Fluffy WWII Musical

Summer is the best time to watch old movies. There isn’t really anything on TV, except reruns. Since I saw the shows I like the first time, I really only watch reruns of crime shows like Law and Order or Without a Trace. But honestly, I don’t need an excuse to watch old movies. It’s just a good reasoning -- especially since I don’t have cable.

And tonight I got to watch another Van Johnson movie. Yes, my curiosity in this popular 1940s/1950s movie star has spread, and I’ve got a couple people supplying me with his movies. Two Girls and a Sailor was actually Johnson’s first top billing movie -- as well as Gloria DeHaven and June Allyson’s first big parts. It’s a pretty fluffy story about two female musicians. The Deyo Sisters – Patsy (Allyson) and Jean (DeHaven) – have an act at a club in what I am going to assume is California during WWII. So the rather thin plot is stretched out by a lot of performances by other musicians and singers, including Lena Horne, Jimmy Durante (who is surprisingly funny!), Gracie Allen, and several orchestras.

The story – albeit thin – is pretty good, but standard. Jean and Patsy have their nightclub act, but after hours, they run a canteen for servicemen in their home. How they manage to afford to supply all the sailors and soldiers with sandwiches and pop is never quite clear, but taking into consideration the size of their apartment, they must be making pretty good money at the club. Jean is the cuter sister and has an admirer who keeps sending her orchids. One night they are inviting young men to their canteen and Jean gets to invite a sailor (Johnson) to the canteen. He isn’t known by his name -- he's mostly just “Hey Sailor.” The girls sing and get to know the sailor and another soldier, Frank (Tom Drake). These are the two rivals for Jean’s affections, but Patsy seems to like the sailor too. What will happen?

The girls mention that they wished they had the warehouse across the street from their apartment, and the next day someone shows up at their door with the keys and the deed. "Someone" has decided that the Deyo Sisters deserve to get what they wish for -- but who is this "someone?" The sisters explore the warehouse, which turns out not to be haunted by ghosts, but rather by Billy Kidd (Durante) who they used to tour with as children. And this isn’t an ordinary warehouse -- it's a theatrical warehouse which makes it so much easier to clean up and transform into a spectacular nightclub/canteen. (It’s an MGM musical, so I didn’t expect any realism.)

Jean continues to get on well with the sailor, much to the dismay of Patsy. She even ends up having a dream about it. It’s a pretty standard dream sequence, although the sailor shows up in an admiral’s uniform, complete with enormous epaulets. The most memorable part of the dream is the catfight between sisters over the sailor. Seriously girls, is he really worth fighting over?

The next morning Billy manages to overhear one of the assistants with the club’s overhauling mention that "someone" can afford to pay extra -- it's J. Dykeman Brown who is paying for this! He tells Patsy, who manages to track down J. Dykeman Brown, who is old enough to be Jean’s grandfather! It turns out that he’s J. Dukeman Brown, and there’s a J. Dykeman Brown II, and finally, J. Dykeman Brown the Third -- the sailor! Johnny has been hiding a secret -- he's worth sixty million dollars! Patsy, of course, is heartbroken, so the oldest J. Dykeman Brown comforts her by saying "At your age I wouldn’t have fallen in love with your sister."

The nightclub opens again, complete with a plethora of musical numbers. Patsy reveals to Jean "someone’s" real identity, and she is more happy with his cash than with him. Jean decides to leave to do a single act in Buffalo, but before leaving, the Deyo Sisters need to do one last act together. Jean realizes that she really doesn’t love Johnny -- she's in love with the Texan soldier Frank who calls her ma’am. (It really is adorable.) She’s going to move to Texas and raise onions with him. Yay. So Johnny is left for Jean to have -- and he’s realized that he’s in love with her, not Jean. All the couples are complete, so all that’s left is for the final big number.

Two Girls and a Sailor is pretty chintzy and predictable, but I enjoyed it. They don’t make movies like this anymore -- musicals like this have gone out of vogue, and nightclubs like the one portrayed in the movie don’t seem to exist any more. It’s a nice look at an era gone by.

World War II Films and Philosophy

I finally watched Saving Private Ryan today. What a powerful movie. I’m actually kind of glad that I didn’t see it in the theater – it was very moving to see, but I think it would have been even more overwhelming if I had seen it ten feet high in the dark with no distractions. I almost had the opportunity to see it when it came out – my dad picked me up one weekend when I came home from school in Milwaukee, and it was playing at a second run theater. I was the only person in the family who would go see it with him, but when we got to theater, it had stopped showing, despite what the sign outside said. So, six years later, I finally saw it.

