Quote:
Hotel manicurist Regi Allen is a cynical gold-digger who meets her match in Theodore ‘Ted’ Drew III, the penniless scion of a once-wealthy family who is himself about to marry for money. After a date with Ted, she lets him sleep on her couch when he’s too drunk to get any further. But what is she to think when he wants to extend the arrangement?Read More »
Frank S. Nugent wrote:
THE SCREEN; At the Paramount
Carole Lombard and Fred MacMurray skip through the formular devices of “Swing High, Swing Low” (née “Burlesque”) with their usual ease at the Paramount, raising a routine story to a routine-plus picture. The plus is extremely small, sometimes being almost invisible. We recall being impressed by the photography of the Panama locks, by a shot of Mr. MacMurray with a beard, by Charles Butterworth’s tropical wardrobe of overcoat and muffler. The rest is so much surplusage: a thin excuse for a film that requires an hour and thirty-five minutes to trace the rise, the fall and the potential ascendancy of a trumpet king.Read More »
When an imaginative girl has fantasies that her mother is having an affair, her visions almost ruin her parents domestic life. Based on the play “Alice Sit By The Fire” by James M. Barrie.Read More »
Plot:
Adapted from Norman Krasna’s Broadway hit A Small Miracle, Four Hours to Kill is a multi-plotted effort that can best be described as “Grand Hotel goes to the theater.” Richard Barthelmess stars as Tony, a condemned murderer, who is handcuffed to Detective Taft (Charles Wilson) while en route to the death house. Tony breaks loose and heads for the theater, where the man who squealed on him is attending a play. As the killer prepares to rub out the stoolie, the action cuts away to the romance between a hatcheck boy (Joe Morrison) and his girlfriend (Helen Mack), which is complicated by the clerk’s allegedly pregnant former love (Dorothy Tree). Another subplot involves unfaithful wife Gertrude Michael and her lover Ray Milland. All the various plotlines are knitted together in the climax, wherein Tony closes in on his intended victim.Read More »
Frank S. Nugent wrote:
‘Midnight,’ With Don Ameche and Claudette Colbert, Strikes a Seasonal High in Comedy at the Paramount
The ice went out of the river at the Paramount yesterday, and Spring came laughing in with “Midnight,” one of the liveliest, gayest, wittiest and naughtiest comedies of a long hard season. Its direction, by Mitchell Leisen, is strikingly reminiscent of that of the old Lubitsch. Its cast, led by Claudette Colbert, Don Ameche, John Barrymore and Francis Lederer, is in the best of spirits. Its script, by too many authors to mention, is a model of deft phrasing and glib narrative joinery; and its production, while handsome, never has been permitted to bulk larger than its players. The call is for three cheers and a tiger: the Paramount is back on Broadway again.Read More »
Plot:
In this dark drama, a young American is on his way to take his final vows as a priest when he encounters a troubled nightclub singer with a checkered past. He honestly wants to help her and soon falls for her and finds himself tempted by her seductive ways.Read More »
Quote:
This superior melodrama with a darkly comic tinge came out at a time when Mitchell Leisen’s career was running hot after a series of successes including films like Easy Living, Midnight, and Remember the Night. It was also the last film Billy Wilder (in partnership with Charles Brackett) was content with just writing the screenplay for. He was supposedly so annoyed by the way Leisen took liberties with his script that he resolved never to cede directorial control again.Read More »
Synopsis:
Just before Christmas, Lee Leander is caught shoplifting. It is her third offense. She is prosecuted by John Sargent. He postpones the trial because it is hard to get a conviction at Christmas time. But he feels sorry for her and arranges for her bail, and ends up taking her home to his mother for Christmas. Surrounded by a loving family (in stark contrast to Lee’s own family background) they fall in love. This creates a new problem: how do they handle the upcoming trial?Read More »
The Grim Reaper (Frederic March) takes the form of a Prince in an attempt to relate to humans and, along the way, also learns what it is to love.Read More »