"To Be or Not to Be" (1942)

Sadly, Carole Lombard's last movie before being killed in a tragic airplane crash in 1942. A great, great loss. HUGE. 

The movie is an interesting satire of the Nazi's and wasn't appreciated in its day, understandably; U.S. had just entered the war, Lombard was dead, and the "Greatest Generation" were being drafted to fight the Japanese and Germans and Italians. WWII era audiences didn't want to see a comedy about Nazi's. The director is the sublime Ernst Lubtisch at the peak of his career. The movie is considered one of his best. With Jack Benny, a famous comedian of the day, and Robert Stack, later the host of "Unsolved Mysteries" in the nineties, that scary ass mystery show that used to come on Lifetime at midnight. Miriam Hopkins was first offered Lombard's part, but turned it down because she thought Benny got all the laughs. Streaming free via the Criterion Collection on hulu.com.http://www.hulu.com/watch/249579

ALFRED HITCHCOCK: The Skin Game

neighbor drama.

Boring and lackluster early talkie from Hitchcock. From John Galsworthy's play, The Skin Game concerns two feuding families, one old money the other new money. The concern is over land, as always. Only interesting part is the fast paced auction scene; the rest of the movie sags. Stage plays are most of the time not great source material for movies. With Leo Genn in his first Hitchcock picture; John Longden, a Hitchcock regular during his BIP period; Jill Esmond, Laurence Olivier's wife; Phyllis Konstam, and Helen Haye. Hitchcock and his wife, Alma Reville, collaborated on the script.

She (1935)

Merian C. Cooper, the man behind King Kong, produced this campy adventure yarn about a female ruler in a Lost Kingdom for RKO Radio Pictures in 1935. Helen Gahagan Douglas portrays She/Ayesha, who "must be obeyed." The story is from a series of novels written by H. Rider Haggard that were popular in the very late 19th century.

Randolph Scott, Cary Grant's "roommate" and future western star, is the male lead and Helen Mack plays a young woman vying for his heart with She. Unfortunately, for She, she takes one too many flame baths and her eternal youthfulness doesn't last: she becomes a hag and dies. Spielberg must have watched this movie, along with other Cooper productions, because there are many similarities between She and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Also, She's quest for eternal youth reminded me of the outrageous Death Becomes Her. So someone involved with that movie watched this too because Meryl and Goldie look like She at the end of She.

Gahagan Douglas later became a Democratic Representative for California in 1940's. She was her only movie part. Before Douglas had been a Broadway actress and married Melvyn Douglas whom she met while performing in a play. In 1950, Richard M. Nixon took her seat in a tough campaign in which he accused her of being a Pinko/Communist. His smear campaign effectively put an end to her political career; this was during the witch hunt days. Because of his smear tactics Douglas was the first to call the future U.S. President "tricky Dick."

The behind the camera team is first rate. The art director/production design is by Van Nest Polglase who did all the Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers musicals and other major RKO productions during this period. She's court does look like it was before or later used for a musical.

There were two versions of She before this version and a later one in 1965 with Ursula Andress.

ALFRED HITCHCOCK: Juno and the Paycock (1930)

Alfred Hitchcock's screen adaptation of Sean O'Casey's play, Juno and the Paycock is about Irish tenement dwellers in the twenties, namely Juno the matriarch who tries to keep her family together when things start to fall apart. The role of Juno is a strong part for an actress and is played with much gusto and passion by Irish stage actress Sara Allgood. She had appeared in the stage version of Juno and also in Hitchcock's Blackmail as Anny Ondra's mother. The movie is a bit stage-y and Hitchcock remarked years later Juno and the Paycock was just a filmed stage play. He told Truffaut: "It was an entity of its own, written by Sean O'Casey, and all I could do about it was cast it and direct the players."

Sean O'Casey was a distinguished Irish dramatist. O'Casey spent most of his years living in exile in England, however. I'm not sure if he's as well remembered today, but his plays, which all deal with Irish identity and politics but can be viewed across nationalities, are relevant today as they were in the 1920's, especially in these sour economic times. At an opening performance of one play in Dublin at famed Abbey Theatre during the twenties, a riot broke out.

Hitchcock claimed he based the bum in The Birds declaring the end of the world on O'Casey!

ALFRED HITCHCOCK: Blackmail (1929)

Hitchcock scored a triumph with his gripping talking picture debut in 1929. Adapted by Charles Bennett from his own play, Blackmail had been performed on the stage by Tallulah Bankhead, who was a London stage actress at the time. The female character in the picture kills a suitor of hers who tried to rape her; but, is it self defense or murder? Should she have gone to the gentlemen's flat by herself after only just meeting him? Was he expecting a tryst? Should she have expected that? These are not easy questions to answer while watching Blackmail. The characters in Blackmail are not black and white and there is no happy ending for any of the principal performers. While all of his movies up to this were well made and enjoyable, this is the first Hitchcock thriller since The Lodger, and it is much more darker about humanity.