I had heard about the first twenty minutes and the graphic carnage it showed of the D-Day landing at Omaha Beach. It lived up to its reputation. The senselessness of war became obvious as I watched the men try to get on the beach and just die, creating piles of bodies. I had heard about the beaches being washed with blood, but the movie made it real. The moments of silence – as I later learned were supposed to be Tom Hank’s character’s moments of deafness – seemed poignant and almost worse than hearing the whiz of bullets and explosions. What I imagined was going on was almost worse – and it seemed to point out the hopelessness of war, how it doesn’t make any sense.

The second act – when Hanks and company go off in search of Private Ryan – proved to be the typical narrative of a WWII movie. Although, I might say, it was rather refreshing to have average, normal, what I would think are representative soldiers, instead of a cast of characters like many of my other favorite WWII movies (The Dirty Dozen, The Great Escape, etc.). I read Ebert’s review of the movie afterwards, and I thought his observation that the translator (who I totally thought was Henry Thomas – he and Jeremy Davies could be twins!) was the point of entry for him into the movie. I agreed – I felt that if I were in a war, I would be the civilian unprepared for the realities of actual fighting. His confusion with the war – and especially his expectations for the company to accept him – gave me a way to understand how to come to terms with the rest of the film.

The third act – after Ryan is found and the company defends the bridge was probably the most interesting. After recently seen The Bridge of the River Kwai, I found this part of protecting a bridge fairly interesting. And I began to identify the characters more strongly – they had actually bonded before the Germans came. I understood the fighting in vague terms – what they were trying to defend and how their movements affected one another. Although I was slightly disturbed by my reaction to the translator’s inability to fight with the Germans – I kept urging him to go upstairs and save his comrades. Well, this wasn’t a Hollywood movie, and he couldn’t manage to pull himself together until it was too late.

Saving Private Ryan was a great movie – one that I don’t think I will soon forget. It makes me think about war differently, although I still believe that WWII is the main touchstone of the 20th century for Americans. It is hard to watch a movie about a war right now and not think about the differences between back then and the war we are fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. Things seemed so much clearer back then – the enemies were more black and white – you were either Axis or Allies, German or American. WWII seems to be a war that we as Americans keep going back to, perhaps because it has an ending that is easily understood. Good triumphed over evil. WWII was also so well documented, even as the war was going on, Hollywood made films to inspire those on the homefront. I’m always a fan of watching the Memorial Day marathons on various cable channels, and the amount of WWII movies always outnumbers WWI and all the other various wars or conflicts that the US has fought in. Perhaps going back to WWII and creating fiction out of the facts makes us hope that we can create some understanding out of the wars fought afterwards – that understanding reasons for a war that is clearer can help us understand why the more confusing wars were fought afterwards.

But enough philosophy for now -- I loved the use of color in the movie. It was washed out and felt real. The use of handheld cameras for the beach scenes and most of the combat scenes made it feel less like a Hollywood movie made in the 1990s harkening back to 1944, but as if it could have been a documentary, that a camera crew followed the search for Private Ryan. The opening and closing shots of the transluscent American flag was just right. Seeing Saving Private Ryan makes me question how Shakespeare in Love managed to win the Best Picture Oscar over this film. I have no doubt which one will be more talked about fifty years in the future -- and it will not have Ben Affleck in it.

One of My Favorite Vans

Van Johnson, that is. My friend Shayna has kindly offered to tape two of his movies for me recently -- Easy to Wed, a remake of Libeled Lady, and Invitation. I watched Invitation this afternoon, and what a hoot it was! It is a total soaper -- Dorothy McGuire plays a woman (Ellen) with a heart condition. She can't be active and ends up leading a rather quiet life. Her father dotes on her, and after finding out she only has a year to live, he sets her up with Dan (Johnson) -- a struggling architect -- who he tempts with the offer of work. Dan doesn't necessarily take him up on directly, but he does end up marrying Dorothy before falling in love with her. Flash forward ten months -- and Ellen finds out! Maud, Dan's ex-girlfriend, is extremely jealous and sends her an invitation to a dinner for a heart specialist -- and Ellen finally puts two and two together and makes four. She confronts her father and Dan. Dan tells her the truth -- he didn't exactly love her when they got married, but he does now, and he's found her a specialist (from Baltimore!) who will operate on her. Ah, happy ending, and Ellen lives to see the spring.

