film

Winter of Cagney: Yankee Doodle Dandy

/ Lisa R. Howeler / 6 Comments

For winter this year, I am watching James Cagney movies.

First up is Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942) which Cagney won an Oscar for.

This is a biopic about the entertainer George Cohan. Actually, though, he was more than just an entertainer. Under that umbrella, he was a playwright, lyricist, actor, singer, dancer, and theatrical producer.

Don’t think you know who Cohan is?

Well, if you’ve ever heard the songs “You’re A Grand Old Flag”, “Over There”, “Yankee Doodle Dandy Boy,” or “Give My Regards to Broadway,” then you have heard some of George’s work.

Yankee Doodle Dandy is his story, but . . . with some poetic license from what I’ve been reading. Cohan comes out looking a bit better than he might have been in real life, considering his first wife divorced him for adultery and that mysteriously didn’t make the movie. The movie did portray him as a bit of an arrogant kid who pushed his way to stardom, so he wasn’t portrayed as totally perfect, however. Plus, Cohan had the final say on the movie so maybe that’s why he looked a bit better in the movie. *wink*

Cohan was born July 3, 1878 according to baptismal records but according to him and his parents, he was born on the Fourth of July. This “fact” would be used throughout his career as he asserted his bold patriotism for the United States of America.

“I’m a Yankee Doodle Dandy
A Yankee Doodle, do or die
A real live nephew of my Uncle Sam
Born on the Fourth of July
I’ve got a Yankee Doodle sweetheart
She’s my Yankee Doodle joy”

  • From the musical Little Johnny Jones

Cohan’s was an Irish immigrant named Jeremiah (Keohane) Cohan. His mother was Helen “Nellie” Costigan Cohan, and his sister was Josephine “Josie” Cohan Niblo (1876–1916). Together the four of them would form a Vaudeville act called The Four Cohans.

George began singing and playing the violin at the age of 8 and toured with his family from 1890 to 1901.

During these years, he made famous a speech at the end of their show that you might have heard over the years, or even said yourself as a joke: “My mother thanks you, my father thanks you, my sister thanks you, and I thank you.”

The Four Cohans with George on the left.

He and his sister made their Broadway debuts in 1893 in a sketch called The Lively Bootblack.

I won’t give you his entire biography here, so if you want to know even more about his life, the movie will fill you in or there is a ton of information about him online.

Many people think of James Cagney with a New York accident asking questions like, “You talking to me?” because of the many mobster-themed movies he appeared in in the 1930s. (I don’t think he actually ever said that line, though. Much like he never actually said, ‘You dirty rat! The quote was actually longer and included the words “You yellow-bellied dirty rat” in the movie Taxi, 1931.)

“There is a story that James Cagney stood on his toes while acting, believing he would project more energy that way,” Roger Ebert wrote. That sounds like a press release, but whatever he did, Cagney came across as one of the most dynamic performers in movie history–a short man with ordinary looks whose coiled tension made him the focus of every scene.”

Yankee Doodle Dandee showed there was lot more to Cagney than many moviegoers realized.

For one, Cagney could dance, which he had showcased in other movies but really was able to showcase in this movie.

Cagney could also be funny and charming — which moviegoers had seen in other movies but really saw in Yankee Doodle Dandy.  

Cagney almost didn’t get the role that he would later call his favorite, according to an article on TCM.com.

Originally Cohan and MGM had combined to make a film that would cover when Cohan had toured with his family. It would have starred Mickey Rooney. The deal collapsed because the studio head, Louis B. Mayer, refused to let Cohan have the final cut on the film.

Samuel Goldwyn then expressed an interest in making a movie with Cohan and planned on giving the role of Cohan to Fred Astaire.

Astaire turned it down, and Warner Bros. picked up the rights and cast Cagney, who at the time was being suspected of being a communist sympathizer due to being president of the Screen Actors’ Guild a — gasp! — union!

“He wanted to show his patriotism on screen,” the TCM article reads. “And the George M. Cohan story was the perfect vehicle to do that.”

Cagney broke into infamy with this movie. I am sure many of you have seen one of his most famous scenes — when he tap dances down a long flight of stairs while leaving the white house after talking to President Franklin Roosevelt. This scene, like many others in his career, was improvised by Cagney, who called it his favorite moment in the movie.

“I didn’t think of it till five minutes before I went on,” Cagney later recalled. “And I didn’t check with the director or anything; I just did it.”

Yankee Doodle Dandy was directed by Michael Curtiz (most well-known for directing Casablanca).

According to TCM and other sources online, Curtiz letting Cagney have free rein in the role is what made it such a success and made him so enamored with Cagney as an actor.

“The ordinarily hard-boiled Curtiz was so moved by the scene in which Cohan bids farewell to his dying father (Walter Huston) that he reportedly ruined a take with his loud sobs,” reads the article on TCM.com. “According to Cagney biographer Michael Freedland, tears streamed down Curtiz’s face as he stumbled away to find a handkerchief and exclaimed to Cagney, “Gott, Jeemy, that was marvelous!’”

I can speak from the experience of seeing the movie that that scene was heartbreakingly marvelous. I wasn’t super emotionally invested in the movie as I watched it, but during that scene, I teared up and failed to hold back a small sob. Maybe it’s because my parents are older, so I could relate to that scene more than I might have been able to if I had watched this when I was younger.

Critic Brenden Gill said of Cagney’s role in the film: “George M. Cohan was by all accounts something of a scoundrel. He was an impossible human being, but he was a tremendous actor, comedian, showman, and he wrote great popular songs. He exists in our memories now not as George M. Cohan but as James Cagney in the movie.”

“Cagney managed to capture this persona that Cohan created,” another critic I heard (but couldn’t find the name of) said. “It was brash. It was pushy. It was aggressive. It was funny. Very American. Very New York. And Cohan created this character as his own persona on stage, but it really became the emblem of Broadway itself.”

Cagney, according to TCM.com writer Jeremy Arnold, wanted to portray Cohan correctly, not only because Cohan — 63 at the time the movie was made —had final approval over the film, but for accuracy.

“To perfect Cohan’s distinctive, strutting style of dance,” Arnold writes. “Cagney rehearsed with choreographer John Boyle, who had worked with Cohan extensively in the 1920s. Cagney also channeled Cohan’s singing voice, which was more like rhythmic speaking, and brought his own charismatic talent to the romantic, comedic, and dramatic scenes.”

There were liberties taken with Cohan’s life, as I mentioned above. For instance, his two wives were combined into a single character. Also, the chronology and order of his parents’ death was also switched around (probably to make that death bed scene even more emotional). Additionally, in one scene when he suffers a flop with a non-musical drama called Popularity, a newspaper seller announces the torpedoing of the Lusitania. The play flopped in 1906, but the Lusitania sunk in 1915, according to TCM.

Despite these changes, most critics agree that the movie captured Cohan’s life and music perfectly.

 “Yankee Doodle Dandy, with its many flag-waving musical numbers, proved just the ticket for World War II-era audiences and became the top-grossing movie of its year, as well as Warner Bros.’ top-grossing movie to that time,” Jeremy Arnold wrote for TCM.com.

In addition to Cagney, the movie also starred Joan Leslie, Walter Huston, Richard Worf, Irene Manning, Rosemary Decamp, Jeanne Cagney (Cagney’s sister who played his sister Josie in the movie), and Eddie Foy Jr as Eddie Foy Sr.

So, a pause here. Eddie Foy Sr. was another entertainer of a similar style and also performed vaudeville with his family, The Seven Foys.

There is a movie called The Seven Little Foys (1955) starring Bob Hope as Eddie Foy Sr. and in it there is a cameo by Cagney, who portrays George M. Cohan, reprising his role from Yankee Doodle Dandy.

The two dancers face off in a very fun tap-dancing routine on a boardroom table. You can catch that here:

As for what movie watchers or critics now think of Yankee Doodle Dandy, you can find a variety of opinions online — some calling it satire to make fun of capitalism and nationalism while others say it is a disgusting display of support for capitalism and nationalism.

Some love the over-the-top patriotism and some absolutely hate it.

I guess you’ll have to make up your own mind what it promotes or represents and what it doesn’t, but what many can’t deny is the talent Cagney displays in the movie.

I definitely enjoyed seeing Cagney’s talent, but at first glance didn’t enjoy his dancing style. It was floppy and lanky instead of smooth and debonair like Gene Kelley or Fred Astaire, who I am more used to, but after seeing footage of Cohan, I now get that Cagney was imitating Cohan’s dancing style.

After hearing and seeing recordings of Cohan this week, I realized how perfectly Cagney nailed Cohan in the movie. No wonder he won the Oscar for best actor that year. It was also his only Oscar, incidentally.

Cagney pulled the role off even though “he (couldn’t) really dance or sing,” observed critic Edwin Jahiel, “but he acts so vigorously that it creates an illusion, and for dance-steps he substitutes a patented brand of robust, jerky walks, runs and other motions.”

