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Ann Baxter, never a star of the first rank, chiefly remembered for the film "All About Eve," here inaugurates her second tier status with this pedestrian role of woman in distress. Baxter plays Norah Larkin, a young naive woman, who is a romantic and overly sentimental. For Norah this is a combination of character traits that lead to the kind of complications found in dime store novels. Lurid, dime store detective pulps, the gorier the better, happen to be the passionate obsession of one of her room mates, Sally, a gawky, dim bulb played by the confusingly named actress, Jeff Donnell. Ann Sothern is the wisecracking, motherly presence, Crystal, the practical one of the trio, which doesn't stand for much in this storyline. All three share a one room LA apartment living dormitory style and when not working as switchboard operators for the telephone company, are occupied with men, dating and keeping their "honor" intact.

Trouble ahead!

After all this is 1953, and the world is divided among vulnerable females and predatory males on the make. Men carry little black address books with the phone numbers of hot, compliant babes, their attributes annotated by coded symbols. Hubba! Hubba! "If women killed every man who got fresh with them," Crystal wisely quips, "there'd be no men left in the world!" That's the set-up, so ladies, watch out.

Trouble ahead!

In comes one Harry Prebble, an artist known for drawing calendar girls, a profession which gives him convenient and abundant access to women. He's the guy whose main agenda in life is to seduce as many women as possible, females who in the end are disposable after use. Raymond Burr, TV's "Perry Mason," plays the physically large, ungainly, lumbering Prebble. As a seducer of women he's no suave, subtle operator. Only the most unworldly, and gullible would fall for his dating routine, one basically primed to get his date blind drunk, if not giddy, on exotic cocktails called Polynesian Pearl Divers. He's a deceiver all right.

Trouble ahead!

Another male not exactly on the up-and-up is Casey Mayo, portrayed by Richard Conte, a newspaper reporter always hungry for the big scoop, the hot copy. He's no genius either as he tries to be the first to catch a murderer at large, his main assets being a dogged stubbornness and determination that won't quit. George Reeves, TV's original "Superman," is Haynes the homicide detective with whom Mayo maintains an uneasy though companionable alliance. Richard Erdman is news photographer, Al, who serves as Mayo's devoted mascot, following him around relentlessly, hoping one day that some of Mayo's mojo with women will somehow rub off on him and that maybe, just maybe, he can get some of those phone numbers in Mayo's little black book.

And so, this is a prime example of a B movie trying to pretend that it is a crime drama and not a soap opera and failing to convince the audience that it is anything but a second rate and mildly entertaining potboiler. The highlight of the movie may well be the legendary Nat King Cole sitting at the piano, his velvet voice providing his rendition of the movie's insipid, schmaltzy theme song, "Blue Gardenia."

This is the kind of film made by a film director of solid reputation like John Huston when they want to hang out with the rest of the guys in the Hollywood-hood and spend their off hours partying in exotic locations. Huston and Truman Capote ultimately tinkered with the screenplay together, a pair of self-indulgent jokesters, and however inspired, their efforts put together an offbeat little gem with a storyline that entertains at every complicated plot twist. It's a wacky story about a group of con artists each to a one demonstrating various levels of cunning and idiocy. Meeting up together in the scenic isolation of some southern Italian port town, they're all obsessed with getting to some unnamed country in British East Africa where they plan to grab for themselves a monopoly in uranium deposits.

This crew consists of Billy Dannreuther and his wife Maria played by Humphrey Bogart and Gina Lollabrigida. Dannreuther is the seasoned soldier of fortune type, a wanderer of the world always looking for ways to make a million. Bogart, a consummate professional, would never put in a lazy performance but here he shows little enthusiasm and just looks weary and impatient. This, however, actually serves well for the character, Dannreuther being a man who's seen it all and takes nothing for granted. His Italian wife all bosoms, curves and pouty lips is an Anglophile obsessed with all things English from tea in the afternoon to a hunger for the rolling lawns of titled English estates.

The couple are in uneasy league with a quartet of ne'er-do-wells, the key members being Peterson, played by Robert Morley, Ivor Barnard as Major Jack Ross, a loony homicidal fascist who believes Hitler and Mussolini had the right idea, and Peter Lorre as Julius O'Hara. O'Hara, so obviously a brand of O'Hara that Ireland never saw, pridefully expresses that O'Hara is a very respectable surname in Chile. He counteracts Dannreuther's frustration with the complications of their scheme by emphasizing what every con man needs to keep in the forefront: "To seem trustworthy is no more important than to be trustworthy." Time has not been kind to Peter Lorre who only age 49 in this movie looks significantly older since his appearance in Huston's 1941 "The Maltese Falcon" twelve years previous.

We get a blonde Jennifer Jones of all things, apparently an effort to give her the vibes of the blonde noir babe practiced at duplicity. She's Gwendolen Chelm married to a stock-character British male, a member of the prissy, tight-laced breed, humorless and outwardly dull-witted. Chelm breaks into crisis mode when he finds he didn't pack his hot water bottle.

The group of disreputables are waylaid on some North African shoreline after their African bound boat sinks, and taken in for interrogation and detention by horseback marauding Arabs and their leader. These turn out to be not a tribe of terrorists in the modern sense but terrifyingly stupid and intimidating. After Gwendolen rambles on in protest over their detainment, the chief of this band simply points out that "In my country a female may at least know her words are not heard." He may not care what a woman has to say but he certainly is interested in what they look like. It turns out he suffers from a swooning obsession with actress Rita Hayworth, his dream girl whom he'd like to add to is harem.

Whichever one of this crew scores the riches at the end of the game doesn't really matter. It's a winner for the viewer.

This is a comedy that is hilariously nutso bad. Van Johnson is Joe Bedloe, a teacher in a small New England college. He's perfectly happy instilling a new generation of American students with an appreciation for the writing of William Shakespeare. His wife Connie, portrayed by Janet Leigh, is expecting their first child and they live in a cute little two-story house. But being a professional intellectual doesn't provide enough money to keep the family table filled with plates of meat. "Haven't seen a rib roast since 1948." The town butcher Emil Spangenberg, played by Walter Slezak, prescribes a dietary regimen for the mother-to-be: "Meat. So I'd have a strong, healthy baby." In this town of meat hungry carnivores, populated by meat junkies, the butcher's role is tantamount to the one provided today by dispensers of medical marijuana.