Hitchcock opens the movie with the police working the beat: arresting and booking a criminal. Once the female character, played by Anny Ondra, commits murder she stumbles around the streets of 1929 London shocked and disoriented. Will she be taken in like the criminal in the opening scenes? Is that  why Hitchock showed us the policeman's routine? There's a catch: the murderess also has a detective boyfriend. And, of course, he is assigned to the case of the murdered suitor, who was an artist. Will he turn Anny Ondra in? Finally, someone else knows Ondra was at the scene of the crime, hence the movie's title, Blackmail.

Hitchcock shot Blackmail as a silent except for the last reel. He was encouraged to make it all sound, but he wanted the film to be shown in cinemas that weren't equipped for sound technology which were a good bit as this was the early years of talking movies. Eventually, he reshot scenes with sound, but, unfortunately, his leading lady, Anny Ondra, who appeared in Hitchcock's The Manxman, was Czech and not fluent in the English language. Her line readings were provided by actress Joan Barry who read the lines off camera into a microphone while Ondra mouthed the words. It's not as awkward onscreen as one would think, but Barry's voice doesn't exactly fit Ondra. Barry would later work with Hitchcock again on Rich and Strange.

Anny Ondra has the distinction of being played by Britt Ekland in a 1978 telefilm, Ring of Passion. Besides being an actress Ondra was married to boxer Max Schemling who fought Joe Louis in a 1938 boxing match that was labeled "the most important sporting event in history." It was on the eve of WWII and the match become symbolic in terms of race and history. It became sociopolitical. Joe Louis won. A black man beating a white man, German one, in 1938. However, Schemling wasn't political and didn't consider himself a Nazi, and though he was in the German army, after the war he was cleared of any Nazism.

Cyril Ritchard, who plays the horny suitor was known for appearing in musical comedies and had a  distinguished stage career spanning England, America, and Australia. He appeared most famously alongside Mary Martin in Peter Pan in which he played Captain Hook. He won a Tony for the role.

Pollyanna (1920)

Mary Pickford plays the title role in the first adaptation of Eleanor H. Porter's book which Pickford produced herself through her production company. It's about an optimistic orphan who goes and lives with her wealthy spinster aunt after her father passes away. Everyone remembers the 1960 version with Hayley Mills as Pollyanna and Jane Wyman as the aunt, but this version has much to recommend it, foremost being Pickford's adorable performance as a twelve year old girl. She was twenty-seven at the time! This movie was one of her major hits, and Pollyanna is the type of character Pickford often played in movies: adolescent girls. At barely five feet, it was easy for audiences to accept Pickford as a little girl.

This movie is a lean 57 minutes; not unusual for a feature film in that day and age. The scenario is credited to pioneering female screenwriter Frances Marion, who collaborated with Pickford on several of her key films. Pickford helped Marion become established in the movie industry - for she wielded great power during this period. Hollywood was just becoming established and she, along with Griffith, Chaplin, Fairbanks, contributed a great deal to it's foundation. Eventually, perversely, sadly, shockingly, the business they all gave so much to would, with each in a different way, come to neglect them.

You can watch Pollyanna here via Internet Archive http://archive.org/details/Pollyanna

ALFRED HITCHCOCK: The Farmer's Wife (1928)

This Hitchcock was a little bit twee for my tastes. It took three days to finish watching it. The movie opens with the death of the farmer's wife then four minutes later the farmer's daughter is getting married and after the wedding the farmer decides he wants to take a wife. He has three ladies in mind, but the perfect wife is right in front of him: his housekeeper.

Frankly, it's hard to see how the farmer doesn't grasp this from the get go; the housekeeper, Minta, is so much more attractive than the four women he proposes marriage to. Played by Lilian Hall-Davis, who was the female lead in The Ring, Hitchcock's previous release, the character has very little to do until the last ten minutes of the movie. But throughout Davis gives a calm, gentle and assured performance. Sadly, Davis suffered from severe depression in real life and like many successful silent screen actors the transition to sound hurt her career; she committed suicide in 1933.

Jameson Thomas plays the role of the Farmer; he's okay. Handsome, his idea of being a farmer seems to be poking his chest out and pointing his finger alot. There are flashes of dandy ism, a sly smile, and the following year these traits were put to great effect in the classic Piccadilly, where Thomas played a nightclub impresario. The movie was notable for featuring beautiful Chinese American star Anna May Wong, one of the very few Asian stars in that era and even today. She's best known today for playing opposite Marlene Dietrich in Josef von Sternberg's Shanghai Express.

The Farmer's Wife began on the London stage as a play from Eden Philpotts. He was also an author and poet and a friend of Agatha Christie. His play was a huge hit; none other than Laurence Olivier went on tour with it in 1926.

Hitchcock later told Francois Truffaut in their famous interview he had little recollection of The Farmer's Wife.