Showing posts with label Joseph Pevney. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Joseph Pevney. 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.
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.
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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 ... ***.