Showing posts with label Jeff Chandler. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jeff Chandler. Show all posts
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| Jeff Chandler gives one of his best performances |
Flashy Christine Carroll (Loretta Young) is given a package by her fiance, Mike (Alex Nicol), and suddenly finds herself arrested and in jail despite her truthful protestations of innocence. She trains to be a nurse in prison and winds up ministering to a handsome vet named Steve Kimberly (Jeff Chandler), with whom she falls in love and vice versa. Her parole officer (Helen Wallace) warns her that Steve must be informed of her prison record before they can marry, so an apprehensive Christine manages to get around this, and a child soon follows. Then Mike comes back into her life and everything starts unraveling ... Because of You is an entertaining soap opera that soon becomes a study of frustrated mother love, with good performances from Young (in a Joan Crawford-type role) and Chandler, who is at his best in this. Notable supporting players include Alexander Scourby as a doctor at the veteran's hospital; Frances Dee as Steve's lovely sister, Susan; Lynne Roberts as his friend, Rosemary; Gayle Reed as little Kim; and Arthur Space as a judge. Pevny also directed Chandler in Female on the Beach and Foxfire.
Verdict: Pleasant enough if unremarkable soaper with two solid lead performances. **1/2.
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| Jane Russell, Dan Duryea and Jeff Chandler |
A wealthy young woman named Amanda (Jane Russell) gets a lift from a handsome half-Apache mining engineer [who seems to have mixed emotions about his heritage], Jonathan "Dart" Dartland (Jeff Chandler), and the two rapidly fall in love and get married. Amanda must deal with the culture shock of moving out of luxury to a comparative shack in a mining town, and Dart has to deal with jealousy and a certain void in his emotions, as well as some self-esteem issues. The movie doesn't bang you on the head with the characters' problems, which is all the better, and the leads give good performances. Chandler has a limited bag of tricks but he makes them work within the role, and Jane gives a vital, warm and appealingly feminine performance instead of playing it hooker-hard as she often does in other movies. She and Chandler work up a lot of chemistry, which the latter didn't have with all of his leading ladies [such as the unfortunate June Allyson]. Frieda Inescort [The Alligator People] is fine as Russell's high society mother, but Austrian Celia Lovksy is ludicrously miscast as Dart's Native American mother, especially with that thick Viennese accent! Dan Duryea scores as the alcoholic doctor in the mining camp as does Mara Corday as his nurse, Maria, even if it makes no sense that the doc is smitten with Amanda but can't see the even more gorgeous and buxom Maria for dust. "Foxfire" refers to an abandoned Indian mine that Dart suspects has hidden gold in it, and wants to work. When all is said and done, however, Foxfire can't quite rise above its minor melodrama-romance status, despite some unusual and interesting elements. Whether Foxfire is accurate as regards to Native American affairs and attitudes in the fifties is debatable. NOTE: Jeff Chander wrote the lyrics for the title tune (with music by Henry Mancini) and also did the vocal, quite creditably. Nice score by Frank Skinner.
Verdict: Nice technicolor and a solid cast never hurt. **1/2.
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| Allyson and Chandler at the sideshow |
A STRANGER IN MY ARMS (1959). Director: Helmut Kautner.
Korean war widow Christina Beasley (June Allyson) and her mother-in-law Virgilnie (Mary Astor) are both mourning the death of son and husband, Donald (Peter Graves). The women, especially Virgilnie, are hoping that Major Pike Yarnell (Jeff Chander) will use his influence to get Donald a posthumous Medal of Honor, even though it's given in only the most extreme of circumstances. At first Pike doesn't even want to come to a ceremony for the man who was his navigator, but his attraction to widow Christina gets the better of him. As Pike and Chris find themselves increasingly drawn to one another, Chris must face the reality of her marriage, and Virgilnie must confront the even more difficult reality of her relationship with her son, as well as what happened on the life raft that Pike and Donald shared in the days before Donald's death (shown in flashback). A Stranger in My Arms certainly sets up an intriguing situation, but it's still rather dull, and as a romance it misfires because the leads have no chemistry. Not only is the sexless Allyson a mismatch for the virile Chandler, but she's so short next to him that there are times you get the strange sensation that Pike is pitching woo to a circus midget [not that there's anything wrong with that]! Allyson and Chandler offer competent performances, but nothing more than that, leaving the acting honors to Mary Astor, who has an especially good scene reacting to a note left for her by her son. As Donald's bimbo sister, Sandra Dee seems like a moron. Charles Coburn plays Donald's wealthy grandfather, who thinks he can buy anything, even a medal; he's fine but appears too briefly. Conrad Nagel is suitably low-key as Astor's put-upon husband and Graves is adequate but unimpressive in the flashbacks on the life raft. Kautner did a few American films and then went back to Germany.
Verdict: Intriguing situations of which the most is not made. **1/2.
Drummer: "How do you like your coffee?"
Lynn: "Alone!"
