fun movies

Comfy, Cozy Cinema: The Young In Heart

/ Lisa R. Howeler / 6 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:

Summer Movie Marathon: Gidget (1959)

/ Lisa R. Howeler / 9 Comments

This month I will be writing about classic summer movies that I’ve picked out on my own or that were suggested to me. These will be movies released before 1970.

Some will be campy, some will be about the cheesiest thing you’ve ever seen, but all will have an element of fun in them.

First up is Gidget (1959) starring Sandra Dee.

This movie had me all kinds of nervous and stressed, let me tell you.

First, they seemed to be rushing very young girls toward sex and romance way too early and that surprised me for a movie from the late 50s.

Second, while much of the scenes were meant to be funny, I just kept thinking about how dangerous many of the situations young Gidget was in were.

I was practically yelling at the TV at one point.

We start with Francine Lawerence in her bedroom and her friends are telling her it’s time she grew up and tried to get a man. She’s about to turn 17 and her friends are taking her to the beach so she can join them in trying to hunt men.

Of course, much of the movie is meant to be silly so when her mother asks why she doesn’t look excited to go, Francine’s friend says it’s because she’s going on her first “manhunt.”

The mom is a little shocked but sort of shrugs it off when Francine’s dad protests that she’s too young for that.

Francine is of the age when young girls look for boyfriends, her mother says.

Again, I was a bit shocked with this declaration but continued on.

On the beach, Francine’s friends undress to their bathing suits and do their best to catch the attention of a group of young men lounging on the beach next to their surf boards.

Francine isn’t as – ahem – developed as her friends so she doesn’t garner much attention.

The boys are also on to the girl’s ploys and mock and ignore them for the most part.

Francine would rather go swimming than catch boys anyhow so she sets out into the ocean and gets herself caught in some seaweed, which leads to her calling for help.

A young surfer named Jeffrey “Moondoggie” Matthews (James Darren) comes to her rescue and once she is rescued his friends mock him and Francine, but one of them offers to take Francine back to their hut and help her learn about life. Eek.

Francine is naïve and clueless about the flirting surfer so she ignores him and instead wants to know how she can get a surfboard too. She’d love to be part of the gang, she says.

They all wave her off and tell her to go home but the next day she is back at the beach to buy a surfboard and meets the Burt “The Big Kahuna” Vail, played by Cliff Robertson  – a man who is close to 30 but spends his days surfing the waves all over the world.

Francine eventually inserts herself into the group and gains the nickname Gidget from them. Moondoggie isn’t too happy with her being in the group because he knows his fellow surfers aren’t the nicest guys and will try to take advantage of her.

At point he has to rescue her from the first guy who suggested teaching her how life works – ahem again – and tells her to go home.

“The lessons you’re going to get here aren’t what you are looking for.”

And they aren’t because the lessons Gidget wants are ones that will teach her how to surf so she can fit in with the guys, especially Moondoggie, who she’s fallen for.

Meanwhile at home, while Dad was once nervous about his little girl becoming a manhunter, he decides he should use her to get in good with his boss by having her go out with the boss’s son who is visiting.

The word pimp came to my mind at this point, I’m sorry to say.

There is a ton of humor in this movie, even if I was cringing at some of the scenes with men trying to take advantage of Gidget’s innocence.

I didn’t like the idea that a girl is expected to start dating men at such a young age, even if it was a different time.

Still, I had some fun with the movie and liked the surfing and beach scenes, even if the surfing scenes were very fake.

I thought it was interesting that Elvis was the first choice to play Moondoggie but he was in the U.S. Army at the time. Luckily he went on to make some dumb beach movies on his own in the future, including Clam Bake, which is one my list to watch for this series.

The movie was based on the book Gidget, the Little Girl with Big Ideas by Frederick Kohner who based the main character on his daughter Kathy. According to Wikipedia, the screenplay was written by Gillian Houghton, who was then head writer of the soap opera The Secret Storm, using the pen name Gabrielle Upton. 

There were a few more Gidget movies made after this including Gidget Goes Hawaiian, Gidget Goes to Rome, Gidget Grows Up, Gidget Gets Married, and Gidget’s Summer Reunion.

Different actresses played Gidget in each movie.

There was also a series called Gidget that ran for one season in 1965 and starred Sally Fields.

The original movie is said to have kicked off the “beach genre” movies, a couple of which I plan to watch.

I didn’t look up a ton of reviews and trivia about this one but did see this excerpt of a review by Craig Butler in Allmovie notes: “Although the very title prompts snorts of derision from many, Gidget is actually not a bad little teenaged flick from the ’50s. Great art it definitely isn’t, but as frivolous, lighthearted entertainment, it more than fits the bill. Those who know it only by reputation will probably be surprised to find that it does attempt to deal with the problems of life as seen by a teenager—and that, while some of those attempts are silly, many of them come off quite well. It also paints a very convincing picture of the beach-bum lifestyle, much more so than the Frankie Avalon–Annette Funicello beach party movies.”

