Showing posts with label Mary Astor. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mary Astor. Show all posts
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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.
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| Rudy Vallee and Claudette Colbert |
"Men don't get smarter as they get older, they just lose their hair."
Geri (Geraldine) Jeffers is married to an engineer, Tom (Joel McCrea), who can't seem to get a break. Geri figures that they would be better off if they divorced, and if she married someone wealthy she could get him the $100,000 he needs for his dream project, a "suspended" [!] airport. Although broke, she manages to make her way to Florida via the zany members of the "ale and quail club" and meets a man named J. D. Hackensacker (Rudy Vallee), who is fabulously rich. Tom flies down to stop Geri from getting a divorce and winds up in the clutches of J. D.'s man-hungry sister, the Princess Centimillia (Mary Astor), who thinks he's Geri's brother... The Palm Beach Story is a delightful comedy with fine performances and some hilarious dialogue. Colbert and Astor come off best, and McCrea and Vallee are quite good although they are not especially gifted comic actors. Robert Dudley almost steals the show as a sweet old man who wants to rent the Jeffers' apartment and winds up giving Geri money for the back rent. There's a riotous scene when the Ale and Quail Club shoot up the club car with Fred "Snowflake" Toones [Seventeen] comical as the nervous and then horrified bartender. Other notables in the cast include William Demarest, Mantan Moreland (dining club waiter); Franklin Pangborn [The Bank Dick] as an apartment manager; and Sig Arno as Toto, the princess' latest, unintelligible boyfriend. This is a charming and very funny movie. You may be confused by the frenetic credit sequence, in which there seems to be two Claudette Colberts, but all is explained (more or less) at the conclusion. Sturges also wrote and directed Unfaithfully Yours, which is vastly inferior to this.
Verdict: A classic comedy. ***1/2.
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| Mary Astor and Kenneth MacKenna |
"It isn't wise to love anything so much that to lose it almost kills you."
Struggling novelist Freddie Williston (Kenneth MacKenna) meets May (Mary Astor) in the crowd during the Armistice Day celebration, and discovers that she's just bought a copy of his book. Before long they are married and a child is on the way, along with a string of bestsellers. Had Those We Love looked at the life of an unsuccessful or fair-to-middling author it might have had more dramatic heft, but once Freddie becomes a rich and famous author, the only complication that can be thrown into the couple's lives comes in the form of Valerie (Lilyan Tashman), a married vamp who has set her cap for Freddie. May jumps to conclusions about Val's relationship with her husband, and inadvertently makes matters worse. Will this family survive this crisis, and will Valerie go on her merry way? Those We Love manages to be entertaining because of the cast. Mary Astor is as wonderful as ever, while MacKenna has charm to spare. Tommy Conlon [The Sign of the Cross] is swell as their son, Ricky, who might be as wise as both of his parents. Virginia Sale [Lovin' the Ladies] scores as the maid Bertha, as does Tashman [One Heavenly Night] as the lynx-like (if not terribly beautiful) man-stealer, Valerie. From the first Freddie seems more interested in making money than in crafting lasting literature, so one can imagine his books are as superficial as he is. Those We Love misses virtually every opportunity to say anything about the writing life, the publishing business, or the creative process, and was adapted from a Broadway play. Florey directed The Beast with Five Fingers and many, many others.
Verdict: Fairly creaky, but the acting puts it over. **1/2.