 Ebert wrote in his review of the film : “Unlike Astaire, whose entire body was involved in every movement, Cagney was a dancer who seemed to call on body parts in rotation. When he struts across the stage in the “Yankee Doodle Dandy” number, his legs are rubber but his spine is steel, and his torso is slanted forward so steeply we’re reminded of Groucho Marx.”

 I’ll have to check out Cagney’s dancing in other movies to really get an idea of his actual style.

Cohan saw the picture shortly before he died in November 1942, by the way, and reportedly said afterward, “My God, what an act to follow.” The next morning, he sent Cagney a congratulatory telegram. And then he died. Ha! Kidding. I have no idea when he actually died but I do know he was only 64 so it was shortly after the movie was released.

I was amazed by the amazing sets for the incredible musical scenes in this movie. The scenes — which included moving sets and fireworks, and a floor like a conveyor belt that made the actors seem like they were continuously marching toward the audience — were way ahead of moviemaking at that time

Maybe that is why the movie cost so much to make, which was $1.5 million and well above the standard for the time.

Luckily, it grossed $6 million.

You can catch some of that movie/Broadway magic here:

As for Cagney’s acting in the movie, I thought it was great and engaging. Even parts that could have been a bit cheesy were enhanced by Cagney’s performance.

I loved the dancing and singing sequences throughout the movie. Those snippets were perfect introductions to the style of musicals and Broadway at the time, though that style became the style of Broadway in the future as well, thanks to Cohan.

Have you seen this one?

You can learn a bit more about Cohan in this clip:

If you want to see Cohan himself perform “Over There,” you can see that here:

And for a sneak peek of the movie, here is the trailer from when it was released:

If you want to find clips and thoughts about vintage movies and TV, you can visit me on Instagram on my Nostalgically Thinking Account (https://www.instagram.com/nostalgically_thinking/)

If you would like to follow along with my Winter of Cagney and watch some of the movies yourself, here is my schedule for the winter:

 Yankee Doodle Dandy

The Man of A Thousand Faces

Taxi

The Strawberry Blonde

Mister Roberts

Angels With Dirty Faces

Public Enemy

Love Me or Leave Me

White Heat

Bonus: The Seven Little Foys

Additional Resources:

https://www.tcm.com/articles/afi-top-100/24022/yankee-doodle-dandy-1942

https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-yankee-doodle-dandy-1942

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yankee_Doodle_Dandy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Seven_Little_Foys

If you want to find clips and thoughts about vintage movies and TV, you can visit me on Instagram on my Nostalgically Thinking Account (https://www.instagram.com/nostalgically_thinking/) or on my YouTube account Nostalgically and Bookishly Thinking here: https://www.youtube.com/@nostaglicandbookish

James Cagney: One of the most versatile actors of the Golden Age

/ Lisa R. Howeler / 6 Comments

When people think of the actor James Cagney, many might think of his roles as gangsters, bad guys, and double-crossers. He was much more than that, though, in his acting roles and in his life.

This month I am watching James Cagney movies as part of my Winter of Cagney movie event.

To kick it off, I thought it might be good to share a little about the actor’s life.

Cagney was born to an Irish bartender father (James Francis Cagney) in the rough lower east side of New York City. His father, who Cagney says was an alcoholic, was also an accomplished boxer and at the age of 14 Cagney followed his footsteps and became one of Yorkville’s best fighters. James’ mother was Carolyn Elizabeth Cagney (my mom’s name is ironically Carolyn Elizabeth..but not Cagney).

“My childhood was surrounded by trouble, illness, and my dad’s alcoholism,” Cagney wrote in his autobiography, Cagney on Cagney. “But as I said, we just didn’t have the time to be impressed by all those misfortunes. I have an idea that the Irish possess a built-in don’t-give-a-damn that helps them through all the stress.”

While in high school, Cagney worked wrapping packages at Wanamaker’s Department Store, for $16 a week. His introduction into entertainment came when a fellow employee at Wanamaker’s told him a vaudeville troupe paid its players $35 a week. When Cagney auditioned, he told them he could sing and dance. He couldn’t do either, but he still had a successful audition. It was while working in Vaudeville that he met Frances Willard. They married in 1922 and remained married until his death 64 years later. She lived until 1994.

Cagney’s big break on the stage came in 1929 when he acted opposite Joan Blondell in Penny Arcade.

His big screen debut came in 1930 with Sinner’s Holiday, and he made four more films that year. Public Enemy (1931) and Taxi (1931) are two movies where the world was introduced to him as a gangster.

Growing up, I heard a lot of impressions of Cagney and those always claimed he said, “You dirty rat….” Or “All right, you guys.”

For the record, according to the Encyclopedia Britannica website, Cagney never actually said the words “You dirty rat,” or “All right, you guys” in any of his movies. Wow. Talk about a disappointing revelation there. Ha!

He did, however, say, “Come out here and take it, you dirty yellow-bellied rat or I’ll give it to you through the door,” in the 1931 movieTaxi.

According to The Kennedy Center website (he was honored there in 1980), “The unforgettable ‘fruit facial’ scene, in which he rams a grapefruit into Mae Clarke’s nose is exemplary of Cagney’s spontaneity, for the script called for him to slap Clarke with an omelet.”

Eventually, though, Cagney would tire of “packing guns and beating up women,” as he said in his autobiography, and after a string of movies where he played a gangster type figure, he did try some different roles, including the one he won an Oscar for — playing George M. Cohan in Yankee Doodle Dandy.

“No matter the genre of the film he was in, James Cagney always brought unique, riveting energy to the screen,” writes Jeremy Arnold for TCM.com. “Known best for his tough-guy and gangster roles, a persona cemented by his fourth picture, The Public Enemy (1931), Cagney had actually started his showbiz career in 1920s vaudeville as a song and dance man, and to the end of his life he thought of himself primarily as a hoofer. Hollywood didn’t give him a chance to show off those talents until his fourteenth film, Footlight Parade (1933), and even after that movie’s success, Cagney went on to make surprisingly few musicals.”

In 1934 and 1940, Cagney was accused of being a communist sympathizer and many say this is why he took the part in Yankee Doodle Dandy  — to attempt to clear his name and show that he really was a true patriot. His brother, in fact, urged him to take the part for that very reason.

Information online from various sources also suggests Cagney once had a hit on him by the mafia for work he did against the Chicago Outfit and the Mafia because they were extorting money from Hollywood studios by threatening to strikes by a mob-controlled labor union.

Cagney once shared that a hitman was sent and a heavy light was dropped on his head but it didn’t kill him, and the hit was eventually dropped when actor George Raft made a call to have the contract canceled. Raft was an American actor who played mobsters in movies and was (apparently) connected to the mob as well.

Some of Cagney’s most famous movies, besides the ones already mentioned, include:

White Heat (1949), Come Fill the Cup (1951), Love Me or Leave Me (1955), Mister Roberts (1955), and Man of a Thousand Faces (1957).

White Heat is one film that Cagney enthusiasts say you have to watch (and I will be). One reason is for the scene where Cagney breaks down after finding out his mother has been killed. The scene was shot with 300 extras in a prison cafeteria and none of the men knew what Cagney was going to do. Many of the men in the scene actually thought he had lost his mind which is why their reactions in the background are so real.

“I didn’t have to psych myself up for the scene in which I go berserk on learning of my mother’s death,” he wrote in his autobiography Cagney by Cagney. “You don’t psych yourself up for those things. You do them. I knew what deranged people sounded like. As a youngster I had visited Ward’s Island. A pal’s uncle was in the hospital for the insane. My God, what an education that was. The shrieks. The screams of those people under restraint. I remembered those cries. I saw that they fit the scene. I called on my memory to do as required. No need to ‘psych up.’”

White Heat is also where Cagney uttered one of his most famous lines, “On top of the world, Ma!”

After playing the manic Coca-Cola executive in Billy Wilder’s One Two Three in 1961, Cagney retired from acting and moved to an 800-acre farm in Dutchess County, NY with his wife where he relaxed, read, played tennis, raised horses, swam, and wrote some poetry.

It was on that farm where he died on Easter Sunday, 1986, of a heart attack at the age of 86.

I was saddened to read from a couple of sources that he did have adopted children, but the relationships with them fell apart, and his adopted son died of a heart attack when Cagney was 84, without them really speaking to each other for years..

Many actors and famous people have commented on Cagney, his acting, his movies, and his life in general.

One of those actors was George C. Scott who never worked with him but met him toward the end of Cagney’s life and borrowed a quote about General Robert E. Lee that Scott said fit Cagney as well: “What he seemed he was, a wholly human gentleman. The essential elements of whose positive character were two and only two — simplicity and spirituality.”

Scott said he was “perfectly himself” and “he was what he seemed to be.”

I will be watching the following movies for my Winter of Cagney:

 Yankee Doodle Dandy

The Man of A Thousand Faces

Taxi

The Strawberry Blonde

Mister Roberts

Angels With Dirty Faces

Public Enemy

Love Me or Leave Me

White Heat

Bonus: The Seven Little Foys

What Cagney movies have you watched?

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Cagney

https://www.kennedy-center.org/artists/c/ca-cn/james-cagney/

https://www.tcm.com/articles/021761/wb100-james-cagney

https://www.britannica.com/biography/James-Cagney

If you want to find clips and thoughts about vintage movies and TV, you can visit me on Instagram on my Nostalgically Thinking Account https://www.instagram.com/nostalgically_thinking/ or on my YouTube account Nostalgically and Bookishly Thinking here: https://www.youtube.com/@nostaglicandbookish

Classic Movie Impression: It Happened On Fifth Avenue

/ Lisa R. Howeler / 5 Comments

I’ve been watching less popular Christmas-themed movies around Christmas for the last couple of years. One of those movies was It Happened on Fifth Avenue (1947).

I truly thought I’d written about this movie in previous years, but I can’t find it when I search so I am writing about it now.

The movie is about a group of people who are sort of thrown together but it starts with a man named Alyosius T. McKeever (Victor Moore) who sneaks in the mansion of businessman Michael O’Connor (Charlie Ruggles) in New York City early in November when O’Connor goes to his home in Virginia for the winter.

McKeever is a “vagabond” or homeless man.

He lives in the home, wearing O’Connor’s clothes, and eating any food left at the house in the pantry.

The movie opens with him sneaking inside through the back fence and will later learn that he’s been doing this for some twenty years.

I, of course, am surprised that no one has ever seen him or seen the lights on in the house but, it’s a movie. Let’s suspend belief.

There are police who patrol the grounds, but McKeever has a system where he hides in the icebox (or a room they call the icebox) until the police have passed by. He also has the lights hooked up so they will shut off as soon as someone opens the front door.

One day McKeever meets Jim Bullock played by Don DeFore, sleeping on a park bench. Jim, a veteran, has been evicted from his apartment building because it is being torn down. Michael O’Connor is putting up an 80-story building in its place.

When Jim gets to the mansion and is settling in, he sees an award shaped like a boat with the name Michael O’Connor on it and accuses McKeever of taking over homes of people who can’t afford to live in family homes like his.

McKeever tells Jim he’s not really O’Connor, but a friend of his. Jim accepts this explanation easily

Jim isn’t sure what to think of this arrangement, but he needs a place to stay so he accepts it.

Soon we see Michael O’Connor, who is in Virgina having a board meeting. During the board meeting he gets a call from his daughter Trudy’s school and been told that it’s possible she’s run away.

Michael looks at a photo of two women and asks his assistant if he thinks that she has run off to her mother in Florida.

The man doesn’t know so Michael orders him to hire a private investigator and find his daughter (played by … get this name…Gale Storm).

His daughter, though, is already found for us viewers. She is at her father’s mansion looking for her clothes when Jim finds her. He demands to know what she’s doing there and suggests she is stealing from the mansion. He threatens to call the police.

Trudy, apparently smitten with Jim merely based on his appearance, decides not to tell him who she really is and tells him to go ahead and call the police.

McKeever pulls Jim aside and confesses all. He is not a friend of O’Connor, but is, instead, simply someone who takes advantage of the home being empty for a few months out of the year. When O’Connor leaves, he moves in and when O’Connor leaves Virginia, McKeever hitches his way to Virginia and moves in that house until it’s time to come back to New York.

(Again…suspend belief).

Jim isn’t sure what to make of the arrangement, but is amused and impressed that McKeever hasn’t been caught yet.

Trudy listens in and overhears what McKeever has been doing and smiles in an amused way. She decides she will find a way to stay on with the men since it will be a way to hide from her father for a while. She tells the men the truth, which is that she’s going to get a job at a music store so she can get back on her feet again. She then says she only broke into the house because she was hungry and desperate and then does a lovely fake faint to add to her story.

The men agree that she can stay. From here the movie will start to get a bit more complicated as more people are invited to stay at the mansion, including a family with small children. What could make all of this even more chaotic? Add in Michael O’Connor returning to New York to try to find his daughter and planning to return to the mansion.

One little thing that bothered me about this movie was how young Gale Storm looked and was supposed to be. She was supposed to be 18 but a romance develops between her and Jim and he seems considerably older than her. That was…awkward at times. However, I’m not sure how old Jim is actually supposed to be so maybe it isn’t so awkward. Gale was 22 at the time the film was made.

The screenplay for this movie was written by Everett Freeman. The original story was created by Herbert Clyde Lewis and Frederick Stephani.

Harry Revel wrote the songs “It’s A Wonderful, Wonderful Feeling.” “That’s What Christmas Means to Me” and “Speak My Heart” for the movie, according to the opening credits, but I wouldn’t call this movie a musical. One of the main characters simply sings a bit.

Gale Storm thought she’d be singing the parts in the film, but, unfortunately, she was told her voice would be dubbed over.

She later wrote in her memoir: “I couldn’t believe it. I thought that maybe the director didn’t know I’d been singing and dancing in films, and that if I spoke to him he’d let me do my own numbers. Well, I asked him, and he said no. I asked him to look at some of my musicals, and he said no. I asked him if I could sing for him, and he said no. His theory was that if you were a dancer, you didn’t sing; if you were a singer, you didn’t dance; and if you were an actor, you didn’t sing or dance. It was humiliating.”

Another song in the movie is “You’re Everywhere” sung by The King’s Men at 1930s/1940s barbershop quartet.

According to TCM.com, Frank Capra originally acquired the rights to the movie but passed it on to Allied Artists, a new subsidiary of Monogram Pictures, which used to develop B movies. It Happened on Fifth Avenue was the companies first major motion picture and was developed by Roy Del Ruth.

Not only was Gale upset about not being able to sing in the film, but she also was disappointed Capra didn’t direct it, according to the TCM.com article. She felt the movie was decidedly “Capra-esque” — “a warmhearted human story about the little guy with underlying social and political commetary. She said that she felt Del Ruth didn’t make the most of the story’s potential, but she may have been holding a grudge since he didn’t let her do her own singing.

Gale said Del Ruth wasn’t easy on anyone.

“I wasn’t the only one Del Ruth humiliated,” continued Storm in her biography. “Victor Moore was a dear, sweet old man who was kind to everyone; we all loved him. Except Del Ruth. Whatever Victor did, the director made him redo it — again and again. And Del Ruth never told the old man what he might have been doing wrong.”

Despite these complaints from Gale, the movie did well when it was released, with the actors receiving praise by reviewers and critics. It has now become a beloved classic as well.

Is this one you’ve ever seen? What did you think about it?

This post is part of the Comfy, Cozy Christmas feature hosted by me and Erin at Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs. If you have a blog post that you would like to share as part of this annual link-up, please find out more here.

If you write book reviews or book-related blog posts, don’t forget that Erin and I host the A Good Book and A Cup of Tea Monthly Bookish Blog Party. You can learn more about it here.

Comfy, Cozy Cinema: The Mummy (1999)

/ Lisa R. Howeler / 11 Comments

Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs and I are hosting Comfy, Cozy Cinema again this year and up this week was The Mummy!

The Mummy (1999) was a perfect watch for Halloween, though maybe not super comfy or cozy? I don’t know but we slip some creepier ones in for Halloweeeen too so it all evens out! This one isn’t super creepy all the way through, though, and oneee thing you should know is that The Mummy does not take itself too seriously.

Even though it isn’t really a horror film, it deals with the dead and ancient curses, gross bugs, the undead, and bringing people back from the dead and…., etc., etc.

And we also get to see when Brendan Frasier had a career. Ha! I kid. I kid. I know his career has been resurrected like some of the characters in this movie. I just thought it was a funny line.

This movie has become a cult classic after performing well in the theaters, but even better for video/DVD sales which raked in $1 billion for Universal in 2000. The movie’s success even led to a sequel, The Mummy Returns, which was must less successful and then yet another sequel, which was not a huge success either, if I remember right..

Even though I have seen this movie a couple of times, it’s been a long time since the last rewatch, so I rewatched it with my kids to remind myself of specific scenes, plot, etc.

Etc. is the word for today, by the way. I’m going to keep using it throughout this post just to be annoying, obnoxious, belligerent, etc. etc.

(I’m kidding about that too. I can’t keep that up for an entire post…..or can I?)

This movie starts with the affair between Imhotep and  Anck-su-namun, the mistress of the Pharoah. No one was to touch  Anck-su-namun  other than the Pharaoh but I guess Imhotep missed that memo because he started an affair with her.

