Is this the end?

things are not going very well for me right now. I will be taking a break from movie blogs. If you have read these blogs I do thank you.

August 4 Louis Armstrong

To celebrate Louis Armstrong’s birthday I watched A Song is Born. The film is a musical version of Ball of Fire. Danny Kaye and company are recording music. He realizes that they have been working for so long on the recordings that they did not know about jazz. Danny goes out into the world to hear it and invite the artists to the mansion to record. One of those musicians is Louis Armstrong. Louis basically is himself. He has a small role and a few spoken lines but is often on camera.

Enough is enough and there will be no more.

August 3 Delores del Rio

Happy Birthday to Tony Bennett and Delores del Rio

To celebrate Delores del Rio’s birthday I watched In Caliente. Pat O’Brian’s eyes glaze over for 2 things liquor and Delores del Rio. Pat plays an editor to a big New York magazine. Edward Everett Horton plays his friend and assistant. Pat is supposed to marry Glenda Farrell and Edward thinks she is a gold digger. Pat gets drunk and sleeps it off for over a day as Edward takes him unconscious to Caliente Mexico. Delores is a guest at the hotel, she is a famous dancer/singer. Her manager is a card cheat. Through a misunderstanding Edward thinks that she is an “adventuress” and hires her to entertain Pat, because upon seeing her Pat stated (paraphrasing) that was a woman he could give up drinking for. Delores agrees because Pat wrote a bad review of her performance in New York the year earlier. He called her “bag of bones”.

Pat falls for her. He falls in love very quickly. Edward tells Pat what he did. Pat still wants to marry her, but for revenge. Glenda then shows up when Delores and Pat are in an intimate moment. They argue and she won’t see him again. She decides to dance in the hotels show that night to prove to Pat that she is a good entertainer. In a very strange Berkley number there are horses and bandits as part of the production. Pat realizes he really is in love with Delores and chases after her. He gets her in the end and they marry.

The big production number is The Woman In Red. In the Berkley collection there is just a scene of the musical so I was interested in the movie. It is a 1935 release and I wonder how the costumes got through the production code. There is not a lot of skin showing but the gowns look like there is a lot of mesh with strategically placed embroidery.

Delores looks her best in this film. She is stylish and graceful. She flows when she moves. She has great facial bone structure. She pool dives a few times and seems like an expert, an arch down and there was very little splash.

July 31 Geraldine Chaplin

Happy Birthday to Geraldine Chaplin and Barry Van Dyke.

TCM showed Peppermint Frappe which stared Geraldine Chaplin technically the day after her birthday. This movie creeped me out a little bit. Geraldine plays a duel role. One as a brunette with a peaches and cream complexion, nurse who is somewhat dowdy and a wild blond, pale complexion who is married to the doctors best friend. The doctor seeing the similarities between the women seduces the nurse. The doctor invites the nurse and his married friends to dinner. The friends liberally drink. The nurse is late and the blond decides to go find her. She rides a bike with her husband following her. The nurse is hiding in the shadows of the house. The blond collapses and then her husband. The doctor follows in the car. He puts them both in the car. He drives to a cliff, gets out and then pushes the car off the cliff. When he gets back to the house the brunette is pretending to be the blond. They kiss. The end..

I really didn’t get the film. There was something about eyelashes and lipstick and legs (ok I get the legs) that was just weird. I don’t get why he spiked the drinks and killed the couple. I thought at first that maybe the brunette was jealous and spiked the drinks, but I watched the film again trying to understand the film and the doctor did not drink. He held the class but never actually drank.

August 1 Yvonne DeCarlo

At first I was worried about not being able to find most of the films for the August birthdays. There are two stars who have days devoted to them this month that were born in August, Lucille Ball (on her birthday) and Joan Blondell (not on her birthday). There are 8 others that have films being shown throughout the month. I am going to follow the order that is being shown, not necessarily the day.

To celebrate Yvonne DeCarlo’s birthday I watched Criss Cross. The beginning of the film shows her in the arms of Burt Lancaster in a parking lot. She goes inside club where her husband Dan Duryea is looking for her. In a flashback you find out that Burt and Yvonne were married. They talk about getting back together. Burt’s family and friends threaten her and tell her she is poison to stay away from Burt. She marries Dan, who beats her. Burt and Yvonne spend time together while Dan is out of town. Dan finds out and blackmails Burt who is an amour car driver into working on a heist. Something goes wrong and Burt’s partner is killed.

Burt is injured and hospitalized. The gang want the rest of the money and drag him out of the hospital. He convinces the man to take money and drive him to Yvonne. Yvonne is upset that he is there knowing Dan isn’t far behind. Yvonne packs to leave, taking the money and plans to leave Burt there, because you have to take care of yourself and an ill man would slow her down. As she leaves a car pulls up. It is Dan. Yvonne runs back into the house screaming Burt’s name. She runs to his arms, Dan comes in limping and he looks awful. Dan pulls out a gun and kills the couple. The sound of police sirens come closer and Dan leaves the house. The end. It seems to end abruptly. There are not really any good guys in the film, but there are different levels of badness. Burt who grudgingly went along. Yvonne is out for herself and will take what she can get. Dan who is just mean and nasty.

