Too Many Girls (George Abbott, 1940)

Hal Le Roy, Lucille Ball, Richard Carlson, Eddie Bracken, Desi Arnaz in Too Many Girls

Cast: Lucille Ball, Richard Carlson, Ann Miller, Eddie Bracken, Frances Langford, Desi Arnaz, Hal Le Roy, Libby Bennett, Harry Shannon, Douglas Walton, Chester Clute, Tiny Person, Ivy Scott, Byron Shores, Van Johnson. Screenplay: John Twist, based on a play by George Marion Jr. Cinematography: Frank Redman. Art direction: Van Nest Polglase, Carroll Clark. Film editing: William Hamilton. Songs: Richard Rodgers, Lorenz Hart.

When Desi met Lucy -- that's the most memorable thing about this silly college musical that was directed on stage by George Abbott, who brought over several members of the original cast when he was hired to make the film version at RKO. It was designed to be a vehicle for Lucille Ball, an RKO contract player who hadn't been in the stage production and whose singing voice wasn't up to the demands of the Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart songs of the original show, so she was dubbed by Trudy Erwin. Among the cast hired out of the original were Eddie Bracken, Hal Le Roy, and Desi Arnaz, as well as a young chorus boy, Van Johnson, who has a couple of lines but goes uncredited. Although Arnaz is paired in most of the film with Ann Miller, he and Ball hit it off when they weren't on screen and married shortly after the movie wrapped. The story is nonsense about Connie Casey (Ball), a playgirl whose father wants her to settle down and go to college at his alma mater, Pottawatomie, in New Mexico. But he also hires some bodyguards, four young college football players, to keep her out of trouble. And so it goes, as the four bodyguards lead the Pottawatomie football team to a string of victories, and one of them, Clint Kelly (Richard Carlson), falls hard for Connie. It's very loose-jointed stuff, with some lively musical numbers spotlighting Arnaz, Miller, Frances Langford, and a large company of dancers directed by LeRoy Prinz, but a lot of dull filler in between. It's amusing to see Eddie Bracken before he got stereotyped as a doofus in Preston Sturges movies, and a crewcut Richard Carlson before he wound up as the very square star of such 1950s sci-fi movies as It Came From Outer Space (Jack Arnold, 1953) and Creature From the Black Lagoon (Arnold, 1954). 

Roberta (William A. Seiter, 1935)

Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire in Roberta

Cast: Irene Dunne, Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Randolph Scott, Helen Westley, Claire Dodd, Victor Varconi, Luis Alberni, Ferdinand Munier, Torben Meyer, Adrian Rosley, Bodil Rosing. Screenplay: Jane Murfin, Sam Mintz, Allan Scott, Glenn Tryon, based on a play by Otto A. Harbach and a novel by Alice Duer Miller. Cinematography: Edward Cronjager. Art direction: Van Nest Polglase, Carroll Clark. Film editing: William Hamilton. Music: Jerome Kern, Max Steiner.

If Roberta is less well-known than most of the Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers movies, it's partly because it was out of circulation for a long time after 1945, when MGM bought up the rights to the film and the Broadway musical on which it was based, planning to remake it in Technicolor as a vehicle for Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra. That plan fell through, and the actual remake, Lovely to Look At (Mervyn LeRoy, 1952) with Kathryn Grayson, Howard Keel, Red Skelton, and Marge and Gower Champion, is nothing special. But MGM's hold on the property meant that, unlike the other Astaire-Rogers films, it didn't show up on television until the 1970s. But it was also a kind of throwback to the first of their movies, Flying Down to Rio (Thornton Freeland, 1933), in that they weren't the top-billed stars of Roberta, and their plot is secondary to that of the star, Irene Dunne, and her leading man, Randolph Scott. It doesn't matter much: What we remember from the film are the great Astaire-Rogers dance numbers, "I'll Be Hard to Handle," "I Won't Dance," and the reprises of "Lovely to Look At" and "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes." Scott's inability to sing resulted in the big number for his character in the Broadway version, "You're Devastating," being cut from the song score of the movie. "I Won't Dance" was brought in from another Jerome Kern musical, and Kern and Jimmy McHugh composed that fashion-show/beauty-pageant classic "Lovely to Look At," with lyrics by Dorothy Fields, for the film, earning Roberta its only Oscar nomination. Except when Astaire and Rogers are doing their magic, the film is a little draggy, and Dunne and Scott strike no sparks. Look for a blond Lucille Ball, draped in a feathery wrap, as one of the models in the fashion show.

Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House (H.C. Potter, 1948)

Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House (H.C. Potter, 1948)

Cast: Cary Grant, Myrna Loy, Melvyn Douglas, Reginald Denny, Sharyn Moffett, Connie Marshall, Louise Beavers, Ian Wolfe, Harry Shannon, Tito Vuolo, Nestor Paiva, Jason Robards Sr., Lurene Tuttle, Lex Barker, Emory Parnell. Screenplay: Norman Panama, Melvin Frank, based on a novel by Eric Hodgins. Cinematography: James Wong Howe. Art direction: Carroll Clark, Albert S. D'Agostino. Film editing: Harry Marker. Music: Leigh Harline.

Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House was made during the boom in house construction that followed World War II, so it had a ready audience in young couples with dreams of lovely homes. That audience tends to regenerate, so it's no surprise that the original film was loosely remade in 1986 as The Money Pit (Richard Benjamin) and even more loosely in 2007 as Are We Done Yet? (Steve Carr). The original is the best, of course, thanks largely to its trio of stars: Cary Grant, Myrna Loy, and Melvyn Douglas bring their immense charm and comedy skills to what is essentially a routine domestic sitcom. The pitfall in such a story is predictability: We know that every plan the Blandingses make will go awry, and usually in ways we can see coming a mile away. And the film has a smug racism characteristic of its era: A "faithful retainer" played by Louise Beavers, who seems to have no life of her own outside of serving the Blandingses; she follows them from Manhattan to Connecticut dutifully, and when she saves Blandings's job by coming up with an advertising slogan for his client, his response is to tell Mrs. Blandings to give her a $10 raise. We even see her in a newspaper advertisement as a kind of Aunt Jemima figure, grinning over a ham and her slogan.

Westward Passage (Robert Milton, 1932)

Laurence Olivier and Ann Harding in Westward Passage

Cast: Ann Harding, Laurence Olivier, Irving Pichel, Zasu Pitts, Juliette Compton, Irene Purcell, Emmett King, Florence Roberts, Ethel Griffies, Don Alvarado, Bonita Granville, Florence Lake, Edgar Kennedy, Herman Bing. Screenplay: Margaret Ayer Barnes, Bradley King, Humphrey Pearson. Cinematography: Lucien N. Andriot. Art direction: Carroll Clark. Film editing: Charles Craft. Music: Bernhard Kaun. 

Laurence Olivier made an early try at American movie stardom with this creaky marital drama, and its failure sent him back to England and success on the stage. He plays an egotistical would-be writer, Nick Allen, who makes things hard for his wife, Olivia (Ann Harding), and their small daughter. After trying to make a go of it, they divorce and she re-marries. Both find success, she in marriage and he in writing, but when they meet again on a ship bound for America from Europe, he tries to rekindle their relationship. It's a fairly flimsy movie, and Olivier looks alarmingly skinny and lupine.

The Mad Miss Manton (Leigh Jason, 1938)

Barbara Stanwyck and Henry Fonda in The Mad Miss Manton

Cast: Barbara Stanwyck, Henry Fonda, Sam Levene, Frances Mercer, Stanley Ridges, Hattie McDaniel. Screenplay: Philip G. Epstein, Wilson Collison. Cinematography: Nicholas Musuraca. Art direction: Van Nest Polglase, Carroll Clark. Film editing: George Hively. Music: Roy Webb.

If The Mad Miss Manton seems to me a laborious misfire of a screwball comedy, it may be because I can't help comparing it to another film that also stars Barbara Stanwyck and Henry Fonda, Preston Sturges's sublime The Lady Eve (1941). Stanwyck plays the doyenne of a gaggle of silly socialites who get involved in trying to solve a murder. They tangle with a police lieutenant played by Sam Levene and a reporter played by Fonda in the process, but Stanwyck's character and Fonda's naturally fall in love during the proceedings. It's over-frantic and under-motivated.

The Toast of New York (Rowland V. Lee, 1937)

The Toast of New York (Rowland V. Lee, 1937)

Cast: Edward Arnold, Cary Grant, Frances Farmer, Jack Oakie, Donald Meek, Thelma Leeds, Clarence Kolb, Billy Gilbert. Screenplay: Dudley Nichols, John Twist, Joel Sayre, based on a book by Bouck White and a story by Matthew Josephson. Cinematography: J. Peverell Marley. Art direction: Van Nest Polglase, Carroll Clark, Darrell Silvera. Film editing: Samuel E. Beetley, George Hively. Music: Nathaniel Shilkret.

Beyond a Reasonable Doubt (Fritz Lang, 1956)

Beyond a Reasonable Doubt (Fritz Lang, 1956)

Cast: Dana Andrews, Joan Fontaine, Sidney Blackmer, Barbara Nichols, Arthur Franz, Philip Bourneuf, Edward Binns, Shepperd Strudwick. Screenplay: Douglas Morrow. Cinematography: William E. Snyder. Art direction: Carroll Clark. Music: Herschel Burke Gilbert.

While the City Sleeps (Fritz Lang, 1956)

While the City Sleeps (Fritz Lang, 1956)

Cast: Dana Andrews, Rhonda Fleming, George Sanders, Howard Duff, Thomas Mitchell, Vincent Price, Sally Forrest, John Drew Barrymore, James Craig, Ida Lupino. Cinematography: Ernest Laszlo. Art direction: Carroll Clark. Film editing: Gene Fowler Jr. Music: Herschel Burke Gilbert.