The two are caught by the Pharaoh, the Pharaoh is killed, the Pharaoh’s men come in, Imhotep escapes while  Anck-su-namun reminds him that only he can resurrect her later so she kills herself before the Pharaoh’s men can.

Imhotep then steals  Anck-su-namun  body and tries to resurrect her but is interrupted by the pharaoh’s guard and is intombed with a bunch of creepy beetle things and buried alive “for all eternity.”

Ha. As if that line is going to stick. Of course, we know something is going to happen to disturb this dude’s resting place.

The Medjai, by the way, are sworn to prevent Imhotep’s return, as his resurrection would grant him immense power. They are guarding over him when Rick O’Connell (Brenden Frasier) is in the French Foreign Legion, fighting against an Arab Army, and finds the tomb, but runs away when the sand begins trying to attack him.

The Medjai decide not to kill him, but instead to “let the desert kill him instead.”

Bad idea because Rick lives and discovers an intricate box, which he takes home with him and has stolen by Jonathan Carnahan (John Hannah) who gives it to his sister, Evelyn (Rachel Weisz) a librarian and very green Egyptologist.

Evelyn finds a map inside the box that will lead them to buried Egyptian treasure but it is in the city of the dead. She takes it to her boss at the ancient library but he — oops — sets in it on fire. Was that an accident? Hmm…not so sure there.

Now Evelyn wants to know where Jonathan got it so they set off to find the man who Jonathan stole the box from.

Rick is in jail and actually looks way too clean to have been in jail and he agrees to help Evelyn get to the lost city of death if she will get him out of jail. She figures out a way, but the jailer says he is going to come along to keep an eye on his prisoner.

From there, hijinks ensue, especially when the group runs into a rival team also looking for the city and treasure and Rick runs into an old “friend” who always abandoned him at the most inopportune moments. That friend is Benji and he provides a lot of humor throughout the film, including an iconic scene where he uses symbols from several different religions to keep the mummy from attacking him.

This movie is a fun ride. My husband and I had seen this years ago in the theater when we were first dating — we think anyhow. Our memories are so fuzzy because we are so old.

The Boy said during this movie, “This movie is so fun. I’m really liking this.”

I could have sworn he’d seen this movie before, but he had not, and wanted to, so the timing was perfect, great, impeccable, etc. etc.

The movie is full of eye-candy for all with Rachel Weisz being pretty and Brenden and Oded Fehr and even Arnold Vosloo for those who like bald men.

As I mentioned above, The Mummy is not necessarily a “horror” film but there is a lot of grotesque scenes and moments involving — a bit of a spoiler here — the mummy trying to piece himself back together, which involves pulling other pieces off living humans.

The film was shot in Morocco and The United Kingdom. I found it interesting when I read that Universal took out kidnapping insurance on the crew and cast but didn’t tell them until filming was over. Yikes.

This is the movie where we almost lost Brendan Fraser to by the way

According to an interview with Brendan on The Kelly Clarkson Show, in the scene where Brendan is being hung, the director told him it wasn’t looking believable. Brendan pushed up on his tiptoes while the man who was holding the rope lifted up and Brendan had nowhere to go but try to push down.

“So he was pulling up and I was going down. And then the next thing I knew, my elbow was in my ear, the world was sideways and there was gravel in my teeth.”

He said the stunt coordinator was leaning over him clapping his hands and calling, “Brendan. Come on, Brendan.”

When he did, the coordinator told the actor, “‘Congratulations, you’re in the club — same thing happened to Mel Gibson on ‘Braveheart.’”

The Mummy became such a hit that there were two sequels and a spinoff. Yes, I saw the spinoff with Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, The Scorpion King. No, I do not recommend it.

I never saw The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor but I probably wouldn’t recommend it either.

This movie did get positive reviews when it came out, with most calling it lot of fun.

Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film a positive review, writing, “There is hardly a thing I can say in its favor, except that I was cheered by nearly every minute of it. I cannot argue for the script, the direction, the acting or even the mummy, but I can say that I was not bored and sometimes I was unreasonably pleased.”[

Trivia and facts:

*Disclaimer: always make sure to double check these as what I report is only as good as the sites I pull it from and they are not always accurate.

  • The library disaster in the beginning of the film was done in one take. It would have taken an entire day to re-shoot if a mistake had been made. (source IMdb)
  • The effects team was told “no gore” when designing the look of the Mummy. They actually did tests for “grossness threshold.” (source IMdb)
  • Erick Avari who portrayed Dr. Terence Bey now portrays Nicodemus on The Chosen. (source: me!)
  • With the exception of a loin cloth, a few pieces of jewelry, and pasties, Patricia Velasquez as  Anck-su-namun, was nude except for body paint, which took four hours to apply. (source IMdb)
  • This movie is a remake of the 1932 film of the same name. (various sources, including my husband.)
  • The white nightgown Evelyn wore when the ship was attacked became transparent when it got wet and had to be digitally painted white during post production so the film could keep its PG-13 rating. (source IMdb)
  • The Medjai were originally supposed to be tattooed from head to toe, but Stephen Sommers vetoed it because he thought Oded Fehr was “too good-looking” to be covered up. (source IMdb)
  • The crew could not shoot in Egypt because of the unstable political conditions. (source IMdb)
  • To avoid dehydration in the scorching heat of the Sahara, the production’s medical team created a drink that the cast and crew had to consume every two hours. (source IMdb)
  • Sandstorms were daily inconveniences. Snakes, spiders and scorpions were a major problem, with many crew members having to be airlifted out after being bitten. (source IMdb)
  • When Evelyn reads the inscription “He who shall not be named” on Imhotep’s sarcophagus, the hieroglyphs used are accurate. The inscription actually translates literally as “the one without a name.” (source IMdb)
  • The film is called The Mummy everywhere except Japan where it is called Hamunaptra: The Capital City of the Lost Desert. (source, TVTrops.org)
  • “John Hannah claimed in interviews that he didn’t have the best time shooting the film because he felt the character of Jonathan was pretty redundant: he had been hired as a comedic actor but Beni was far more prevalent as the comedy relief and he didn’t work as a sidekick either since Evy fulfilled that role as well. Whenever Hannah tried bringing this up to Stephen Sommers, the latter would just tell him to make something up. Luckily, later films in the series would give Jonathan a more focused role as the comic relief and give him more stuff to do.” (source, TVTrops.org)
  • “The original script’s opening had a number of edits. Imhotep was originally supposed to narrate, and following Seti’s murder Imhotep was supposed to lead the ritual to curse Anak-su-namun’s mummified body for her crime of regicide, only for Imhotep and his priests to dug up the body as soon as all the other witnesses were either dead or had left; in a scene mirroring Imhotep’s origin story in the original film, the diggers were to be killed by the soldiers after burying Anak-su-namun, and for the Med-jai to kill the soldiers afterwards in order to keep her grave a secret. During the ritual at Hamunaptra, Imhotep explains the ritual didn’t require a human sacrifice since Anak-su-namun’s organs were still fresh. When the Med-jai arrive to stop Imhotep, one of them smashes the jar containing Anak-su-namun’s heart, explaining why it it’s intact in one shot, and broken in the shot where her soul flees back to the underworld. Lastly, Imhotep explains how part of the Hom Dai works: the sacred scarabs would be able to enter his now tongue-free mouth and he’d be forced to consume them, cursing him, while the scarabs would become cursed as well upon consuming his flesh, creating a perversion of the cycle of life, death, and rebirth. Yes, the scarab swarms that plague our heroes later are all undead insects.”  (source, TVTrops.org)

 If you want to read Erin’s impressions of the movie, you can find it here

So, have you ever seen this one? What did you think of it?

Up next in our Comfy, Cozy Cinema will be The Englishman Who Went Up A Hill But Came Down a Mountain.

You can read my impressions of past movies in this year’s Comfy Cozy Cinema and past years here: https://lisahoweler.com/movie-reviews-impressions/

Our full list of movies is here:

Comfy, Cozy Cinema: The Young In Heart

/ Lisa R. Howeler / 7 Comments

Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs and I are hosting Comfy, Cozy Cinema again this year and up this week was The Young In Heart.

And, yes, that title is the actual title: The Young IN Heart.

I feel like I cheated a little bit this week because not only have I watched this movie, but I also wrote about it when I watched it for the Winter of Douglas Fairbanks Jr. That means   I had an advantage to Erin when it came to writing this week’s post because I am going to quote a lot of my original post.

 This is part of what I wrote in that post: “I absolutely loved Douglas in this one. He played a more prominent role than in Gunga Din and was simply … shall I sound completely cheesy? Yes, I shall. He was completely delightful.

At one point, I texted my friend Erin that a drunk Douglas is adorable.”

Yes, I did text Erin this past January to tell her he was adorable. Yes, I am weird.

Before I forget, I found this one for free on YouTube.

So, let’s get to the movie.

The Carlton family, of which Douglas is a part of in this movie, are not a family you would want to know in real life. They are swindlers and grifters. They mooch off and manipulate people to scrape by in life.

We open the movie in the French Riviera with Douglas’s character (Rick) ready to marry a young woman whose father is rich.

Everything falls apart, though, when the police find out about the family and reveal their conniving ways to the family of Rick’s future wife. The family is told to get out of France and end up on a train where they meet a ridiculously sweet woman (Minnie Dupree) who has only recently come into a great sum of money.

Ironically, her last name is Fortune. George-Anne sets out to swindle the woman out of paying for their lunch, but the plan expands as the woman explains she lives alone in a big mansion left to her by a former suitor. She is saying how lovely it would be if all of them came to stay with her when there is a train derailment. Their car tips and at first Rick and George-Anne believe the old woman has died. She’s still breathing so the siblings carry her from the car and George-Anne covers her with her own coat.

We begin to wonder if the family is rotten through and through and are still playing things up as the woman later recovers and invites the family to come live with her.

George-Anne suggests to the family that if Miss Fortune believes they are a respectable family she will be more willing to let them live there and maybe even leave them money when she leaves. To play up this ruse she suggests the men get actual jobs and she and her mother act like caretakers and women who don’t swindle people out of money.

This is all very baffling to the family who has always cheated and stole for a living. When the men decide George-Anne’s plan might work and go to look for jobs, the scenes that follow are some of the most hilarious tongue-in-cheek moments I’ve seen in a movie.

Spinning around in the background of the family’s drama is the romance between George-Anne and Duncan Macrae (Richard Carlson), who she originally considered marrying when she thought he was rich. Duncan learned she was a con-artist along with everyone else and was shattered but still ends up chasing her down on the train back to London to tell her he still loves her.

The rest of Rick’s family — father, Col. Anthony “Sahib” Carleton (Roland Young), mother Marmey Carlton (Billie Burke), and daughter George-Anne (Janet Gaynor) — are thrilled with this plan because they know it will also set them all up for a rich life. George Anne might be even more thrilled because then she can marry a poor Scottish man who she’s fallen in love with, and the rest of her family will support her financially.

She tells him to get lost, believing he’s much too good for her and . . . well, you’ll have to see where all that ends up.

Rick is also having his own romance with Leslie Saunders (Paulette Goddard), a secretary and the engineering business he applies at for a job.

This is the second – or shall I say third – movie I’ve watched in recent months with Billie Burke and there is no mistaking that voice if you have seen The Wizard of Oz.

Yes, she is Glenda the Good Witch.

The screenplay for this movie was written by Paul Osborn and adapted by Charles Bennett from the serialized novel, The Gay Banditti by I. A. R. Wylie. That title certainly would have had a different connotation in the modern day, eh?

Anyhow, the novel appeared in parts in The Saturday Evening Post from February 26 to March 26, 1938.

The movie was released in November of the same year. They certainly worked fast back then.

I found it interesting when I read that Broadway actresses Maude Adams and Laurette Taylor screen-tested for the role of Miss Fortune and that the footage is the only audio-visual samples that existed of both of them.

The movie was produced by – can you guess? Because it feels like every movie I write about lately is produced by him.

Yes. David Selznick. The man who produced what is considered one of the biggest movie triumphs in the world — Gone with the Wind.

This movie was one of many he produced leading up to Gone With The Wind. The Prisoner of Zenda, which I wrote about a couple of weeks ago, was another. Goddard was actually rumored to be being considered to play Scarlet O’Hara in Gone With The Wind, which later, of course, went to Vivien Leigh.

While I was watching the part of the movie where Mr. Carleton goes to apply for a job, I was fascinated by the fancy car they showed. It was spinning like a pig on a spit at the front of the building and it was a very modern looking car and a very modern looking set up altogether.

According to Ultimate Car Page and Wikipedia,  https://www.ultimatecarpage.com/car/1905/Phantom-Corsair.html

The six-passenger 2-door sedan Flying Wombat featured in that scene was actually the one-of-a-kind prototype Phantom Corsair. The Phantom Corsair concept car was built in 1938 and designed by Rust Heinz of the H. J. Heinz family and Maurice Schwartz of the Bohman & Schwartz coachbuilding company in Pasadena, California.”

I also found it interesting that this was Gaynor’s last movie before retiring while she was at the top of her career. She made one last movie in 1957 called Bernardine.

Like I said above, I loved this movie. It was just what I needed to watch this week with so much sadness going on in the world. There was a lot of humor from all the cast, but Douglas really had me smiling throughout. Not only because he is my latest old Hollywood star crush (watch out Paul Newman!).

Have you seen this one? What did you think of it?

You can read Erin’s impression of the movie on her blog.

Next week we will move into a bit of spooky with Coraline.

The rest of our movie list can be found on this graphic:

Comfy, Cozy Cinema: The Five Year Engagement

/ Lisa R. Howeler / 11 Comments

Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs and I are hosting Comfy, Cozy Cinema again this year and up this week was The Five-Year Engagement.

I am going to share right off the bat that this was not the movie for me. Erin enjoys it (though she had not watched in a long time and forgot some of the aspects of it) and you can find a more positive view of it on her blog.

Disclaimer: The fact I did not enjoy it is NOT an attack on anyone who did enjoy it. All views expressed here are my own opinions on the movie only. I don’t think anyone is awful for enjoying it. It simply was not my cup of tea. Everyone has different tastes.

I probably should have researched this one a little more when I agreed to watch it because it really wasn’t a movie I’d normally watch. It also was not cozy at all to me personally, but it probably has some sentimental value to others.

For my regular readers who know I usually recommend books and shows without a ton of swearing and crude “jokes” or references, you can know I don’t recommend this one because that’s the majority it.

When I did finally look up the movie this morning, I learned that it featured “more than 205 obscenities and profanities and lots of verbal sexual humor.”

Yeah. I really need to look this stuff up before I go into a movie. *wince*

I am  not going to sit here and say that I do not swear. I certainly do. I wish I didn’t, but I do. I’m in a deep depression this week and have sworn about ten times already today (and asked God to forgive me).

Despite that personal flaw confessional moment, movies that throw swear words in for no reason aren’t my thing. 

Here is a bit of a description of the movie from online:

“On their one-year anniversary, sous chef Tom Solomon (Jason Segel) plans to surprise his girlfriend, Violet Barnes (Emily Blunt), with an engagement ring. The lovers do end up engaged, but the fact that the proposal does not go exactly as planned proves to be a harbinger of things to come. Each time they try to set a date, various obstacles stand in their way. As more and more time passes, Tom and Violet begin to wonder if perhaps their marriage is not meant to be.”

The movie is rated R, so a lot of it the languag and sex scenes are to be expected but I just wasn’t comfortable with the level of crudeness or how many times I had to see Jason Segel having sex. Eek.

Also, Jason Segel plays pretty much the same character in every movie or TV show he has ever been in so if you like him in other movies or TV shows you should like this – just add a few more penis jokes, f-words, and views of his naked butt.

Again, Erin has more positive reasons she enjoyed the film (and I totally get her reasons!) so you can check out her views and more information on her blog here:


Next week we are writing about The Young In Heart (1938), starring Douglas Fairbanks Jr.

The other movies we will be watching are on this list:

Classic Movie Impressions: The Talk of the Town (1942)

/ Lisa R. Howeler / 7 Comments

This past weekend I watched the movie The Talk of the Town with Cary Grant, Jean Arthur, and Ronald Colman. I found this movie, among many other good ones, free on Tubi. It is also currently free on YouTube.

I had seen it before as a suggested move but ignored it, thinking it was a drama. After watching it, I asked myself, “What took me so long to watch this one?!”

I loved this movie and while I always love Cary Grant, I once again loved Ronald Colman who I first saw in The Prisoner of Zenda earlier this year.

This movie starts with a fire at a factory where a man dies. Cary, portraying Leopold Dilg, is arrested for arson and murder.

Soon he’s breaking out of jail and escaping through the woods on a rainy night. He makes his way in the dark toward a small house while dogs hunt him down. The name of the house is Sweetbrook and there is a woman inside getting it ready — maybe for a guest.

Leopold breaks in the door, startling the woman.

“Miss Shelley,” he says. “Please…let me…” And then he faints and falls down the stairs.

Miss Shelley wakes him up with a bucket full of water and he asks if she can stay at the house, which he knows is a rental. She tells him he can’t stay because she knows he has escaped jail. There is a knock on the door before she can finish explaining and she tells him to run upstairs and hide.

There is a Professor Michael Lightcap at the door and he’s standing in the rain. He reminds her that he’s rented the house out and he’s here to stay. Miss Shelley, whose first name is Nora, panics because Leopold is hiding upstairs and she doesn’t want the professor to find him.

Things will get more complicated as she makes up an excuse to stay in the house overnight to make sure the professor doesn’t find Leopold.