De-toxing from the red meat craving by going cold turkey is to be avoided at all costs. That's where Joe's father Opie Bedloe comes into the picture. He's of all things a prosperous Texas cattle baron! When he comes to visit the couple he is horrified to learn that his son is such a poor family provider. It's not that this husband can't provide his wife with jewels and furs and lavish vacations. His beef is that Professor Joe can't shower the woman with…beef!

Cultural satire when well done can be a great comedic look at society. When done in this movie it is a ham handed misfire, a plate of baloney adulterated by coy whimsy and artificial ingredients.

I give this a 2 in recognition of what I interpret as scriptwriter's Max Shulman's mockery of the American mindset of entitlement to all the consumer bounties of life. Hip, hip, hooray! It's the American Way!

Katherine Hepburn plays Alice Adams a foolish, annoying, young woman determined to be accepted by the town snobs who shun her. What goal in life could be a more worthy one than to focus on being accepted by those whose lives are measured on shallow values?! And poor Alice, her plight is a tortured one in which the movie audience is asked to join in on and root for her victory. Are we to sympathize with Alice because she is forced to wear an unfashionable, two-year old dress to a society dance? Katherine Hepburn certainly gives this performance the full benefit of her forceful personality, babbling incessantly and pretentiously to all those around, her finishing school accent only aggrandizing the assault. Her mother, played by Anne Shoemaker, certainly shares Alice's pretensions, bemoaning her daughter's social ostracization from the country club set, berating her husband Virgil, (Fred Stone), with shrewish insistency that he is a business and social failure. As far as Mrs. Adams is concerned, Mr. Adams' shortcomings have selfishly doomed their daughter to an undistinguished middle class life. Not that Mr. Adams isn't asking for what he gets; he's a childish, petulant man who wears his ignorance of the world like a medal of honor.

Fred MacMurray is the socially acceptable suitor Arthur Russell who takes an interest in Alice, although why he is attracted to this strident girl trying too hard to impress, is a mystery. MacMurray, a bland presence in any movie he's in, basically portrays his character as a man in silent contemplation of a theater piece he's been given a front row center seat to take in, or as a hapless boob suffering in non-comprehension of what's going on. Whatever, he's just a prop put carefully in place.

Hattie McDaniel has a small but showy role as the housemaid tasked with preparing and "waiting at table" to the assembled Adams' and their dinner guest for the evening, beau Arthur Russell. She's sloppy, dumb, inept and totally bereft of social poise. Mrs. Adams is so demanding that the maid (who is never referred to by name) becomes so flustered, she falls down the basement stairs to the dismay of Mr. Adams. He just hopes that when the servant took her fall, she didn't break any of his things!

This movie was based on a novel by Booth Tarkington, a Pulitzer Prize wining author whose writing and literary glory has now faded and with reason. Tarkington came from political family, wealthy, conservative businessmen with a bona fide WASP pedigree. His preoccupations were the circumscribed environs of small town Midwest life---the social stratification, the importance of wealth and the petty world of class distinction. Tarkington doesn't condemn this elitist dominance; he legitimatizes societal differentiation determined by material distinction as irrevocable and correct. You just got to feel sorry for people like Alice, and families like the Adams clan. They're just pathetic nobodies.

This movie plays an old tune out good and loud with all false cords and superficial sentiment. It's a real "antique" and not of the valuable kind.

This may have been a stage hit in 1935, but by 1962, it was a stale offering. Cecil B. DeMille had already done everything in his ancient bag of tricks to kill off the circus theme for good ten years earlier with his antique, sentimental extravaganza "The Greatest Show on Earth" in 1952. Jumbo did nothing to revive MGM's glory as the producers of great musical entertainment.

I couldn't sit through this entire movie. Doris Day, Jimmy Durante, and Martha Raye----what a trio. Durante and Raye can only be taken in by small portions at a time and an entire movie with them in it is just too much to digest without discomfort. Stephen Boyd is in the cast but the less said about this wooden, uninteresting actor, the better.

This movie is a real stinker. And this implies no offense to the title performer, the enormous elephant Jumbo and his toilet habits.

By the time this movie was made, 1933, Mae West was 40 years old, blowzy and on the market so long, she'd passed her expiration date. Yet, she still managed to effectively maintain herself as a bona fide, self-manufactured icon representing in face and figure the bawdy ladies of the Gay Nineties. She'd spent years on the stage nurturing a public nostalgia for this past era, a period of American history she herself only knew as a child having been born in 1893. With the Roaring Twenties over, and the cultural liberation of the flapper/bootleg era a done deal changing the public perception of what was taboo, her risqué patter full of titillating one liners and sexual innuendo still resonated with an audience. This movie is worth watching just to see West in action and take in what aroused all the legions of decency into a frenzy of outrage.

Mae plays Lou, a songstress in a Bowery beer hall performing solo on stage, standing glued into sequined gowns, balancing feathered hats like platters on her head and bodily bejeweled with diamonds, every bauble a souvenir from an endless inventory of male idolaters. While not having a heart of gold, (it's rather steel-plated), she isn't such a bad gal. Lou's got one deranged lover doing time in the pen and obsessed with breaking out and re-possessing her as his exclusive property. We've got the sleazy owner of the joint, Gus Jordan, played by Noah Beery Sr., a conniver who's got his larcenous hand in all kinds of criminal sidelines from counterfeiting to white slavery. Cary Grant in his film debut as Captain Cummings, is tasked with a character that certainly allows him little in the way of exercising his supreme acting gifts. Aside from his good looks and distinct accent, nothing here hints of his future professional glory. Cummings runs a mission for lost souls; an ersatz Salvation Army do- gooder. Lou catches his eye and he catches hers but the motives behind their attraction is anything but mutual. Is Cummings simply wearing his heart on his sleeve? It's certainly not where he chooses to display his police badge.