Wealthy widow Lynn Markham (Joan Crawford) moves into a beautiful beach house her husband owned that had formerly been leased to another wealthy widow, Eloise Crandell (Judith Evelyn). Eloise took a header off the deck onto the rocks below, and homicide is suspected, and the chief suspect is a handsome hustler named Drummer (Jeff Chandler), who has now set his sights on Lynn. Drummer has two sleazy associates who pretend to be his aunt and uncle, Osbert (Cecil Kellaway) and Queenie (Natalie Schafer), but Lynn gives the both of them a good dressing down. Unfortunately, Drummer has something the other two don't have, and that's sex appeal, so Lynn finds herself falling for the guy despite her better instincts. But has she stepped out of the frying pan into the fire? Female on the Beach has a workable premise and some good dialogue, but something's missing, and that's veracity and in-depth characterization. As essayed by Crawford, Lynn seems too smart not to walk away from Drummer when he says things like "I don't hate woman -- I just hate the way they are." True, it takes him some time to wear away her resistance, with her telling him initially "You're about as friendly as a suction pump!" The two leads aren't bad, although in some of their scenes talking of the past they seem like college students in an acting class. Kellaway [The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms] and Schafer [Repeat Performance] are fine, as is Jan Sterling [Johnny Belinda] as a real estate lady and former flame of Drummer's. Evelyn [Rear Window] makes an impression despite her limited screen time -- the opening and a couple of flashbacks. Charles Drake shows up now and then as a cop investigating Eloise's suspicious death [one has to wonder how such a tiny, frail thing as Evelyn could cause such damage to a wooden railing even if she were jet-propelled through it?] Female on the Beach is somewhat entertaining, but it's cheap, tawdry, and often unbelievable. Pevney also directed Man of a Thousand Faces with James Cagney. As an actor he appeared in such films as Body and Soul.
Verdict: Flaccid suspenser. **1/2.
"This is just a question -- not the bell for the next round." -- Laura
"What are you doing here? You belong on an island with nobody on it." -- ditto
Laura with no last name, the oldest fashion model in the world (Esther Williams was nearing forty when she made this film) is in Rome when she gets a visit from her married lover's lawyer, Wally Drucker (Carlos Thompson). She decides to return home with him in his plane, but they make a crash landing on a small island located near Sardinia. The only inhabitants of the island are Urbano (Eduardo De Filippo) and his daughter, Costanza (Rossana Podesta), who is betrothed to a strange man named Moore (Jeff Chandler), who came to the island seeking peace and isolation and never left. As Laura and Wally try to fix up a yacht to take them off the island, Laura and Moore find themselves attracted, even as strange acts of sabotage occur on the boat, and Costanza's handsome ex-lover, Gavino (Rik Battaglia), shows up now and then in his rowboat gunning for Moore. Laura makes up her mind to find out exactly who "Moore" is and where he came from. If you think this movie might be interesting, be forewarned that it's not a fraction as entertaining as it sounds. There's a lot of empty posturing with no substance underneath, hollow, under-written characters, and lead actors who are competent but completely miscast. While there's what passes for smouldering passion between Laura and Moore, and Wally seems hot for everyone, the movie has an erotic charge that registers zero. With more than one climax, it seems to take forever to finally end. Thompson seems to have been dubbed by Paul Frees, and the pseudo-romantic music, some of which is nice, is by Hans Salter. Wilson also directed The Big Boodle with Errol Flynn.
Verdict: The only memorable thing about this tedious mess is the title. *1/2.
This lamentable biopic purports to be the life story of famous stage and screen actress Jeanne Eagels, but it comes off more like a travesty, almost a parody, of movie star biographies. Part of the problem is the casting and atrocious performance of Kim Novak, who has been seen to much better advantage in such movies as Vertigo and Middle of the Night. Apparently given no help at all in shaping her role by director George Sidney, Novak -- who does have a (very) few good moments -- portrays Eagels by lowering her voice an octave and developing an imperious manner and never seeming remotely human -- in fact at times she's more grotesque than anything else. She confuses over-acting with "Great Acting" and even has trouble with simple line readings. Although there was certainly enough drama in the real Eagels's life, with two marriages, a drug problem, and death at 39, Jeanne Eagels needs to make up even more slanderous stuff [her family filed a law suit, but you can't libel the dead in the U.S.]. In the movie an invented alcoholic actress named Elsie Desmond (a creditable Virginia Grey) brings Eagels the script for the play "Rain," hoping the latter will interest a producer in mounting the play as a comeback for her. Instead, Eagels steals the play away from Desmond, who then commits suicide. Eagels is seen as being similarly ruthless in other sequences as well. The two men in her life, one of whom she briefly marries, are portrayed by Jeff Chandler [who basically gives a good accounting of himself] and Charles Drake, who is okay as her husband. As Eagels' stern if loving acting coach, Agnes Moorehead gives a competent performance but at times seems affected by the movie's sheer badness. Murray Hamilton does his typical sleazy, oily, repulsive shtick as a vaudeville performer who tries to rape Jeanne. The movie mixes facts with fantasy, such as when Eagels is suspended from the stage for several months by Actors Equity [true] and has her running to vaudeville when she actually went to Hollywood to make (mostly silent) movies [one of which is inexplicably shown at the end of Jeanne Eagels, only it's a musical!]. In actuality, Eagels had a triumph in the first sound version of The Letter, and was posthumously nominated for an Oscar, but this, incredibly, is never mentioned, even though it would have added up to an effective and bittersweet conclusion. Drake and Grey played a married couple in All That Heaven Allows and George Sidney also directed Bye Bye Birdie, for which he was more suited.
Verdict: Eagels certainly deserved better than this miserable schlock. *1/2.