Have you ever seen Gidget or any of the other Gidget movies?

My complete Summer Movie Marathon list (with some additions possible):

Gidget (August 1)

Beach Blanket Bingo (August 8)

Mr. Hobbs Takes A Vacation (August 15)

Summertime (August 22)

Having A Wonderful Time (August 27)

Clambake (August 29)

‘Tis The Season Cinema: A Christmas Carol Goes Wrong

/ Lisa R. Howeler / 10 Comments

Shortly after we moved to our current house, my son and I were looking for a show to watch late at night and found a show called The Goes Wrong Show on BritBox. We clicked on it and were, quite frankly, bewildered by it.

It was a group of about seven people acting out a play and completely messing up lines, tripping off props, and being all-out insanely weird.

We weren’t sure if these people were really messing up their plays or if they were pretending to mess up a play, or  . . .what was going on.

We watched the first episode and laughed so hard that our sides hurt. Obviously, we eventually caught on that the whole show was meant to be a joke and that the actors were real actors playing fake actors on a show about actors.

Later we watched the episodes with The Husband and he laughed so hard I thought he was going to burst a blood vessel.

We watched the whole season and I have to say the Christmas episode was my favorite that first season. Flash forward to last year and we discovered this group — which we had since found out was called Mischief Theatre — had been featured in a special called A Christmas Carol Goes Wrong on the BBC.

Moving us up in the timeline to a couple of weeks ago and we arrive at the moment I suggested to Erin at Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs that we include A Christmas Carol Goes Wrong in our list of Christmas movies to watch for our ‘Tis The Season Cinema.  Comedy is featuring heavily on our movie watching list over the next couple of months because Erin and I both need heartwarming and funny in our lives right now.

With A Christmas Carol Goes Wrong we are getting more than just funny but also pure ridiculousness.

For a little background on the actor troupe who takes part in this Christmas special, according to Wikipedia, “Mischief Theatre is a British theatre company founded in 2008 by a group of students from The London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art in West London, and directed by Henry Lewis, Jonathan Sayer, and Henry Shields. The group originally began by doing improvised comedy shows, but by 2012 they expanded into comedic theatrical performances that include choreographed routines, jokes, and stunts.

The company is best known for its performances as the fictional theatre company, The Cornley Polytechnic Drama Society, who attempt several amateur performances that comedically go wrong.”

If you look up Mischief Theatre online, as I did after we became hooked on their television show, you’ll see that the cast are very accomplished stage actors, some of them having won Olivier’s and other prestigious writing and acting awards. Most of their work, incidentally, is performed live and is often improv as they interact with the audience during their performances.

On the surface, the entire performance of any of their shows seems simple and fairly stupid but when you think about the talent needed to recite the lines of the original play they are putting on (in this case A Christmas Carol) while also having to pretend to mess up their lines and other aspects of the play, you realize what talent these actors actually have.

The fact they only have seven cast members playing all the parts and remembering all the lines and where the various pratfalls need to happen make it even more amazing. Then there is the focus they need to keep acting, even with the chaos going on around them.

There are also storylines going on between cast members behind the scenes that carry on throughout the various episodes and specials.

In this particular special, the comedy group has taken over the BBC’s production of A Christmas Carol by kidnapping and dragging out the main stars, including Derek Jacobi, a famous British actor.  Actress Diana Rigg plays the narrator part of the time but literally has to “phone it in” because she is stuck in traffic.

Things, of course, go completely haywire and become even crazier when one of the actors believes he should be the lead actor and tries to knock out the director (Chris) to take over the lead as Scrooge. While trying to take out Chris, though, he injures other cast members or ends up destroying various sets.

Another pair of cast members are in a romantic relationship and things may, or may not, be on the rocks throughout the entire night, making the show even more entertaining. There is also a cast member who can’t remember any of his lines for most of the shows and in this one they think of a creative way to help him with that issue.

You can watch A Christmas Carol Goes Wrong in its entirety for free on YouTube:



Don’t blame me if you end up looking up their show and their production of Peter Pan Goes Wrong.

You can read up on Erin’s impression of this silly show on her blog.

Up next for our Christmas special features (the dates are when we are sharing our specials):

Nov. 24: White Christmas

Dec. 1: Muppets Christmas Carol

Dec. 8: Holiday Inn                                                                           

Dec. 15: It’s A Wonderful Life

Dec. 22: Charlie Brown Christmas and Emmett Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas