull into one of his schemes. Also, you can tell he likes the look of her, if you know what I mean. *wink* *wink*

So, yes, we have a group of scammers ready to scam each other. O’Brien sees in Engle a quick buck because he’s going to talk him into going to an illegal poker game and throwing away some of his money and then getting a cut of whatever is taken from him. O’Brien’s main source of income is leading rich men to notorious gangster Dutch Enright (Ralph Theodore). Dutch then cheats them out of a fortune and gives Bill a cut of the profits for luring them in.

Thomas Mitchell portrays playwright Gene Gibbons (Thomas Mitchell….also known as Uncle Billy in It’s A Wonderful Life) whose last play fell on its face.

He’s intoxicated and handed the wrong coat when he goes to collect his. Its Engle’s coat and in the pocket is the suicide letter Engle has written for his partner and estranged wife to find after his death.

Gibbons reads the letter and asks who it belongs to. He doesn’t like the idea of someone killing themselves and tracks Engle down to try to talk him out of it.

Gibbons reveals himself to Engle to be a womanizer, adulterer, and a failure at success. He tells Engle he doesn’t want him to miss out on all the beautiful things in life so he decides to  help Engle get the $3,000 back. His plan to do that fails so in walks O’Brien, who learns Engle doesn’t actually have any money. Nina thinks this is hilarious and blurts out the scheme O’Brien tried to pull her into.

O’Brien is a bit ticked at her move to blather about the plan but Gibbons believes they can still pull the plan off by pretending Engle is rich.

Scam a gangster? Eek. O’Brien doesn’t like the idea but if Engle can win more than $3,000 in the game then O’Brien can take whatever is left.

The bulk of the movie is watching three people try to play each other or others to benefit themselves and then later having to decide if this is the person they really want to be.

Douglas is a bit of a jerk and a softy in this one. He does,  however, rescue Nina from a predatory man when she tries to use the man to get to an opportunity to make her famous. He also shows he’s not all about himself later in the movie.

I wasn’t sure what to make of his thick New York City accent in this one. All I know is that I kept talking like him for the rest of the night, including asking my kids, “Eh, you ready for dinner or what? You need me to wait to get dinner on the plates or do ya’ wants me to bring it to  you while it’s still warm?”

My children didn’t find any of this amusing, by the way.

Hayworth got the role after Jean Arthur turned it down and it was her first “A” list film. As we all know, she flew to fame after this by becoming a heartthrob of the 1940s and a pin-up girl during World War II.

Before this movie she was in 35 different movies starting in 1926, but in most of those movies she portrayed secondary characters.

Angels Over Broadway was directed by Ben Hecht and co-produced by Douglas, who convinced Harry Cohn, head of Columbia Pictures, to finance the rest.

“Cohn couldn’t figure out what the picture was about but neither could we,” Fairbanks was later quoted as saying about the film.

Samantha Richards from Musings of A Classic Film Addict writes on her blog, “The plot and theme are clear to audiences today, as the screenplay, which earned iconic screenwriter Ben Hecht an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay for 1940, has since been regarded as far ahead of its time by critics. I find it difficult to understand why this film isn’t universally recognized that way that I see it: as a strong and riveting drama that blends the realism of New York City life, with a touch of fantasy and the idealism that maybe good guys can sometimes win in the end. To answer my own question, Rita Hayworth is miles apart from the calculated femme fatale image that she would later be known for, with a mousey voice and a doe-eyed look that would make even diehard fans of hers puzzled.”

Richardson continues, “Each performance in Angels Over Broadway (1940) is spot on and impeccably cast, made up of wildly underappreciated actors like Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. and Thomas Mitchell, both of whom rank highly in my book. Jean Arthur could never have portrayed a role like Nina Barona, but I also doubt that even Rita herself could have pulled this part off after being transformed by the Hollywood machine after this film’s release.”

I feel Douglas was very good in this, but in some ways Mitchell stole the show as the intoxicated, and later repentant and sober, Gibbons. He seems to play drunk fellows well. I hope that wasn’t because he knew a lot about it in real life.

It did hit me as I was watching the movie that Douglas always has a small mustache, no matter what movie he is in — other than one of his first movies, The Power of the Press.

There isn’t a ton of information about this movie online, so you won’t have to read through paragraphs of history, behind the scenes stories, or trivia today.