This movie is an entertaining antique curio worthwhile watching just to see Mae West and get a taste of what made up her popularity and the uproar that surrounded her. The appearance of film newbie Cary Grant is an added attraction

James Stewart plays Jefferson Smith, a toddler in a man's body taken out of his small town rural play-pen and plunked down into the heavy political traffic of Washington DC. The sudden death of the incumbent Senator of an unnamed state prompts the state's political machine to appointment Smith as interim Senator. Smith's a local celebrity in his hometown, a proponent of boy's healthful living, the founder of Boy Rangers whose mission it is to prepare the male youth of today to take their place as the patriotic cheerleaders for the American Way in the world of tomorrow. The senior Senator Joseph Paine admirably played by that fine actor Claude Rains, and his puppet master, corrupt political boss, Jim Taylor, in the person of actor Edward Arnold, are convinced the newbie Smith is naïve enough and malleable enough not to disrupt their dirty program of graft and shady dealings so that business can be carried on as usual. Arnold, virtually typecast by Hollywood as the venal, power hungry businessman really puts this character across with all its hallmark, villainous trappings.

Jean Arthur as Clarissa Saunders is tasked with a real thorny assignment. She's Smith administrative assistant, a Washington-wise veteran of the savvy, cynical breed who takes him in hand, steering him and cheering him on. So refreshing, and pathetically unspoiled is the new Senator, Saunders can't but help taking him under her wing and---ultimately falling in love with this touching, earnest sap.

Most of the action takes place in the Senate chambers that serves as the arena of combat, a theater full of drama, tension and political maneuvering in action. Spectators in the gallery are the enraptured audience. Perched eagerly above are a contingent of the newspaper corps avidly gazing down on the proceedings notebooks and pencils at the ready to document any newsworthy copy that can be finessed into sensationalist reportage. Thomas Mitchell plays Diz Moore, one of these tough, weathered news-hounds, a man without illusions yet one not immune to sentimentality, himself joining Saunders in her concern over Smith's dilemma.

Well, things don't exactly work out the way boss Taylor and his ally Senator Paine are convinced they will. In Capra's world honesty and just causes never go unrewarded. Smith introduces a Congressional bill to fund a national boys camp, and doing so unknowingly intrudes into one of the bad guys well laid schemes crafted to enrich themselves and their cronies back home.

Frank Capra was a life long right-wing Republican who reviled President Franklin Roosevelt and adamantly opposed his New Deal programs during the Great Depression. Capra had achieved the American Dream of fame and fortune and saw no reason others could not do the same. He lived the American Myth and spent his professional life making films that were skilled vehicles of propaganda.

In Mr. Smith, both Democracy and domestic bliss reign over all in this happily ever after Capra love letter to America. This is a true film classic and a noteworthy example of Capra presenting America to Americans at its most idealized, fantastical best.

Joan Bennett plays prostitute Kitty March, a dumb, lazy dame who only gets going when batted around by her boyfriend, pimp/gambler, Johnny Prince. But this relationship has Kitty in heaven; Johnny's heavy hand with her shows the match is true love. "Jeepers Johnny, I'm crazy about you," she croons. Dan Duryea plays Johnny here and he's in fine form. No actor could put across a stinker, an insolent petty criminal with shallow manipulating charm like the tall, lanky Duryea.

In comes hen-pecked, abused husband Chris Cross, played by the stellar Edward G. Robinson. Cross is a dejected, self-effacing account clerk by day, and a target of emotional assault by his virago of a wife Adele during his night hours. Adele's got him in a ruffled apron, cooking dinner and washing up afterward, all the while berating him with blow-by- blow recitations of his deficiencies. But Cross has one consolation; he paints. He produces canvases of subject matter singularly personal and idiosyncratic. He dreams of becoming a great recognized artist, his wife threatens to throw his creations into the trash.

Then on a lonely dark Manhattan street corner, fate puts Kitty into Cross's life. Soon a triangle of associations form: Kitty and Johnny and Chris Cross. Johnny, ever the schemer, masterminds a plan to extort money from Cross who he is convinced is a famous artist. Kitty, of course, is set up as the bait. And of course, Kitty is strong-armed into going along with the extortion. Joan Bennett is good at portraying this woman, at bottom one of coarse nature, but one that can mimic a minimal refinement when it suits the game. With a gullible target like Cross, it's a done deal from day one.

Edward G. Robinson, a talented versatile actor gives a poignantly intense performance as the naïve, lonely man totally invested in his own fantasies. But the tragedy is not his alone. All three main players here become victims of deception.

This is neither a crime drama nor being made in 1945, a prime example of the film noir genre, which reached its zenith in the post World War II years. Although some noir-ish elements exist, there are no stalwart heroes battling the forces of night evil here. Only the casualties of human vulnerability and frailty.

A highly recommended film.

Bob Hope is AJ Niles, a writer notorious for having penned controversial books on the male/female relationship, and now finds himself exiled to Paradise, that being the name of the California suburban subdivision where he takes refuge. The character of Niles allows Hope full license to play out his comedic persona at its most familiar---the snide, self-satisfied deliveryman of one-liners meant to wither his target. Yes, this is Bob, the iconic performer of the Eisenhower 1950s, an entertainer whose shtick everyone in America was comfortable with. Even when buffoonery is called for, Hope projects arrogance and swagger; a case of the private man intruding into the public image. Lana Turner is Rosemary Howard the real estate agent who rents the house to Niles setting in motion a train of events that disrupt the whole community. Niles just can't help himself, anonymity is against his nature; he becomes the village Yentl, the meddling, intrusive busybody who dislodges the neighborhood's equilibrium and subsequently the lives of its residents.

Lana Turner was once a cute, ingénue with acting potential until Hollywood manufactured her into a "glamour goddess." In this movie at age 40, Turner was well established as a self- conscious actress, plaster cast-stiff, without any real depth or emotive spontaneity in her performance. Every mannerism, ever walk is calculated for correct poise and posture. The make-up artists and hair dressers only accentuated this frozen appearance with painfully perfect application of cosmetics and a hair-do that could only be dislodged by a tsunami.

There's not much to say about the storyline itself. Disgruntled with this "known libertine and seducer," the husbands sign a petition to evict the Casanova Niles from his home and oust him from the community. The females, excepting a few puritanical matrons, protest this and rally in his defense. Niles was only trying to help them make their marriages more exciting; he was a public servant, a benevolent family counselor.

That tall pair of actors Paula Prentiss and Jim Hutton are once again teamed as a romantic couple, here a married one, who are the focus of Nile's ministrations.

The movie is dated, a cultural commentary of the era. Unless you're a big fan of Bob Hope or are just interested in opening a time capsule from a world long buried, pass this one by. For being a historical curio, I give it a "3."

Lana Turner abandoned developing her talent into becoming a good actress early in her career when still a teen-age starlet. Here a mature Lana puts out her usual wooden performance, an actress always acting, always conveying to the audience that she is Lana Turner, Sex Goddess and Movie Star. Kirk Douglas is fierce and dictatorial, a character type he excels at and could probably play in his sleep. Dick Powell is a bland presence in every movie he's in. Walter Pigeon is in it too. Aren't he and Melvyn Douglas the same person? Barry Sullivan, a competent B movie actor, has a role. Gilbert Roland is thrown in for effect to represent the generic Latin Lover female moviegoers traditionally swoon over. Gloria Grahame shows up too, always the "dame," in this case a Southern belle one fluttering and flitting all over the place; and the Academy honored her with a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for 1952!

That takes care of the cast. As for the story, well it's supposed to be an inside look at Hollywood wheelers and dealers, star making, and breaking, glory takers and those on the down escalator to failure. It's the real story, exposed! Wrong. It is so full of clichés and tired old tropes, stereotypes--- everything that the public anticipates and comfortably accepts in a fictionalized story purported to be drawn on "real life" events and people. All the soap opera melodrama bursts out of it everywhere making scenes meant to be taken seriously more like comedic spoofs from Saturday Night Live. And the Academy honored this with a Best Screenplay Oscar for 1952!

The weepy, poignant musical score by David Raksin serves as the baleful icing dripping off this collapsed cake.

To say that this is not director Vincent Minelli's best effort is an understatement. He made a lot of good movies. This should be relegated to the bottom of the heap.

Cary Grant plays Johnny Case, a fool in love, engaged to marry a girl Julia Seton who he really knows nothing about and whom he met at a winter resort. That she lives in a Manhattan mansion, complete with elevator, a private residence about the size of Buckingham Palace, well--- it all leaves him dumbfounded when he shows up at her door. Confused, taking it all in, Johnny does back flips on its grand polished floors. He meets up with his fiancée's older sister Linda, played by Katharine Hepburn, who immediately sniffs out a kindred spirit. She recognizes his discomposure: "You didn't realize what you were getting into," she tells him. "A world of stuffed shirts and mink-lined ties." Yes, Linda is the self-admitted black sheep of the family, a type completely opposite from that of Julia, the conventional, snobbish socialite adequately played by Doris Nolan. And into this family mix is added the Lew Ayres character, brother Ned who wanders around with his hand permanently attached to a whiskey glass that is subjected to constant refills. Ned is the idle, miserable son of the banker class, a sensitive soul frustrated in his ambition to pursue a career in music, a profession vetoed by his financier father. So Ned has taken the path of least resistance by becoming a professional alcoholic.

Prospective groom Johnny has always been an independent guy, coming from a hardscrabble background, working since the age of ten, and now at the age of thirty has accumulated enough money to live the kind of life he feels is right and honorable for himself. He's so enamored with his dream of life, which demands a "holiday" for self-exploration, he doesn't realize that he's in love with the wrong sister. Julia wants "the golden throne." And what he wants is a life of somersaults and the acrobatic freedom of an existence not reigned in by convention. He's got some buddies rooting for him throughout, husband and wife academics who worry and fuss, and encourage him, surrogate parents devoted to his welfare. Wonderful character actors, Edward Everett Horton as Professor Potter and Jean Dixon as Mrs. Potter serve as delightful counterparts to the stuffy, moneyed world of the Seton family.

Throughout Cary Grant seems to be having fun with this role, one where he can demonstrate his flair for physical comedy, a skill he retained from his early stage career pre-film. Hepburn is superb at playing a type of woman with which she has an intimate acquaintance, one very similar to whom she was in real life, a member of East Cost society with all the accompanying mannerisms and accent. The director George Cukor again shows his talent and facility in directing such an ensemble of talented actors.

Who finds true love and is given the opportunity to actualize their true path in life? Watch and enjoy the fun of discovery along with the characters.

So pronounces Joe McCall, played by David Wayne, a disillusioned family man who has temporarily fled the Midwest for NYC to taste what it feels like to be liberated from the ball and chain of marriage. He crashes with old buddy Charlie Reader, played by Frank Sinatra, a talent agent who inhabits the perfect bachelor pad that is equipped with all the accessories for a free-wheeling life: terrace and window overlooking a panoramic view, a bar conveniently located to the front door allowing immediate access to rows of bottles and the requisite ice bucket. Sinatra looks bored and put upon, walking through this all too familiar territory of portraying the "swinging bachelor." An assortment of women taking on the function of additional props, walk in and out of his apartment bringing him tributes of rare cheeses, raw whole fish, and to break this monotony, one serves as a dog walker for his dog who is all but invisible, the poor animal, apparently, sentenced to live out life in the kitchen.

Debbie Reynolds, as Julie Gillis, would be actress, must be bride, is the interloper in Charlie's endless parade of women, anonymous personalities, known only by first name. She is stubborn, annoyingly willful and has life all figured out. Reynolds carries on in full perky form with a spunk and cuteness that for her amounts almost to a genetic curse. As you watch this film, you get the feeling that Frank Sinatra does not like Debbie Reynolds. There is no on screen chemistry between them and you wonder what his character, this "hip" guy, sees in this "square" bratty tyrant. Oh yes, then there is Sylvia Crewes, played by Celeste Holm, an actress, for some reason, periodically and illogically cast as a romantic interest. She's a concert violinist, " a first class lady…a girl someone marries." She's got Charlie's number all right but as a single woman who's been on the shelf too long, she hangs on, just hoping. Ultimately no damage is done to anyone, except to the "invisible" dog that is being held without bond for an indeterminate sentence. The sanctity of marriage prevails.

So that's the set-up. The male/female tug of war, America 1950s style. This movie would have you believe that every man is on the make ready to jump the bones of any woman in convenient proximity. And every woman's reason for living and breathing is marriage and children. It's the wolf and the his prey, one hoping to avoid the tender trap of marriage, the other determined to cage her capture and throw away the key.

If you can immerse yourself in this time capsule of an era gone by, and enjoy watching Sinatra on screen, who even, when as here is not at his best, the movie is worth watching. Sinatra's singing the Cahn/Van Heusen "Love is a Tender Trap" is a highlight. The movie does have its amusing moments, as you hoot at its mostly antique shenanigans.

The movie is about a high-priced call girl. Elizabeth Taylor as Gloria Wandrous is a prostitute but Hollywood, in 1960, still bound by antiquated production codes couldn't reveal her real resume. This leaves the film uncomfortably constrained and contrived. The audience has to go with what's presented, a story line crafted to sanitize the world's oldest profession. So the censors have given us a character Gloria, who is a "club girl," a model paid to wear fashionable clothes and be seen in trendy watering holes. These gathering places are frequented by men in suits, the wealthy and influential whose hands are never empty of a glass, downing one drink than another, the highball or martini. Gloria, a "good time girl," is promiscuous, BUT what she's really selling and out to get is "true love." She herself is an elitist in her own line of work, not just a common gold digger, but also a girl with an elevated purpose.

And then in comes one of the regulars Gloria has hooked, Weston Liggett played by Laurence Harvey. Harvey's an actor accomplished at playing characters practicing deception and enduring subsequent remorse, and he's able here to deliver this type of troubled personality. Liggett, we soon learn is suffering from a terrible malady. He is married to a wealthy society woman, and works for the family company where he feels undervalued and unproductive. With all the entitlements of the good life, he is still a wretch, enslaved to a life of dull, staid opulence. His wife Emily, played by Dina Merrill, is the ever suffering, understanding spouse, putting up with her husband's philandering. His wife's indulgence of his shortcomings only increases Liggett's self-loathing and guilt. What's a young, good-looking man with money to do when he's destined to endure such a banal lifestyle? Why take up with a fancy slut and then of course, fall obsessively, madly in love with her.

Eddie Fisher, Taylor's husband at the time, is awkwardly positioned into this melodrama, giving less a performance than a "walk through." He plays Gloria's childhood friend Steve who serves as her devoted, unfailing confidante. He's always there for her when she is in need of emotional support, which for Gloria means an almost daily cry for help. Steve's jealous finance Norma hates his relationship with Gloria. Susan Oliver as Norma gives a serviceable performance as she has little to do but by turns look aggrieved and frustrated. Her confrontations with her boyfriend Steve are verbal jabs, inviting Steve to challenge her dramatic statements, ones usually centered around Gloria's cheap behavior: "Is she not the biggest tramp in the whole city!" Since Manhattan contains somewhere around 8 million inhabitants…this is certainly quite a distinction.

Mildred Dunnock is Gloria's mother, a woman living a genteel life of denial. Her daughter is a "good girl." Mrs. Wandrous' one time man friend, and prospective husband, sexually abused the young teen-aged Gloria, a heinous exploitation over a protracted period of time. Whether the mother even knows of her daughter's childhood ordeal is never in fact made clear to the audience.

Kay Medford, provides the most noteworthy, spirited performance in this otherwise dour production. She is the ironically named Happy, the owner of a popular motel, a rendezvous for illicit love. Happy, herself a "good time girl" in her younger days, maintains a cynical but upbeat philosophical outlook on life. She's a self-defined expert on male/female relationships, the guru ready to dole out wisdom and advice gained from her own hard luck lessons of life.

Elizabeth Taylor reportedly disliked making this movie and her displeasure shows. Her portrayal is deficient in conveying the emotional and physical scars of misuse. Taylor gives us the emotional posturing of an uninspired acting technique. She's too much The Screen Goddess throughout, unblemished by any of the authentic grit and misery defining a victim of a sordid past and present. No piece of used merchandise, Taylor on screen is every inch the Movie Star. Liz got the best actress Oscar for this movie, purportedly the "pity vote," in acknowledgment of the illness that almost took her life. The win certainly couldn't have been for the undistinguished performance she gave in this movie.

To put it mildly, I have no idea how cast and crew got through each day of filming without collapsing onto the floor in convulsive laughter. How Ayn Rand's script, basically a polemic on the virtues of self-interest, ever got green-lighted by Warner Bros. is a mystery for the ages. The characters are just cardboard props set up to mouth Rand's philosophy, which is divorced from any mature world view. The storyline itself is no more than a sermon definable by its pathological psychology preached in dead earnest. It is for these reasons, the movie can't even be enjoyed as entertaining camp.

Gary Cooper, an actor comfortable portraying easy-going, modest men of virtue, is tasked with playing a character completely out of his skill set or comfort zone. He's Howard Roark, an architect who is defiantly ego-driven to wrestle life into a shape that conforms to his own terms. He'd rather be reviled and ridiculed than compromise his vision to please the degraded sensibilities of the common masses. Cooper's take is to play him as a man of solemn dignity, but what we get on screen is a confused actor whose self-containment comes off as disinterest and boredom. Twenty-two year old Patricia Neal is the heroine in this tale of gods, goddesses and villains. The romance between her character Dominique Francon and the rogue genius Roark has all the fantasy elements and juvenile dialogue that would enchant the mind of a starry-eyed, young girl's dream world of knights and damsels.