Invitation was fairly entertaining, but primarily only as a soap. I wouldn't recommend seeing it unless you're a die-hard Johnson or McGuire fan. The story is pretty far-fetched, but it seems a relict from the early '50s.

FILE UNDER: Classic Film ; Van Johnson

Golden Boy

More old Hollywood gossip -- I've been busy reading biographies this week. Golden Boy: The Untold Story of William Holden is the only biography of William Holden and it is an incredibly crappy book. The author writes the biography as if he was there, transcribing the conversations from a variety of Hollywood stars. After I finished the first chapter, I wanted to return the book to the library, but I decided to carry on to get a quasi-real story about Holden.

And what a sordid story I got. Basically, he was an alcoholic. Holden had to drink before he was able to act in movies, and much is made of the couple belts he would take before a scene. The drinking eventually lead to his downfall -- and actually caused his death. Holden died from a laceration to his forehead which was caused by hitting his head during a bout of heavy drinking. He apparently remained conscious for half an hour or so after the injury but never realized he should phone for help and died.

The author coyly refers to his reputation as a lady's man, and the affairs he apparently had with his co-stars, but I didn't get many details on many of them. The most interesting is that he was going to leave his wife for Audrey Hepburn after starring in Sabrina. But she wanted to have kids, and he no longer could have them, thanks to surgery. (Snip-snip!)

I think I may be a little harsh on the bio -- but seriously, the writing style was awful. Leonard Maltin sums it up in his mini-bio by saying, "Bob Thomas' melancholy biography, "Golden Boy," revealed that the handsome, self-assured actor so admired by men and women alike onscreen was in fact a man fraught with insecurity who essentially drank himself to an early grave."

FILE UNDER: Biography ; Books on Film

Get Happy

I just finished reading a biography about Judy Garland, aptly titled Get Happy: The Life of Judy Garland. Now, I knew that Garland had a fairly messed up life. Anyone who has five husbands has got to be troubled (just look at Zsa Zsa Gabor, Elizabeth Taylor, and the current star heading that way, J-Lo), but I didn't realize the depth of her problems. The book is a quick read -- despite its 500+ pages, I managed to read it in an evening. It just reveals so much about Garland, but doesn't seem to verify any of the details. The author has extensive footnoting, an enormous bibliography (including several books I've read!), and a large list of people that he has interviewed in order to write the book, but it didn't seem to ring very true with me as I was reading it. I believe the general outlines of his work -- Garland was so troubled, and her childhood problems with her closeted gay father and her demanding mother must have created some of the issues she had with sex.

I read a biography of Garland years ago -- back when I became an old movie fan -- and I remember feeling sorry for Garland. Her life story made me cry. But now, over ten years later, I don't have as much sympathy for her. Her life was awful, yes. She was controlled with pills given to her by her boss L.B. Mayer and her mother. But it seems as though she never really took responsibility for very long. She reinvented herself, became Judy Garland III and conquered the stage -- but it never lasted long enough. She seems to fit the stereotype of the old Romantic poets -- they had to die young, or else they would become irrelevant. Garland had to have drama in her life or else it wasn't worth living.

File under: Biography; Books on Film

AFI 100 Years...100 Movies

This list came out when I was a freshman in college, way back in the fall of 1998. I've been working slowly at seeing all 100. I'm almost half-way (seen 49!) -- so here's the list so far. I've bolded the ones I've seen, and * the ones that I own.