Complications just keep arising as Nora offers to become the professor’s secretary and housekeeper during his stay, a senator arrives to tell Professor Lightcap he’s up for nomination to the United States Supreme Court, and Leopold walks down one morning to argue about the role of the law in society and Nora has to introduce him as the gardener.

This is a non-stop movie full of hilarious mix-ups, near misses, and a love-triangle that won’t be resolved until the very last minute, literally, of the movie.

As I said above, I loved this movie.

It was engaging, funny, witty, and captivating. Mixed in all the lighthearted moments were a few philosophical moments about law and justice.

Jean Arthur was delightful as Nora Shelley, always quickly rescuing the day just at the last moment, taking care of both Leopold and the professor.

Ronald Colman pulled off the staunch, uptight professor well and it was fun to see him “let down  his hair” a bit later in the film. He didn’t let down his hair. It’s just a saying, of course.

Cary walked the line between an aggressive rebel and a falsely accused victim, putting his usual romantic charm on the backburner for most of the film and bringing it out in more subtle moments. This was a movie where he wasn’t a pursuing a woman as much as he was his own freedom and justice.

I spent much of the last half of the movie wondering which one of the men Nora was actually falling for and I think she was doing the same thing. She’d gathered affection for both of them but wasn’t sure if either of them had for her.

This movie was nominated for seven Oscars but it was about the same time that America started the war so more “patriotic” movies got the nod that year. Ironically the best picture went to Mrs. Minier, which was set in England, however.

According to TCM, even without the wins, The Talk of the Town “still marked an important moment in the careers of its stars Cary Grant and Ronald Colman.”

For Cary, it was a new movie after not working for a year and he was nominated for an Oscar as well. He didn’t win the Oscar but he did have his name legally changed  his name from Archibald Alexander Leach, became an American citizen and married heiress Barbara Hutton.

Colman was 51 at the time and needed a spark to reinvent his career. The Talk of the Town worked and he went on to star in Random Harvest, which earned him another Oscar nomination. He lost that to James Cagney in Yankee Doodle Dandy, but still kept him at a high point in his career. Films such as Kismet (1944) and Champagne for Caesar (1950).  He also finally earned his Oscar for portraying the delusional Shakespearean actor in A Double Life (1947).

I found it interesting to read that there was tension between Grant and Colman since both were used to being the lead actor and that tension was written into the script as they aggressively bantered back and forth with each other.

I also was fascinated to learn that two endings were filmed — one with Jean Arthur choosing Cary and the other with Colman. The director allowed the preview audiences to choose who she ended up with.

Trivia:

  • filming was to begin on January 17, 1942, the day Hollywood learned the sad news of Carole Lombard’s death in a plane crash. Stevens halted work on the set and sent both cast and crew home.
  •  
  • Screenwriter Sidney Buchman (who co-wrote the script with Irwin Shaw) was blacklisted in the 1950s. Consequently, Buchman, one of the men who penned Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), left the U.S. and began working in Fox’s European division. Buchman would remain in France until his death in 1975.

When the professor is unconscious on the floor, Tilney (Rex Ingram) asks Sam if he is a doctor. Ironically, Rex Ingram was himself a trained physician in real life.

Cary Grant and Ronald Colman were both paid at least $100,000 for their work in the film. Jean Arthur, who was in Harry Cohn’s doghouse and just coming off suspension, was only paid $50,000.


Whilst many characters find Leopold Dilg’s penchant for adding an egg to his borscht unique (so much so that it becomes a means of determining his whereabouts), it was not an uncommon practice to add an egg to borscht in Poland and in Mennonite communities in Eastern Europe.

A radio theatre presentation of The Talk of the Town (1942) was broadcast on CBS radio on the Lux Radio Theatre on 5/17/1943 with Cary Grant, Ronald Colman, and Jean Arthur recreating their roles from the movie. It’s a 60-minute adaptation of the movie.

Nora tells the professor that he is, “as whiskered as the Smith Brothers.” This refers to a brand of cough drops with an illustration of the Smith Brothers on the front, both of whom have a beard. First introduced in 1852, they remained the most popular brand for a century.


Memorable quotes:

Well, it’s a form of self-expression. Some people write books. Some people write music. I make speeches on street corners.

– Leopold Dilg

What is the law? It’s a gun pointed at somebody’s head. All depends upon which end of the gun you stand, whether the law is just or not.

– Leopold Dilg

Stop saying “Leopold” like that, tenderly. It sounds funny. You can’t do it with a name like Leopold.

– Leopold Dilg

This is your law and your finest possession – it makes you free men in a free country. Why have you come here to destroy it? If you know what’s good for you, take those weapons home and burn them! And then think… think of this country and of the law that makes it what it is. Think of a world crying for this very law! And maybe you’ll understand why you ought to guard it.  – Michael Lightcap

He’s the only honest man I’ve come across in this town in 20 years. Naturally, they want to hang him. – Sam Yates

Sources:

TCM.com https://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/92288/the-talk-of-the-town#articles-reviews?articleId=187407

Comfy, Cozy Cinema: Benny & Joon (without major spoilers)

/ Lisa R. Howeler / 10 Comments

Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs and I are hosting Comfy, Cozy Cinema again this year and first up on our movie-watching list was Benny & Joon.

Benny & Joon (1993)is a quirky film I watched in 1990s and really enjoyed. It was when I first saw Johnny Depp because I never watched 21 Jump Street or anything else he was in back then.

I already knew Mary Stuart Masterson from Fried Green Tomatoes.

For the most part, the movie is funny, comfy, and sweet, but there are a couple of hard moments. In the end, though, (small spoiler ahead —–à) things actually turn out okay.

Let’s start with an online description of the movie:

Benny (Aidan Quinn), who cares for his mentally disturbed sister, Joon (Mary Stuart Masterson), also welcomes the eccentric Sam (Johnny Depp) into his home at Joon’s request. Sam entertains Joon while he dreams of a job at the video store. Once Benny realizes Joon and Sam have started a relationship, he kicks Sam out of the house. This leads to an altercation between brother and sister. Joon runs away with Sam, who soon realizes that she may need more support than he alone can provide.


This movie starts with someone painting and a train rolling across the tracks to the soundtrack of The Proclaimers singing I’m Gonna Be (500 miles). Yes, that very annoying song that is an earworm and was overplayed in 1993. Okay, it’s not actually annoying. I like it! But it won’t get out of my head once I’ve heard it. And I mean for more than a week!

Anyhow, back to the movie.

After we see a woman painting we are at Benny’s Car Clinic where we see Benny (Aiden Quinn) fixing a car and chatting with his friends when a call is made from his home. His sister Joon wants him to know that they are out of peanut butter Crunch cereal.

Later at Benny’s home we meet Joon who seem a little different but otherwise fairly sane and smart.

She’s clearly very intelligent with the way she uses large phrases and big words. Still, she also seems somewhat childlike.

As the movie goes on we will lean that Joon has mental issues and sometimes likes to light things on fire.

She rarely leaves the house alone, instead staying in the house and painting. Housekeepers take care of her during the day but on this day one of them, apparently one of many, is calling it quits.

Joon is out of control she tells Benny. That means Benny is without someone to sit with Joon during the day and he’ll have to miss his card game with his friends that night because Joon can’t be left home alone very much.

His friend, Eric (Oliver Platt), tells him just to bring Joon, but Benny hesitates.

“What’s the big deal?”Eric says. “She paints and she reads.”

“Yeah, she paints. She reads. She lights things on fire,” Benny responds.

As my Mom would say, “Oh. Oh. My.”

Once at the game, though, Joon does fairly well, even if she does like holding her hand over the flame of a candle a bit too much..

We learn that Benny’s friends place real items in the pot for their poker game and this will come into play later in the movie when Joon decides to play a round while Benny is outside and Benny’s friend Mike says if she loses the hand she has to take his eccentric cousin off his hands.

That cousin is a 26-year-old name Sam (Johnny Depp) who can’t read or write and doesn’t know what he wants to do with his life. He likes Buster Keaton and has been studying him, though, dressing like  him and taking on his persona while being generally …. Weird.

 At first Benny says he won’t take Sam but then he agrees and over time Sam becomes the housekeeper and a whole lot more to Joon who falls hard for him.

Before all of this, though, Joon’s doctor suggests that Benny have Joon placed in a group home where she will be among her peers.

Benny laughs. “She has a home.” Not only that but, “She hates her peers.”

The doctor sighs. “You might want to consider there are people more capable of handling these outbursts than you.”

Benny rejects this idea over and over again even though his whole life is put on hold so he can care for Joon. He doesn’t have a love life or any life outside of work.

There will come a time, though, when it does have to be seriously considered. I won’t give away anymore than all of this because this movie is worth a watch. It is actually sweet and when you think it is going some place you don’t want it to, it will change directions and pleasantly surprise you.

Don’t let the dark music that sometimes pops up scare you.

Mixed in with all the drama with Joon, by the way, is a potential romance between Benny and Ruthie, a local waitress who used to be in B-movies.

This movie  has always charmed me. It’s made me laugh, smile, and enchanted me. I’m a big sucker for quirky movies with quirky characters.

As I watched the movie this time around (maybe my fifth time watching it), I realized that I think I am attracted to this movie because my great-aunt was schizophrenic and an artist. Maybe I saw some of her in Joon, even though I never met her. Mental illness has always frightened me. My great-aunt was sent to a mental hospital when she was in her 40s after years of acting odd. From what I understand she was diagnosed with schizophrenia and I always wondered if it might happen to me too. I liked art and I was even a little odd at times. Ha! So far I’m just depressed and have anxiety. No schizophrenia.

I should clarify that this movie never defines what Joon has but many viewers suspect a combination of conditions, including schizophrenia.

There are several classic scenes in this movie for me.

One is when Sam uses forks to make buns dance:




The other is when Sam reenacts Ruthie’s horrible acting in the B-movie (which can also be seen at the above clip)

Another is the absolute look of delight Sam gets when Benny says Joon sometimes hears voices in her head. That makes me crack up every time. It’s like he thinks the idea of her hearing voices is absolutely delightful.

Then there is Sam making grilled cheese sandwiches with an iron.

Then there is also a scene toward the end of the movie that you will have to see — you’ll know what it is when you see it.

There are also so many good quotes that come from either Joon or Sam too

When Sam is staring at Joon at one point she says, “Having a Boo Radley moment are we?”

As a huge fan of To Kill A Mockingbird, that one always cracks me up.

Later when she and Benny watch Sam make the grilled cheese sandwiches she says, “Some cultures are defined by their relationship to cheese.”

In the restaurant one day Joon picks the raisins out of her tapioca pudding and Sam asks her why she doesn’t like raisins.

“They used to be fat and juicy and now they’re twisted,” she says. “They had their lives stolen. Well, they taste sweet, but really they’re just humiliated grapes. I can’t say I am a big supporter of the raisin council.”

He then asks her if she saw those dancing raisins on TV and she says they scare her. That always cracks me up because they used to scare me too!

Some Trivia and Facts

I always wondered this so I looked it up and Johnny does do his own stunts and tricks when imitating Buster Keaton. This does not surprise me in the least.

Apparently, Wynonna Ryder was going to play Joon but she had Johnny had been dating at the time and broke up so she dropped out. I think I could actually see her playing Joon, even though Mary Stuart Masterson did great.

Johnny improvised a scene where he tasted the paint of one of Joon’s paintings. This also doesn’t surprise me.

From IMdb: “During the filming of the scene where Benny rushes to Joon’s aid after she is put into an ambulance, a house party was happening less than a block away from the shooting in Spokane’s Peaceful Valley area (it was a day scene actually filmed at night). After hours of re-takes, Jeremiah S. Chechik bribed the local revelers with a cornucopia of food from the crew’s food tent, which kept them pacified long enough to finish the scene (at around midnight).”

Though released in the UK and Australia in 1988, the song I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles) was not well-known in the United States until this movie. Once it was in the movie it reached number three on the Billboard Charts in the U.S. and was played ad nauseum until many people, such as me, were sick of hearing it. (Again, I do like the song. It was just overplayed that year.)

Another tidbit directly quoted from IMbD: “In the restaurant scene between Sam and Joon, as they are discussing raisins, Sam says, “It’s a shame about raisins.” This is a tongue-in-cheek reference to the video for the Lemonhead’s hit, “It’s a Shame about Ray,” which was released the year before and in which Johnny Depp starred. (At the end of the video, Johnny can be seen carrying a curved cane almost identical to Sam’s.)”

Of the film, Rogert Ebert (a famous movie critic back  in the day) said, “Benny and Joon” is a film that approaches its subjects so gingerly it almost seems afraid to touch them. The story wants to be about love, but is also about madness, and somehow it weaves the two together with a charm that would probably not be quite so easy in real life.”

For once, he actually liked a film I liked and ended his review with this: ““Benny and Joon” is a tough sell. Younger moviegoers these days seem to shy away from complexities, which is why the movie and its advertising all shy away from any implication of mental illness. The film is being sold as an offbeat romance between a couple of lovable kooks. I was relieved to discover it was about so much more than that.”

Have you ever seen this one? What did you think if you did?

You can read Erin’s impressions of the movie here.

Up next in our Comfy, Cozy Cinema is: A Knight’s Tale.

You can see the rest of the list of movies in this cool graphic that Erin made:

Summer of Angela: The Long Hot Summer

/ Lisa R. Howeler / 6 Comments

This summer I am watching Angela Lansbury movies for the Summer of Angela.

This week I dropped the movie with Angela and Warren Beatty that seemed super dark and replaced it with The Long Hot Summer, which I actually watched in 2022 during my first ever movie marathon called The Summer of Paul (Newman that is). For the life of me, though, I could not find that I wrote a blog post about the movie, so I am starting from scratch here.

The Long Hot Summer is not an Angela Lansbury focused movie, but she is in it and fills the screen with her personality when she is on it. The main stars are, of course, Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, but Angela provides some comic relief as Orson Welles’ mistress, Minnie Littlejohn.

First, a bit of background/description of the movie with the Google description:

Handsome vagabond Ben Quick (Paul Newman) returns to the Mississippi town his late father called home, but rumors of his dad’s pyromaniac tendencies follow him as soon as he sets foot there. The proud young man’s determination eventually wins over civic leader Will Varner (Orson Welles), who decides Ben might be just the man for his daughter, Clara (Joanne Woodward) — much to the displeasure of Will’s gutless son (Anthony Franciosa) and Clara’s society boyfriend (Richard Anderson).

The movie’s main focus is the sexual tension between Paul and Joan’s characters, which worked out fine since the two were having an affair before this and were on the cusp of being able to announce that since Paul Newman’s divorce was essentially final. Yes, I have always been a fan of Paul, but, no, I don’t like that part of his and Joanne’s story, and I have a feeling there were times they didn’t like it either.

Paul was always good at playing loners, sad men who don’t know who they are or what they want in life except the woman they set their sights on.

It’s the same in this movie, where Paul seems to want prestige but really just wants Clara to like him as much as he likes her. Clara is uptight, though. She does everything proper and never lets her guard down, especially around Ben Quick. She seems to have a feeling if she does let her guard down all of those feelings she’s been trying to protect all  her life will spill out.

It’s no surprise since her daddy (Welles), is also pretty uptight and fights for control over everything in his life. That’s why he won’t marry Minnie, who desperately wants to be married.

The movie opens with Ben Quick being told to get out of a county because he is charged with burning a man’s barn because he got mad at the man. There was no proof, though, so instead of jailing him, the town tosses him out.

He rides a couple of steamers down the river to his family’s old town and when he’s hitch-hiking he’s picked up by sour Clara and her bubbly friend.

We find out how sour she is when he asks, “So you girls just take your fun wherever you can find it?” And Clara responds with, “Don’t jump to conclusions, young man, we’re giving you a ride and that’s all we’re giving you.”

The sparring between Clara and Ben kick off right from there and continue on in the movie.

The first sign we see is a welcome sign to Fishermen’s Bend, home to – well, everything owned by someone named Varner.

Ben tells the girls that it sounds like Varner is the man to see about work in that town and the bubbly girl says that he can see Mr. Varner every night at their house. He asks if they are connected to Varner and the girl giggles that they are indeed and then drive off and leave him there at the town hall.

Back at the Varner house, Eula, Clara’s sister-in-law, is gushing to her husband Jody about all the clothes she bought, and Clara is on the terrace sipping lemonade with her friend Agnes when Ben shows up again.

The ladies were talking about how they are single and lonely before Ben showed up. Agnes mentions how he might be an option and Clara quips that they haven’t gotten so desperate as to be turning to strangers.

Ben asks Jody about working one of the tenant farms to make some money off of. Jody agrees before running back upstairs to make out with Eula. The servant comments when he sees muddy footprints on the rug after Ben leaves, “Mister, you sure do leave your calling card.”

That’s a bit of foreshadowing and an understatement.

As the movie goes on Ben will work his way into the family in more ways than one, upsetting the apple cart, so to speak.

Clara walks the carpet back to Ben’s tenant house with a little black boy (yep, another servant down here in the South) and tells him you dirty it, you clean it.

What follows is some great dialogue, which continues throughout the movie.

“A lot of fuss to be making about a rug lady, if it’s the rug that’s bothering you.”

Clara tips her chin up. “What else would it be?”

Ben spits out a watermelon seed. “Well now you correct me if I’m wrong but I have a feeling I rile ya’. I mean me being so mean and dirty and all.”

“Mr. Quick, you being personal with me, I’ll be personal with you. I spent my whole life around men who push and shove and shout and think they can make anything happen just by being aggressive and I’m not anxious of ‘nother one around the place.”

Ben smirks. “Miss Clara, you slam a door in a man’s face before he even knocks on it.”

All Clara says is for him to have the rug at the house by 6.

It shows how bigger than life Varner is when he comes back into town in an ambulance or police car (not sure which ) with the sirens blaring. The people in town who watch him drive through talk about how he was in the hospital and had something cut out of him.

Then it’s time for Angela, the point of this here Summer marathon. She comes running out of the Littlejohn Boarding House and Hotel as soon as he pulls up, wearing a tight and tiny white dress, and throws her arms around him. Her Southern accent is so jarring being familiar with her original accent and the American one she ended up developing as the years went on.

He laughs and declares she seems to be getting fatter and blonder on him.

Oh yeah…Didn’t I mention what a charmer he is?

He tells her he will be back…later. *wink* *wink*

He greets his family at home, with a clear critical eye on his son who seems desperate to please his father. That will come to play in a big way in the movie.

Orson Welles’ color is so horrible in this film, and I don’t know if that is because he is supposed to look sick or if it was bad makeup or if Orson Wells was that color back then. Then again, a couple of the other men had that weird color to their skin too. Maybe it was just bad makeup or the film itself.

Despite his color, Minnie wants to marry Daddy Varner, and she lets him know that. He avoids her as much as possible, preferring to keep control of his world.

What Angela said about the movie:

Angela’s plays a playful flirt in this film, not a dark femme fatale like A Life At Stake and she credited the director, Martin Ritt, for bringing that playfulness out in her.

“Martin Ritt had a wonderful enthusiasm and earthy sexy quality himself,” she said. “He loved the idea of the dirtiness of the carryings on, and he certainly brought every bit of kind of naughty sexuality out of me in that role.”

As for Orson Welles, Angela agreed with others who said he was used to getting his own way because he normally had control of his own projects. This project wasn’t his though.

“He was always nudging and pushing for things and wanted to change lines,” said Angela. “But had to be carefully handled so that he didn’t always get his way because his way wasn’t necessarily the best way for everybody else in the scene.”

Welles would irritate his co-stars by overlapping his own lines with their dialogue, ad-libbing, and mumbling to the point where his lines were barely comprehensible, she added.

Despite him being annoying, Angela also said of him: “There was something you couldn’t resist about Orson.”

In a 2001 interview, quoted on TCM.com, Angela said of Paul and Joan: “They seemed to have such a total understanding of each other that they were able to work in scenes where they were at each other’s throats or falling under each other’s spell.”

My thoughts on the movie:

I like the Southern feel of this movie, the acting, the complex relationships. I love watching Ben try to break through Clara’s hard exterior. No matter how hard she tries to resists him or how many times she pushes him away he keeps trying.

I love how the women are very strong in the movie but not so strong that they are outright disrespectful, even though they probably should be in some cases.

Paul’s smirk works well in just about every movie he’s in but it really works in this one. It’s hard to read what his real motives are sometimes, but deep down I feel like he does want something better than what he’s had. I feel like he does want a family and to be successful on his own merit.

This movie has a Tennessee Williams feel to it even though it is based on one main story and other stories by William Faulkner. It did not have a Tennesse Williams’ ending, at least.

On a more shallow level, I don’t know what they were thinking with Joanne’s big eyebrows and those way too short bangs. Despite how much I didn’t like the look they went for, I really enjoyed watching her character develop and blossom and reveal herself to be different than who we think she is for the first half of the movie.

Watching the jealousy unfold in Jody as he desperately tried to be what his father wanted him to be was difficult to see. The poor guy has no idea how to be a man of his own and is always trying to be what he thinks his daddy wants him to be.

Orson really wasn’t good in this movie. He really wasn’t. I don’t know what happened to him or why he performed so awful but from what I read online it was flat out jealousy over his younger counterparts who were associated with the Actor’s Studio. I also read he was only 10 years older than Paul in this film – 42 years old – but he looks terrible! He wore a prosthetic nose which I can not figure out the point of.

As for Angela, she pulled off her part well and it was fun to watch her with a thick Louisiana accent. Every time I see her in one of her early movies, I really do find myself forgetting she was Jessica Fletcher. She would have been so much better in this one if she hadn’t had to act across from Orson who was way over acting.

Trivia and Facts:

  • Orson Welles always wore a fake nose when he worked, so when he would sweat on this film, his fake nose would slip. Make-up people had to keep applying material to keep the fake nose from falling. (source TCM.com)
  • The director was Marty Ritt and Paul filmed five other films with him including Hombre, Paris Blues, The Outrage, Hemingway’s Adventures of a Young Man, and Hud. (source, excerpt from Paul Newman biography on Lit Hub)
  • In his biography Paul Newman wrote of Orson: “Orson couldn’t understand screen generosity, where one actor allows another player in his scene to deservedly get the best camera shots. Screen generosity was not part of Orson’s vocabulary. After a number of retakes on a scene he did with me, Orson asked Marty if he could have a private word with him. They stepped away together, and seemed to be discussing something rather serious. When they came back, we did another take, and afterwards, I asked Marty what was going on.

“Orson thought you were submarining him,” he said; it was an actor’s way of saying someone was stealing his screen time.” (source, excerpt from Paul Newman biography on Lit Hub)

  • The director, ‘Martin Ritt’ , was forever known after this movie as the man who tamed Orson Welles. During filming Ritt drove Wells into the middle of a swamp, kicked him out of the car and forced him to find his own way back in the hot Louisiana heat. (various/several sources)
  • Joan and Paul were married in January 1958 and the movie released in March. (TCM.com)
  • When the movie was complete, the director and others watched it and noticed they could barely here Orson at times. The director felt sure Orson had purposely mumbled his lines to make the sound more difficult because he was unhappy with not having control.
  • From TCM.com: “The success of The Long, Hot Summer helped Martin Ritt reestablish himself as a major director following his 5-year blacklisting from Hollywood. It also showcased the talents of young up-and-comers Joanne Woodward and Paul Newman, who won Best Actor that year at the Cannes Film Festival for his portrayal of Ben Quick. It marked both the beginning of long and distinguished careers for the talented couple as well as the beginning of one of Hollywood’s longest and happiest marriages.”
  • The Long, Hot Summer was based on the works of southern writer William Faulkner, most notably his 1940 novel The Hamlet. (source: TCM.com)
  • The movie was turned into a television series in 1965. It starred Roy Thinnes as Ben Quick, Nancy Malone as Clara, and Edmond O’Brien as Will Varner. O’Brien eventually left the show and was replaced with Dan O’Herlihy. Legendary director Robert Altman directed the pilot. (source: TCM.com)
  • Copied directly from TCM.com’s article because I thought it was interesting and I didn’t want to summarize it: Although William Faulkner was best known as a novelist and short story writer, he did work as a screenwriter in Hollywood for 20th-Century-Fox during the thirties and forties. A good deal of his work went uncredited and he was never successful in adapting any of his own work for the screen (although he did do a screen treatment for “Barn Burning” but it was never produced). He did, however, receive credit for the screenplay adaptations of Ernest Hemingway’s To Have and Have Not (1944), Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep (1946) and a few other scripts such as Submarine Patrol (1938) for director John Ford and The Road to Glory (1936) for director Howard Hawks.

    Other William Faulkner film adaptations include The Story of Temple Drake (1933, based on his novel Sanctuary), Intruder in the Dust (1949), The Tarnished Angels (1958, based on his novel Pylon), The Sound and the Fury (1959), Sanctuary (1961), The Reivers (1969), Tomorrow (1972, based on his story), and an uncredited Russian adaptation of Sanctuary entitled Cargo 200 (2007, aka Gruz 200).

Have you ever seen this one?

My last Angela movie will be Something for Everyone. I don’t know anything about it so I’m going into it blind.

If you want to read about some of the other movies I watched, you can find them here:

Bedknobs and Broomsticks

The Manchurian Candidate

National Velvet

The Pirates of Penzance

Gaslight

The Pirates of Penzance

Gaslight

Please Murder Me

Death on The Nile

The Court Jester

The Picture of Dorian Gray

A Life At Stake

Sources:

Paul Newman on the Lusty Time He Had Filming The Long Hot Summer with Joanne Woodward

https://lithub.com/paul-newman-on-the-lusty-time-he-had-filming-the-long-hot-summer-with-joanne-woodward/

Behind the Camera, The Long Hot Summer: https://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/308663/the-long-hot-summer#articles-reviews

The Long Hot Summer and The Newmans: https://vanguardofhollywood.com/the-long-hot-summer/

Lisa R. Howeler is a blogger, homeschool mom, and writes cozy mysteries.

You can find her Gladwynn Grant Mystery series HERE.

You can also find her on Instagram and YouTube.