I do have a couple tidbits of trivia I read on Imdb, including:

“The tagline on the original movie poster – “A HECTIC ROMANCE TO BLOW THE FUSES OUT ALONG MAZDA LANE” – refers to the Broadway theater district in New York City as “Mazda Lane.” Mazda was a brand of light bulbs common in the first half of the 20th century, with a name referencing an ancient Persian god of light and good. Broadway was and is known for its brightly lit marquees, and had many nicknames in its heyday.”

And:

“The working title for this film was Before I Die.”

So, there is one line from Douglas in this movie that made me swoon a bit. I’ve gone to the trouble of clipping it for you to share here and it was a bit of an ordeal to do so I hope you appreciate it. *wink* Let me know if you figure out what the line is.



I would guess that many of you have not seen this movie but if you have, what did you think?

I found this for free one on YouTube, by the way.

Up next for me in my Winter of Fairbanks Jr. marathon is Sinbad The Sailor (1947) and I did make sure this one is streaming somewhere.

After that I am watching The Rise of Catherine the Great and writing about it February 27. It is also streaming.

My last pick, The Sun Never Sets, 1939, is available for free on PBS and I also found it here: https://archive.org/details/sun.-never.-sets.-1939

You can find my impressions of previous movies in the series, as well as other classic movies here: https://lisahoweler.com/movie-reviews-impressions/

Book Review: Christy by Catherine Marshall

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn book reviews, books and reading, everyday musings6 Comments

Christy by Catherine Marshall is a very dense book. It is full of life lessons weaved between poetic prose and hard realities of life in the Smoky Mountains in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Following the story of fictional 19-year-old Christy Huddleston, the book is fiction but based, very loosely, on the real-life experience of Marshall’s mother, Leonora Whitaker Wood.

The CBS series, Christy, starring Kellie Martin, and a couple of made-for-TV movies were based on the book. I watched the show in the 1990s but had never read the book. I didn’t even know the TV-movies existed until I was doing research for this post.

In both the show and the book, Christy travels to a small mission in the mountains of Tennessee from her home in Ashville, North Carolina to teach in a school full of mountain children who have very little material items but a lot of heart and heartache.

The small area where these children and their families are from is called Cutter Gap. The fictional area isn’t really a town since it is only a collection of cabins scattered across the mountains and through the woods, but there is a fiction town called El Pano, located near it. The families in Cutter Gap are poor, uneducated, and fighting for their lives against disease and judgment.

Christy arrives at the mission after listening to the mission founder speak about it and begins her work with Miss Alice Henderson, a Quaker woman, and Pastor David Grantland, a minister who has been assigned to the school.

Once she arrives she meets other colorful members of the community — Dr. Neil McNeil, resident Ruby Mae, and resident Fairlight Spencer (who becomes her best friend), as well as other colorful (shall we say) characters. She also begins to learn more about the history of the area, the hardships they have faced since the 1700s, and the way some of the men feel they have to take a criminal route in life to scrape out a living.

There is a lot of beauty mixed in with some very ugly tales within the 500 pages of Christy. I marked up a lot of the book to remember parts of it later. Even though I found parts of the faith message of the book contradictory and a little confusing at times, there were many parts that were extremely thought-provoking and moving to me.

Most of what I underlined in the book were quotes by Miss Alice, who was my favorite character in the book besides Fairlight Spencer. In the beginning of the book, I found it hard to connect Christy who was very hard-headed and brash at times. She came to the mission with head knowledge of God but not heart knowledge of him.

I couldn’t stand David Grantland through most of the book and wasn’t sure what to make of Neil McNeil.

I wanted to shake Christy a couple of times throughout the book and tell her not to rush into dangerous situations. Toward the end of the book, though, when she truly struggled with the faith that she had only really found since working at the mission, I related to her immensely. So much of what happened to the people she’d come to love in Cutter Gap seemed so cruel to me. Even though the book was fiction, I found myself questioning the goodness of God, thinking about some similar cruel situations of those I’ve known over the years. It’s something I had to sit and wrestle with mental and spiritually in the moments, hours, and days after finishing the book. In many ways I am still struggling with these questions about God and the goodness I sometimes don’t see.

Some of the sections I underlined in the book included:

“Evil is real – and powerful. It has to be fought, not explained away, not fled. And God is against evil all the way. So each of us has to decide where WE stand, how we’re going to live OUR lives. We can try to persuade ourselves that evil doesn’t exist; live for ourselves and wink at evil. We can say that it isn’t so bad after all, maybe even try to call it fun by clothing it in silks and velvets. We can compromise with it, keep quiet about it and say it’s none of our business. Or we can work on God’s side, listen for His orders on strategy against the evil, no matter how horrible it is, and know that He can transform it.”