1. CITIZEN KANE (1941)* (DVD)
2. CASABLANCA (1942)* (DVD)
3. THE GODFATHER (1972)* (VHS)
4. GONE WITH THE WIND (1939)* (VHS)
5. LAWRENCE OF ARABIA (1962)* (DVD)
6. THE WIZARD OF OZ (1939)
7. THE GRADUATE (1967)
8. ON THE WATERFRONT (1954)
9. SCHINDLER'S LIST (1993)
10. SINGIN' IN THE RAIN (1952)* (DVD and VHS)
11. IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE (1946)* (VHS)
12. SUNSET BOULEVARD (1950)* (DVD)
13. THE BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI (1957)
14. SOME LIKE IT HOT (1959)
15. STAR WARS (1977)* (VHS -- old version without additional special FX!)
16. ALL ABOUT EVE (1950)
17. THE AFRICAN QUEEN (1951)* (VHS)
18. PSYCHO (1960)* (taped off TV)
19. CHINATOWN (1974)
20. ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST (1975)
21. THE GRAPES OF WRATH (1940)
22. 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (1968)
23. THE MALTESE FALCON (1941)
24. RAGING BULL (1980)
25. E.T. THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL (1982)
26. DR. STRANGELOVE (1964)
27. BONNIE AND CLYDE (1967)
28. APOCALYPSE NOW (1979)
29. MR. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON (1939)
30. THE TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE (1948)
31. ANNIE HALL (1977)
32. THE GODFATHER PART II (1974)
33. HIGH NOON (1952)
34. TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD (1962)
35. IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT (1934)* (DVD)
36. MIDNIGHT COWBOY (1969)
37. THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES (1946)
38. DOUBLE INDEMNITY (1944)
39. DOCTOR ZHIVAGO (1965)
40. NORTH BY NORTHWEST (1959)* (VHS)
41. WEST SIDE STORY (1961)* (VHS)
42. REAR WINDOW (1954)* (DVD)
43. KING KONG (1933)
44. THE BIRTH OF A NATION (1915)
45. A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE (1951)
46. A CLOCKWORK ORANGE (1971)
47. TAXI DRIVER (1976)
48. JAWS (1975)
49. SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS (1937)
50. BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID (1969)* (VHS)
51. THE PHILADELPHIA STORY (1940)* (VHS)
52. FROM HERE TO ETERNITY (1953)
53. AMADEUS (1984)
54. ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT (1930)
55. THE SOUND OF MUSIC (1965)* (VHS)
56. M*A*S*H (1970)* (VHS)
57. THE THIRD MAN (1949)
58. FANTASIA (1940)
59. REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE (1955)
60. RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK (1981)* (taped off HBO)
61. VERTIGO (1958)
62. TOOTSIE (1982)
63. STAGECOACH (1939)
64. CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND (1977)
65. THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS (1991)
66. NETWORK (1976)
67. THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE (1962)* (DVD)
68. AN AMERICAN IN PARIS (1951)* (DVD)
69. SHANE (1953)
70. THE FRENCH CONNECTION (1971)
71. FORREST GUMP (1994)
72. BEN-HUR (1959)
73. WUTHERING HEIGHTS (1939)
74. THE GOLD RUSH (1925)
75. DANCES WITH WOLVES (1990)
76. CITY LIGHTS (1931)
77. AMERICAN GRAFFITI (1973)
78. ROCKY (1976)
79. THE DEER HUNTER (1978)
80. THE WILD BUNCH (1969)
81. MODERN TIMES (1936)
82. GIANT (1956)
83. PLATOON (1986)
84. FARGO (1996)
85. DUCK SOUP (1933)
86. MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY (1935)
87. FRANKENSTEIN (1931)
88. EASY RIDER (1969)
89. PATTON (1970)
90. THE JAZZ SINGER (1927)
91. MY FAIR LADY (1964)* (VHS)
92. A PLACE IN THE SUN (1951)
93. THE APARTMENT (1960)* (DVD)
94. GOODFELLAS (1990)
95. PULP FICTION (1994)* (taped from college -- still haven't managed to watch it!)
96. THE SEARCHERS (1956)
97. BRINGING UP BABY (1938)* (off TV)
98. UNFORGIVEN (1992)* (DVD)
99. GUESS WHO'S COMING TO DINNER (1967)
100. YANKEE DOODLE DANDY (1942)

File under: Lists

My 5001 Nights at the Movies

I've decided that my main blog has become a little too occupied by the movies I watch. So I decided to make a blog devoted strictly to movies. And of course, old Hollywood gossip. I got the title (kind of) from a book that I won as the best essayist overall in a film class I took my freshman year in college. The book that I won was actually not called Watching in the Dark, as I thought it was, but Awake in the Dark: An anthology of American film criticism, 1915 to the present.

So here I'll post lists of AFI 100 movies and comment on the ones that I like and stuff like that. My Turner Classic Movies love -- despite not having cable -- will be proudly displayed. And I will share old Hollywood gossip from the biographies I read. It should be a good time. Moving to Maryland has reawoken my love of old movies, and I actually have a couple friends here who are just as much into old films -- and new films -- as I am, perhaps even more so.

File under: News and Notes