Clash by Night (Fritz Lang, 1952)

Robert Ryan and Barbara Stanwyck in Clash by Night 

Mae Doyle: Barbara Stanwyck
Jerry D'Amato: Paul Douglas
Earl Pfeiffer: Robert Ryan
Peggy: Marilyn Monroe
Joe Doyle: Keith Andes
Uncle Vince: J. Carrol Naish
Papa D'Amato: Silvio Minciotti

Director: Fritz Lang
Screenplay: Alfred Hayes
Based on a play by Clifford Odets
Cinematography: Nicholas Musuraca
Art direction: Carroll Clark, Albert S. D'Agostino
Film editing: George Amy
Music: Roy Webb

There's a wonderful directorial touch in the middle of Fritz Lang's Clash by Night that almost makes up for the talky melodrama of the rest of the film: Stealing from the romantic gesture executed by Paul Henreid in Now, Voyager (Irving Rapper, 1942), Lang has Robert Ryan light two cigarettes at once and hand one of them to Barbara Stanwyck. She looks at it with distaste for a moment, then tosses it over her shoulder, takes out her own pack of cigarettes, and lights one herself. It's possible that the moment is spelled out in Alfred Hayes's screenplay, or in the play by Clifford Odets on which it's based, but I like to think of it as Lang's own employment of Stanwyck's great gift for playing women in charge. In fact, Stanwyck's character, Mae Doyle, is hardly ever fully in charge -- she can't control her life because of the men in it, which she describes as either "all little and nervous like sparrows or big and worried like sick bears." The problem with Clash by Night is not the cast, which is uniformly watchable, or the direction, which does what it can with the material, particularly by exploiting the film's setting -- Monterey, the bay, the fishing fleet, and Cannery Row -- but the screenplay. It's full of Odets characters who can't resolve their internal conflicts but also can't stop talking about them. Even the secondary characters, like Jerry D'Amato's father and uncle, can't help putting in their two cents, often in florid Odetsian metaphor. The title of the film comes from Matthew Arnold's "Dover Beach," in which the speaker laments the loss of faith in a world that has "neither joy, nor love, nor light, / Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain." It's a place where "ignorant armies clash by night." That bleak Victorian pessimism, however, doesn't translate very well to a story in which the clashing armies are men and women, a battle of the sexes that's a little too conventional in concept. Mae returns to her family home in Monterey, and immediately starts making a mess of things by attracting not only the good-hearted Jerry but also his cynical burnt-out friend Earl. Since Jerry is played by the somewhat schlubby Paul Douglas and Earl by the handsome Robert Ryan, we can see immediately where this is going to go, and the wait for it to get there gets a little tedious. There's also a rather pointless secondary plot involving Mae's brother, Joe, and his girlfriend, Peggy, who are played by Keith Andes and Marilyn Monroe. The backstories that stars and their personae bring to the roles they play are often valuable. Here, however, Marilyn's presence in the cast has unbalanced our subsequent reaction to the film, which can never be watched without the irrelevant knowledge of the actress's skyrocketing career, troubled relationship with her directors (including Lang, who terrified her so much that she vomited before performing a scene), and pitiable demise. Peggy is a small role, and she plays it well, but it was never meant to be the principal reason many people watch Clash by Night.

The Most Dangerous Game (Ernest B. Schoedsack, Irving Pichel, 1932)

Fay Wray and Joel McCrea in The Most Dangerous Game

Bob Rainsford: Joel McCrea
Eve Trowbridge: Fay Wray
Count Zaroff: Leslie Banks
Martin Trowbridge: Robert Armstrong
Ivan: Noble Johnson
Tartar: Steve Clemente
Captain: William B. Davidson

Director: Ernest B. Schoedsack, Irving Pichel
Screenplay: James Ashmore Creelman
Based on a story by Richard Connell
Cinematography: Henry W. Gerrard
Art direction: Carroll Clark
Film editing: Archie Marshek
Music: Max Steiner

Director Ernest B. Schoedsack and actors Fay Wray and Robert Armstrong were literally moonlighting when they made The Most Dangerous Game: During the day they were working on King Kong (1933), which also used many of the same sets. While not the landmark film that King Kong has become, The Most Dangerous Game has some of the same sexy intensity, much of it provided by Wray's ability to look both wide-eyed and sultry. As in King Kong, she is a damsel in distress, trekking through the jungle in entirely inappropriate and flimsy attire. But although Wray is given little to do but shriek, writhe, and run, she manages to persuade us that if anyone could survive such perils, she's the one. Also like King Kong, The Most Dangerous Game carries an ambivalence about the sport of big-game hunting, articulated by Joel McCrea's Bob Rainsford when he admits that being hunted has let him know how the animals he hunted felt. Leslie Banks is the main show, however, using his war-paralyzed face to convey the madness of his supposedly Russian count -- who doesn't seem to speak Russian but instead some kind of gibberish -- with his credo of "Kill, then love." This is a pulse-pounding classic that moves along at a relentless clip from the exceptionally speedy shipwreck to the well-staged chase. It gets much of its energy from Max Steiner's score, which picks up the two notes of the count's hunting horn and embroiders on them effectively.