“What do you do when strength is called for and you have no strength? You evoke a power beyond your own and use stamina you did not know you had. You open your eyes in the morning grateful that you can see the sunlight of yet another day. You draw yourself to the edge of the bed and then put one foot in front of the other and keep going. You weep with those who gently close the eyes of the dead, and somehow, from the salt of your tears, comes endurance for them and for you. You pour out that resurgence to minister to the living.”

“I’d long since learned that no difference in viewpoint should ever be allowed to cause the least break in love. Indeed, it cannot, if it’s real love.
…But relationships can be kept intact without compromising one’s own beliefs. And if we do not keep them intact, but give up and allow the chasm, we’re breaking the second greatest commandment.”

“The secret of her calm seemed to be that she was not trying to prove anything. She was—that was all. And her stance toward life seemed to say: God is—and that is enough.”

This was one of the few books I’ve read that I became completely immersed in when I read it. Everything around me disappeared – the language and descriptions were so vivid. I could see the mountains, picture the cabins and the people, and sometimes even smell, sadly, the smells.

It took me a little over a month to read through the book because it was so dense. I felt like I really got to know the characters that way and this was both a good and a bad thing.

It was a bad thing because, toward the end, some of the events hit me so hard and left me on my couch on a cold Sunday afternoon with a warm fire in our woodstove burning and me crying until my sides hurt.

I like to be immersed in books but at that moment I thought that maybe I wouldn’t like to be so immersed if it was going to be this painful to continue to read on.

I won’t give away too much but there was a death in the book that I could not make sense of in the least. Much of the book seemed to want the reader to see that there was hope still available, even in the midst of darkness, anger, and sadness, but when we had almost reached the end it was like that message was yanked out from under us with such a ferociousness that it made my head spin.

When I was reading the book, I was thinking, “Wow. There are so many deep messages about our relationship with God in this book” but then I was like, “But there were some really theological muddy waters in this book and I’m not sure how I feel about that.”

There was a lot of talk about superstitions and instead of dispelling them by saying God is in control, there were times the characters tried to explain it away by science or simply telling the mountain people that their beliefs were faulty. There is little to no mention of Jesus in this book. Yet this book is marketed as a great Christian book. That confuses me a little. Still, the story, overall, was very compelling, interesting, and realistic (maybe a bit too realistic).

I saw a review of this after I read it that tagged the book as being “heartfelt” and “family-friendly.”

The book was NOT family-friendly. There are discussions of rape, abuse, murder, molestation, and many other disturbing and triggering topics. There are not, however, extremely graphic descriptions of these subjects.

There are times this book seems to push that there is truth in superstition, even though, I’m sure that’s not what the author, a well-known Christian author, meant to do.

In the end, Christy was a painfully beautiful book that wrung me out emotionally. It challenged my thinking, built me up, tore me down again, and left me with a glimmer of hope that Christy and the people of Cutter Gap found some joy and happiness beyond the time frame addressed within the book’s pages.

I would be remiss if I did not mention that the ending of this book is very open-ended and, to me, somewhat abrupt. It does not answer all of the reader’s questions. Or it didn’t answer some of my questions at least. It left me with a bit of mystery and with a strong desire for a sequel.

According to more than one article online, notes for a sequel to the book were discovered in Catherine Marshall’s things after her death by her family. Those notes have never been revealed, however. Part of me would love to know what happened to Christy after the events at the end of the book (which were wrapped up a bit too quickly for me), but part of me agrees with the blogger of Taking Up Room who wrote, “Christy ending on a question mark has never failed to get my brain thinking, even after dozens of times of reading the book. In a way, it means the story never really ends. Adding more might just spoil whatever ending fans have come to in their own minds, and that’s no fun. I say keep the mystery.”

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In addition to my blog, I write fiction, and you can learn more about my books here: https://lisahoweler.com/my-books-2/

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Sunday Bookends: He wasn’t even listening and already a DNF book

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn everyday musings31 Comments



It’s time for our Sunday morning chat. On Sundays, I ramble about what’s been going on, what the rest of the family and I have been reading and watching, and what I’ve been writing. Some weeks I share what I am listening to.


The other day I became overwhelmed with worry that I have failed my son, the high school senior. Like maybe I didn’t teach him enough or well enough during our six years of homeschooling. The last two years have been tough. He’s had senioritis both of those years. He’s so ready to be done with high school. Getting him to do his schoolwork has been torture.