Yvonne will probably be most well known as Lilly Munster, but she is a talented beautiful actress.

July 27 Lynda Carter

Happy Birthday to Lynda Carter and Jennifer Lopez.

To celebrate Lynda Carter’s birthday I watched the first season of Wonder Woman. There are 3 Halloween costumes I remember wearing: a sailor suit (my dad’s), Cinderella and Wonder Woman. The last two were the plastic dress and cape and a plastic mask that had a string that didn’t stay connected and little holes for the mouth (which felt like it was hard to breathe) and eyes (which made it difficult to see).

I forgot the story took place as it was originally written in the comic books during WWII. Henry Gibson and Kenneth Mars play Nazi soldiers who plot to bomb NY with a plane and a submarine. Lyle Waggoner plays a US officer/pilot who goes after the Nazi plane. He shoots down the plane and looses his own plane in the process. He lands on a beach where Lynda Carter, a princess finds him. Her mother is played by Cloris Leachman, a well jeweled Queen who created the Paradise Island where there are no men, but the Queen acts like she misses one aspect of men.

To decide who will take Lyle back to his own country a tournament is held. The princess is not to compete and decides to go into the country. The women are masked per tradition. The Princess wins. She is given a belt for protection and a golden lasso which forces the person wrapped in it to tell the truth. She already has the bracelets that are bullet proof. She gets the flag outfit and the red boots and calls herself Wonder Woman. The outfit causes quite a stir on the 1940’ crowd.

Stella Stevens is a Nazi spy who is working as a secretary for Lyle at the defense department. Red Buttons is working with her, but you don’t know that at first. His part is as a theatrical agent who witnesses Wonder Woman take care of bank robbers including deflecting bullets. To get money she agrees to a show. An older woman working with Stella Stevens has a machine gun in her valise. Wonder Woman deflects all the bullets with a smile.

Wonder Woman takes down the Nazi plane and crashes it into the U boat. She takes down the Nazi spies and saves Lyle. Her secret identity is the secretary for Lyle at the defense department. Clark Kent glasses and all. I like the transition scenes Lynda spins to become Wonder Woman. If only it were that easy.

July 25 Walter Brennan

To celebrate Walter Brennan’s birthday I watched A Stolen Life. Walter plays a lighthouse keeper. A salty land sea dog. He agrees to pose for a portrait for Bette Davis for a ship in a bottle that he states was promised to him when his friend died.

Bette Davis plays twins. Kate and Pat. Kate falls in love with Glenn Ford, who works at that lighthouse with Walter. They go out on a few dates but Pat steals him away and Pat and Glenn marry. Kate throws herself into her painting to get over her broken heart. She meets Dane Clark a struggling artist who mentors her painting. When Glenn asks Kate’s help to pick out a birthday present for Pat she gladly agrees but is disappointed in Glenn when doesn’t say anything about her birthday. She goes back to her house where Dane is waiting for her. He comes on strong and kisses Kate and she runs away. She goes back to the cottage and Pat is there. She did not go away with Glenn on his new job. The woman go sailing and a big storm comes up. Pat slips overboard. Kate tries to save her but Pat slips away and the ring comes off Pat‘s finger. Walter sees what happens from his lighthouse. Pat’s ring is on Kate’s finger when she awakens.

Walter tells “Pat” it s not her fault that he saw what happened and that she tried to save her sister. Kate plays the role of Kate. When Glenn returns because of Kate’s death he states that after the affairs are settled that “Pat” should go to Reno to get a divorce. Turns out Pat is involved with another man and have been with others during her marriage. Kate decides to leave Glenn due to Pat’s past. She doesn’t want to put Glenn through anymore pain and humiliation. Kate goes back to the cottage and her guardian, Charles Ruggles suspected it really was Kate. Glenn knew it was Kate with her parting words.

I feel bad for the Dane Clark character. I think he was interested in Kate, but she was in love with Glenn and he never stood a chance with her. Dane Clark was equal to Bette Davis, where I don’t think Glenn Ford was.

July 27 Keenan Wynn

To celebrate Keenan Wynn’s birthday I watched The Patsy. Keenan, Peter Lorre, Everett Sloan, Ina Balen and John Carradine play the entourage to a star who dies and decide to create a new star based on what they learned. Jerry Lewis is that man, The Patsy. This is probably my second favorite Jerry Lewis film with the second best entrance.

This film like most of Keenan’s film he plays a supporting character. There are a lot of back of the head shots of him and the others as the center of attention is Lewis. Keenan is the public relations agent who wears the same grey plaid suit throughout the film. When Lewis laughs at Hedda Hopper’s umbrella stand hat Keenan goes up to her to “clean up”. When Hedda says he is a natural talent, Keenan takes the credit and boasts success.

At the end when Lewis is a smashing success in an unbelievable Ed Sullivan skit, when Lewis states that he will need a new secretary, Keenan is the first to stand up and defend her. When Lewis states he wants a wife that states he wants his wife to stay home and take care of the children the men scatter like leaves in the wind.