Today is the big day for Cary Grant, Danny Kaye and Oliver Hardy. TCM celebrated Cary Grant with a day full of his films: Sylvia Scarlett, The Toast of New York, Bringing Up Baby, Gunga Din, Only Angels have Wings and Night & Day. Bringing Up Baby is on one of my favorite films. Cary plays it straight in a screwball with Katharine Hepburn. Not everyone gets that film.
I watched Gunga Din and Only Angels have Wings. Gunga din also starred Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. and Victor McLaglen. I could not get into the story of the film. The three main characters are always together and look out for each other as the Three Musketeers, except in India. At times they were fun, playful, but yet always mind full of each other. The look, the feel of the film was great. There was a texture to the film, whether it was the black and white or location shots of the mountains I am not sure. The photography was excellent. With George Stevens as director, I would not expect anything else. He sees things in a way that other directors and cinematographers don't. In one scene the soldiers go to a city where they have lost communication with the soldiers stationed there. The soldiers wander around trying to find people or tracks something that gives them a clue to what happened. They look around because they feel someone watching them but cannot see anyone. Cary is in the foreground and in the background there is a hill silhouetted with a guard on top and the guard is overtaken by someone and pulled to the ground. I am not sure if I have seen Victor McLaglen in a film before.
Only Angels have Wings also starred Jean Arthur and Richard Barthelmess. Jean Arthur ends up a a bar in a tiny South American city for a few hours of shore leave (I don't remember why she said she was on the boat). The bar happens to be owned by the same man who runs the postal service and plane service. Cary Grant is the manager of the plane service. One of the men takes the mail from the boat to the plane. There is a quick change in the weather and the fog rolls in so the plane has to turn around. The pilot cannot see and he crashes and is killed. Jean is very upset and seems more upset that the rest of the people do not feel anything. They do, but don't let it show in public. It is hard to say if it is a guy thing or pilot/military thing. The weather clears and Cary takes the plane for the scheduled run. When he gets back the next morning Jean is still there. She felt that she had a connection to Cary so she got her trunks from the boat and came back to the bar. Cary was cold and wanted her gone, but she had to stay till the boat came back in a week or so. Cary gets a new pilot, which is Richard Barthelmess. A pilot with a bad reputation and his wife is Rita Hayworth who happens to be the girl who broke Cary's heart. There are plane sequences with edge of the seat action. The only thing that seemed a bit odd to me was the radio work. When the pilots were over the radio the voice seemed to be different, not a different voice, but no emotion, it didn't fit in with the action. That part was probably recorded later but to me it kind threw things off.
I have seen Cary Grant in many films: comedy, drama and mystery. His work is always good even if the film is not. So that leads to the question is Cary Grant bad in any role?
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