I went to him a couple of nights ago while he was preparing his dinner plate and felt very overcome with emotions. I apologized to him and told him I hoped I had taught him what he needed for the future.  I told him that I did my best but sometimes it was hard when he didn’t seem interested in learning so I would try to back off and let  him explore the subjects he was really interested in. Maybe that was the wrong thing to do, I told him. Maybe I should have been  more strict or —

I looked at him and my kid has this dumb grin on his face.

I’m practically crying and he’s grinning at me? What’s this about?

He’s not really looking at me either. So —

He laughs this really stupid laugh , looks up at me, and his smile fades. “What?” he asks. “What’s going on? Why do you look like you’re going to cry?”

That’s when I remember that my son’s long hair covers his ears and in his ears are probably  . . . Yes. Earbuds.

He’s been listening to a podcast the entire time and didn’t hear even one part of my lamenting speech.

“Were you saying something serious?” he asks. “What happened?”

I fill him in briefly and he laughs another stupid laugh and sas, “I was totally not listening at all.”

Apparently he isn’t really concerned that I might have screwed up as a parent so I suppose I shouldn’t be either.

I told him not to worry about it and walked back into the living room shaking my head. Sheehs. Kids. *wink*

Did I write last week that I decided not to finish The Definitive Oral Biography of Anthony Bourdain? I could go back and look, I suppose, or I could just run the risk of repeating it. I’ll run the risk.

So, yes, I DNF’d that book on Anthony Bourdain. I was terribly bored and a few chapters in I realized that reading broken up tidbits of people’s memories of Anthony wasn’t very interesting. There really wasn’t a story to the book. It was more like random memories and thoughts and interviews just tossed together in written form. If it had been filmed and I had been watching it, I might have been a little more interested, but this simply did not hold my attention.

I did enjoy reading Kitchen Confidential by Anthony himself — even though I didn’t enjoy aspects of it (how many times did he need to share the crude nicknames he had for his co-workers or how many times he shot up or snorted something before going to work on the line at well-known restaurants?). I did not enjoy reading how others met him or what interactions they had with him as much.

Anyhow, moving on to my current reads. I am reading The Tuesday Night Club, a series of short stories with Miss Marple, by Agatha Christie.

I also decided I needed something sweet and light one night this past week and got caught up in Every Living Thing by James Herriot, so I am also reading that. I absolutely love the sweet and interesting stories in his books but this one, where he is now older with children, is especially endearing.

I am listening to Frankenstein but I keep getting distracted so I may switch to actually reading it. I do enjoy Dan Stevens narration.

Little Miss is getting close to the end of Harry Potter: The Prisoner of Azkaban.

The Boy is listening to Frankenstein. Okay, he isn’t, but he will be soon because even though I am “making” him do it for school he does actually want to read it.

This week I watched The Exile with Douglas Fairbanks Jr., The Victorian Farm, All Creatures Great and Small, and a couple episodes of The Dick VanDyke Show.

Up next in my Winter of Fairbanks Jr. movie marathon was supposed to be Chase a Crooked Shadow but I can’t find it streaming anywhere. I did find it on DVD and do plan to order it because it looks good from the trailer I found. Anyhow, I am switching to Angels Over Broadway, which I found on YouTube, for this week.

I really swear I checked some of these before I put them on the list and I swear that they were streaming but now they are not. I will update any of the movies I can’t find streaming in my Winter of Fairbanks Jr. post this week.

So far it looks like the rest are on Amazon, Hulu, or other streaming services.

I found the Sun Never Sets here: https://archive.org/details/sun.-never.-sets.-1939

I guess Fairbanks Jr. wasn’t in a ton of super popular movies because they are not easy to find.

Gladwynn Grant Shakes the Family Tree is out on Amazon and Barnes and Noble: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DW1VCWDD

Last week on the blog I shared:

I am listening to Frankenstein, narrated by Dan Stevens, but I have a hard time focusing on it so we will see how that goes. I may have to switch back to the book again.

Now it’s your turn. What have you been doing, watching, reading, listening to or writing? Let me know in the comments or leave a blog post link if you also write a weekly update like this.

This post is linked up with The Sunday Post at  Kimba at Caffeinated Reviewer, Stacking the Shelves with Reading Reality, The Sunday Salon with Deb at Readerbuzz, and Book Date: It’s Monday! What are you reading hosted by Kathyrn at The Book Date.