And then Rand gives you a scene delivered in complete seriousness. A Freudian cliché is played out with such obvious intent; the childishness of it would even have made Freud himself burst out laughing. We see Roark, the man who will never compromise, the unacknowledged avatar of modern architecture, driven to earn a living doing manual labor. In a stone quarry Roark toils manfully ramming his huge, powerful electric drill into a wall. Looming overhead, perched above him on a lofty ridge, is an imperious Dominique watching mesmerized at how skillfully Roark operates his tool. This appreciation of equipment is a love match from the get-go.

But the clichés in this movie hit you in abundance. The architectural critic of the city's most influential newspaper is one Ellsworth M. Toohey, presented as the physical incarnation of the stock Victorian villain. His name is reminiscent of a Dickens character, and like many of Dickens' evildoers, he's effete and snake-like.

The Fountainhead is so stilted, phony, and pasteboard, it's tempting to go on and on about this film disaster. Why then do I give it a "5?" I think it's so bad that it merits watching as a prime example of just how bad a bad movie can really be.

This movie has won a reputation as a groundbreaker in the horror movie genre. This recognition relies on the device of suspense and threat being implied rather than seen or graphically displayed. Menace can be effectively conveyed by mood and tone but in this film, these two enhancers of emotion fail to bring it to a level of masterful execution. I've watched this movie several times and each time it was an effort to see it through to the end.

The storyline of a young woman haunted by an ancient curse involving revengeful killer cats, is a lumbering haul where the viewer patiently waits for some stunning pay-off. By the time this curse is played out, it's anti-climactic. There's no shock or surprise here.

What does scream out at you in every scene is the low budget with which they had to work. The actors and their performances are just as cut-rate as the production values. The unfortunate heroine Irina is played by a French actress of limited talent Simone Simon. The husband, Oliver Reed played by a lackluster Kent Smith, is a wooden presence, a well- meaning man who marries the spooked Irina, a Serbian with a jinxed heritage. The match between the two is the kind of walk on the wild side that Oliver, proceeding through his conventional life, never could have ever imagined. Tom Conway, brother of the more famous and accomplished George Sanders, puts in a stint as a representative of the world of science. Dr. Judd is a psychiatrist whose role in this drama is to counter balance the world of superstition that is the thematic thread of the movie. Conway shares his actor brother's beautiful speaking voice and suave manner, which serves to elevate the film, a notch.

This movie was a big popular hit when released and gave producer Val Lewton a brand name. Nevertheless, this is a boring movie, one if you sit through once, you'll most likely not be tempted to revisit again. I gave it a second viewing to try to determine what all the enthusiasm for it was about. I still didn't become a fan.

The main place of action: A New Orleans flesh peddling "meat house" whimsically called "The Doll House." A studio sound stage production, this movie doesn't even try to credibly re- create the vibrancy of 1930s New Orleans in neither era, set nor costume. This film is so bad, it can't even be appreciated as good camp.

Barbara Stanwyck plays the madam of the brothel, Jo Courtney, a lesbian bully who puts her nose in everybody's business. And she always means business. Her private obsession and property is one of her star girls, a soigné French girl Hallie Gerard played by the high fashion model and sometimes actress Capucine. Hallie is not born to the life but is a melancholy, artistic soul who in a period of vulnerability is hijacked from New York by the madam and transported into the world of prostitution as captive, proprietary goods.

The two star struck lovers in this soap opera are Hallie and a simple, lovelorn man named Dove Linkhorn. Dove is a Texan played, inconceivably, by English actor Laurence Harvey. Harvey is so miscast as a Texas farmer, his regional Texas accent is atrocious, and he completely misses the body language and physicality of a character who has spent his life outdoors under the sun and grubbing in the soil.

Jane Fonda is the eponymously named Kitty Twist, a sassy teen-age runaway, passing herself around as she pleases, and finding the brothel a protected, and for the most part an agreeable environment for someone with her truant ways. Fonda is gorgeous and she gives an energetic performance but there's not much for her to do but exhibit by turns defiance and surrender to intimidation.

The only decent performance is provided by Anne Baxter as Mexican diner owner Teresina, a woman whose sympathy and compassion offer the only humanity in this pasted together potboiler.

If this movie began and ended with Elmer Bernstein's jazzy, opening musical score so stunningly coordinated with the title sequence created by Saul Bass, well, that could of served as an exhilarating introductory appetizer. But as it stands, the main movie fare that follows is pure hash house slop.

Dixon Steele is an on the skids screenwriter who has the chance of a comeback. He's a Hollywood veteran, full of rough, prickly edges that invariably rub everyone he brushes against the wrong way. Anger management problems, and a volatile temper are part of his resume. This is a part custom made for Humphrey Bogart and he excels at playing the character of this troubled man, one with vulnerabilities, loathing weakness or concession, and acting out his frustrations through explosive rages of smash out.

Steele's been recruited to turn a thick soap opera of a book into a screen blockbuster. He feels his past Hollywood creds make this kind of popcorn melodrama beneath his talents. But he needs the career re-surge and the money so he takes it on. Too jaded to read the source book himself, acting on casual impulse, he enlists the assistance of a young, credulous hatcheck girl he knows from one of the watering holes he frequents. He takes the girl, Mildred Atkinson, to his place to give him a verbal summary of the book, and with this brief encounter, all his trouble begins.

Enter his new neighbor whose apartment faces his across the patio of the court apartments where they both reside. They scope each other out warily, sensing mutual attraction, Laurel concluding, "She likes his face." Laurel Gray is a jaded blonde babe, a starlet who's been around Hollywood long enough to know the game and the ways to score. As their relationship develops, Dix sizes her up as one of the Hollywood dames "not so good with arithmetic, BUT ask them how many minks make a coat!" Gloria Grahame playing Laurel is the perfect pouty lipped, narrow-eyed, tough noir broad making her the ideal female counterpart for Bogart's domineering, demanding Dixon Steele.

Two supporting cast members make for some eccentric characterizations, stereotypes right out of central casting who are right in tempo with the storyline. Mel Lippman plays Steele's, patient long suffering agent Art Smith. He's Steele's devoted supporter and uncomplaining lackey. Ruth Gillette is Martha, the masseuse. She's a heavyweight bruiser, Laurel's confidante, whispering poisonous sweet nothings in Laurel's ear as she "therapeutically" kneads her body.

This is director Nicolas Ray at his best, just the kind of cynical, character driven material he excelled at putting on the screen. It's a bonafide classic.

Lucy and Ricky are on the road. Oh, yes they're on the lam, fugitives from Manhattan and hiding out from Fred and Ethel, taking on the new identities of "Nicky" and Tacy." But they can't fool us. It's the Ricardos up to their old tricks, furious and fast.

They're newlyweds and Tacy subjects them both to a honeymoon of horrors as they start on the road of life. Tacy empties "the rocks in her head" and keeps them as mementos of their trip, stashing them in the trailer, weighing it down, courting the disaster of an over-weighted trailer collapsing on the road and tilting over a cliff and into a ravine. Tacy loves Nicky's "elegant " nose and cooks him, or tries to cook him, elegant dinners within the minuscule trailer kitchen. Of course this provides a comic set-up, literally, at full tilt, as food, utensils, and everything not nailed down swoops down all over the place. No matter, nothing, but nothing will dampen Tacy's enthusiasm for trailer life. Her wifely responsibility is to take care of her new husband. She tells him that when she first met him, she almost teared up, she felt so sorry for him because he was out in public with a button missing from his shirt. He needed a woman's care. More specifically, the tender care of a madcap like her.

This is pretty much the duo you see on the classic "I Love Lucy" TV shows. If you love them there, you'll love them everywhere. Even in this movie.

This is the third remake of Somerset Maugham's novel "Of Human Bondage," and it can be said that this is the version most faithful to Maugham's vision. The bondage in Maugham's story is not about romantic obsession but the drama of a man driven to seek out pain and rejection.

Since boyhood, Philip Carey has been taunted and marginalized by a society where he is defined as but a cripple with a clubfoot, and in adulthood, discouraged in his desire to become an artist. He is a man who knows nothing but the wounds, which the world can inflict. He takes up the medical profession, albeit, reluctantly and without passionate motivation. His singular passion in life becomes one Mildred Rogers, a crude, ignorant waitress, whom he seems to identify as the woman of his destiny. She is the perfect vehicle to dish out what he's become accustomed to being served: failure and humiliation. This is an ill- fated relationship where they each enable one and others frailties; for Mildred her wanton, promiscuous lifestyle, for Carey, his propensity to endure victimization.

The 1934 version paired Bette Davis and Leslie Howard. Davis, ever the exhibitionist, pulls out all the stops. Davis gives us a ferocious Mildred, a stick of dynamite ignited by her shallow pretensions and the low-life intrigues practiced by a "loose woman." Howard, a fine actor, however, plays Philip as too much the gentle sentimentalist. In 1946, "Of Human Bondage" was remade with Eleanor Parker and Paul Henreid, in the starring roles, a production obscured by the earlier version and…best forgotten. Parker has an inner refinement that intrudes on her ability to realistically portray the rough edged vulgarity of Mildred. Henreid totally misses the mark. His Philip Carey is a stolid, prissy humanitarian, the actor here misinterpreting the subtle motivations behind the bond with Mildred and Carey's vulnerability to this abuse.

And now to this 1964 production, pairing Kim Novak and Laurence Harvey. Harvey's portrayal of this complex man is nuanced; his Carey is neither a commonplace do-gooder, or in the throws of romantic love. Harvey, the actor, understands this man's toxic obsession with this woman and shows us that Carey senses its perversity, yet cannot or will not relinquish the power it has over him. It is probably Harvey's best screen performance, one of power in its understatement. Novak's performance matches the finesse of the one given by Harvey. She pulls off the coarse, insinuating, street-wise allure, the volatile emotions, and physical tirades without resorting to melodrama. Her ignorance, stupidity and impulsive willfulness play well against the character Carey's controlled reserve.

I just recently saw this 1964 production after not having seen it for many years. I had always preferred the 1934 movie, but I now feel the Novak/Harvey one is a more poignant rendition of two lives living in continual crisis. It was a misstep to shoot this in black and white. The film cries out for color, which would have enhanced the emotional vibrancy and turmoil of the story.

The musical score composed by Ron Goodwin needs to be singled out for its stellar evocative power. Goodwin has provided a musical thread with a theme that runs through the story resonating with longing and loss. It is a haunting accompaniment.

The cause of Mildred's death in the earlier movies was left ambiguous, most likely due to censorship requirements. By 1964, these taboos had fallen away and the audience now sees in more realistic depiction the sordid downfall and death of this misguided heroine.

This is a neat little crime movie in a minor key. Nunnally Johnson's script is basically a linear, expository narrative, the plot building and unfolding without the diversion of tacked on flourishes. The production, in fact, would have benefited from the addition of "noir-ish" elements to amp up the tension and suspense level as this is a visually unengaging film. Both the cinematography and lighting are unimaginative and flat. The camera functions as a static eye invariably positioned as if photographing a stage play. This lack of dynamism extends to the lighting, which captures every scene in full-lit monotone, without contributing any nuance of character or mood.

A Ginger Rogers older than we are accustomed to seeing her, looks aged and brittle. She plays Carlotta Marin, an applauded stage diva lording in regal dominance over her domain. Her wan, defeated husband, Brian Mullen, portrayed by Reginald Gardner, endures all, only too well aware that he plays lackey to his domineering wife. He defines himself as a "hitchhiker" along for the ride, an impotent passenger seated in his wealthy wife's glory train.

Van Heflin puts out a good performance as the successful Broadway producer Peter Denver, contending with his volatile, demanding star "Lottie" Marin. Gene Tierney, as Iris, Heflin's wife, is delegated to the background, given little to do in the movie other than serve as the understanding, patient helpmate.

