Showing posts with label Charles Laughton. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Charles Laughton. Show all posts
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| Charles Laughton as Tony Patucci |
This is the third film version of Sidney Howard's 1924 Pulitzer prize-winning play, and the only one to use his title. The story line -- later used by Frank Loesser in his brilliant musical theater piece The Most Happy Fella -- concerns a middle-aged vintner named Tony (Charles Laughton) who becomes infatuated with a pretty waitress named Amy (Carol Lombard), and asks for her hand in marriage -- but sends a photo of his younger, better-looking hired hand, Joe (William Gargan), instead of his own. When Amy arrives she's horrified to discover that the man she's been dreaming about is years older, uneducated, and rather homely, but her attraction to Joe is still there -- and vice versa ... Although you wouldn't first think of Laughton for the role of the Italian-American Tony Patucci, he's as superb as ever. Similarly, Lombard might not be considered the best casting but she is also excellent, as is Gargan [Strange Impersonation.] The biggest problem with the movie is that the production code was in effect, and there's an awful lot of moralizing and hand-wringing, and the ending is changed from happy to bittersweet [which kind of works anyway]. There's also an annoying priest, Father McKee (played by Frank Fay, who was Barbara Stanwyck's first husband), hovering over the whole movie like the literal embodiment of a censor. Tony is also a bit of an idiot, drunkenly falling off of a roof as he shows off for Amy [in the original version he is in an accident instead]. Despite its many flaws They Knew What They Wanted works because of the superior performances, good direction from Kanin, and a fine score by Alfred Newman. Karl Malden has a small role as Red. Playwright Howard did the screenplay for Dodsworth. Kanin also directed Next Time I Marry with Lucille Ball.
Verdict: Not all it could have been, but noteworthy for the acting. ***.
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| Laughton vs Karloff in a fight to the finish! |
"Don't think badly of me. Family affection was never my strong point."
"I'm sorry I can't invite you to the wedding, but I fear a man who's been dead for twenty years might cast a gloom over the company."
"The Sire De Maletroit's Door" is not one of Robert Louis Stevenson's more memorable short stories, but it was expanded into this interesting film which teams Charles Laughton and Boris Karloff and turns them into adversaries. Denis de Beaulieu (Richard Stapley/Wyler) is on the run from a murder charge when he happens upon an entrance to De Maletroit's manor house that locks firmly behind him. De Maletroit, sitting calmly in his parlor, informs Denis that he is his nephew -- by marriage -- and a sort of shotgun wedding is in the offer. Seems De Maletroit has a pretty niece, Blanche, (Sally Forrest), who is in love with a man who vanished, but whom her uncle wants married to a mountebank so as to make her life miserable. His motives become clearer as the film progresses, climaxing with a wild scene in a dungeon with a cell whose walls slowly and inexorably come closing together. Laughton is as wonderful as ever, Karloff is fine as a manservant who is loyal to another, and Stapley is okay, although Sally Forrest is more decorative than anything else. The Strange Door is not a great movie, and one might have wished for more interaction between its two famous stars, but Laughton is given some great dialogue and delivers it with his customary aplomb.
Verdict: Anything with these two ... ***.