Enter the seemingly naïve waif, Nancy Ordway, played by the former child actress Peggy Ann Garner, who engineers to insert herself into this mix of the Broadway elite. She announces her ambition to be a famous writer but this is far from her real agenda. She's a manipulating, conniving little gold digger and none of these worldly Manhattan sophisticates can even sniff out her game. This is where the logic of the plot unravels. Wouldn't someone with the professional stats and savvy of a Broadway big-shot producer like Peter Denver scope out a conniver like Nancy? The gullibility level of this crowd is to a one…an improbability.

George Raft, as the voice of the law, Det. Bruce, is not given much to do but play the authoritative investigator.

All in all, the movie no great event, still provides an hour or so of agreeable entertainment.

Some topics lend themselves to satire; genocidal military dictatorships do not. This is perhaps one of the most offensive, ill-conceived movies ever produced in the name of public "entertainment." To portray Nazis as idiotic buffoons and to script in dialogue and insert one- liners about the comedic aspects of concentration camps…well that's got to just be a laugh a minute.

And here Jack Benny portrays a pretentious Polish actor, Joseph Tura, which gives Benny full license to present us with his comedy persona in full form. Tura, who craves greatness as Shakespeare's Hamlet is prime Benny, the smug, mocking, self-satisfied comedic fool only satisfied when he can make everyone else look foolish. So guess what?! THAT makes him smart. Got it? Hilarious!

This film, Carole Lombard's last, is a sad coda to her sparkling career. Purportedly her husband Clark Gable urged her not to take the part of Maria Tura, but she liked the script?!

The esteemed director Fritz Lang, half-Jewish, (his Jewish mother had converted to Catholicism) and an émigré from Nazi Germany who fled that country just in time, should have known better.

This movie was a disaster when it was made at the height of World War II, and more than 70 years later is still, to put it mildly, an embarrassment. No matter what Leonard Maltin thinks.

D.W. Griffith has bestowed on 21st century viewers a visually engaging historical artifact. The film is largely incoherent and ultimately lacks cohesion in its attempt to incorporate so many historical parallels. The four-hour extravaganza is a spectacle of excess in its every aspect.

Of course it is critical to recognize that this film dates to 1916, predating the "modern era." Like most of the films from the early silent period, it's permeated with Victorian sensibility, and a puritan morality. Almost 100 years on, this makes for story lines reflecting a collective societal naiveté. Watching such a lengthy, moralizing melodrama is a tedious, wearying experience.

I give it a "5" as an important example in the trajectory of the development of the movie industry both as popular entertainment and art form.

Based on a Hemingway short story. And Hemingway knew how to craft stories that epitomized realms of male supremacy. His world was one of combat, African safaris, bull rings… all the places where "real men" constantly had to prove masculine courage. Women were an accessory… the old "Can't live with them, Can't live without them" philosophy.

In this movie, all that comes across in spades. Robert Preston is Francis Mocamber, led around by the nose on a chain by his wife Margaret, played by Joan Bennett. They hire great white hunter Robert Wilson, portrayed by Gregory Peck, to guide them on safari. In the Mocamber marriage it's the wife who wears both the pants and the skirt. The trip is no picnic in the jungle but a miserable, forced emotional trek where the two men just get worn out by Margaret's constant authoritarianism and general bitchiness. Tragedy ensues…who woulda guessed it?!

Not much more to be said. If you subscribe to the Hemingway universe, this movie is for you.

Here we're presented with a contrived premise of daring proportions that in the hands of director Fritz Lang is compelling and entertaining movie fare. It's a psychological thriller with plot momentum and a twist ending that resolves all that came before… with a real payoff for the viewer.

Dana Andrews, playing Tom Garrett, an investigative reporter, takes on a crusade casting himself as lead crusader. His plan is to expose the over-zealous district attorney Thompson, an unethical man always working towards one more criminal conviction and one more execution, and he doesn't care how he gets the result. Garrett's intent therefore is twofold, to expose judicial malfeasance and thereby present a dramatic case against capital punishment. Garrett puts into action a plan with an intricate train of events and trail of incriminating evidence framing himself for a crime he did not commit. The murder victim is an unsympathetic nightclub chorus floozy with a reputation for showing any man everything she's got if there's money in it for her. Garrett's co-conspirator and dedicated support in this ruse is influential newspaper publisher Austin Spencer, the only other person who knows of Garrett's deception. That his playing at murderer may be a dangerous masquerade that will place him in real peril doesn't seem to overly concern Garrett. He has safeguards in place. What can go wrong? Well, just about everything.

The ensuing press coverage is sordid and full of sensationalism rising to a fever pitch, which the DA styles as "working up artificial emotions." This newspaper frenzy is not entirely unwelcome PR to the the DA whose professional ambitions thrive on publicity.

Joan Fontaine is Garrett's love interest and incidentally, the daughter of the newspaper publisher. Fontaine's character Susan Spencer is a pale personality, a lovely, well-bred society girl who shows distress by pacing up and down and twisting a handkerchief clutched in her hands. Fontaine, always somewhat of a decorous wallflower, does manage to muster some self-assertion in her efforts to save her love when his situation as murder suspect number one turns bleak and dire. Dana Andrews puts out his usual journeyman's effort; he's a solid actor who always seems to be working hard at his craft.

This is a neat little movie. "Movie time" well spent.

Martin & Lewis were everywhere in the 1950s. Movies. TV. I remember the duo very well and watching them as a child, I thought Jerry Lewis was hilarious. I haven't seen them together since those days. When I saw "The Stooge" recently on TCM, my memories took a big jolt.

This is a really is an unpleasant, uncomfortable movie. Lewis plays a pathetic nitwit who should be kept on a leash for his own good; instead he is exploited by show biz types. Dean is Dean, a competent crooner with a pleasant, easy going manner. Dean Martin never reached his stride until he cut the umbilical cord from Jerry and took up with the Sinatra Rat Pack.

There's nothing funny about "The Stooge." The movie is a curio, an example of what the public applauded as comedic entertainment 60 years ago: the eccentric combo of Martin & Lewis.