Film review: Holiday (1938)

(Stop me if you've heard this before, but) this was not what I expected at all.  It's in a collection on the Criterion Channel of Cary Grant comedies that's leaving the channel in March, so I thought we'd check it out, but it is very much not a comedy.  Obviously Grant and Hepburn worked together in The Philadelphia Story and Bringing Up Baby, which were classic screwballs, but this is more like (only much better than) Sylvia Scarlett, in that it's a drama as well as a love story.  The holiday in question refers both to the fact that Grant's Johnny Case meets the woman he wants to marry (Julia Seton - a thankless role well-played by Doris Nolan) at a holiday in Lake Placid (before the film starts), and to the extended holiday from work he wants to take as soon as he's socked away some real money, so that he can "find himself."  Jami said this theme was very Somerset Maugham-esque (I wouldn't know) and the play it's based on was a hit in 1928, so I see some post-WWI ennui in there.  I was reminded of Leslie Howard's character in The Petrified Forest, although Grant is still at the point where he thinks he will find himself.  A much sadder character is Julia's brother Ned (Lew Ayres - who played Dr. Kildare in a series of films, but is a Robert Vaughn lookalike (with Jack Lemmon overtones)) 

 

who is already an alcoholic, despite being the youngest of the Seton siblings.  Who's the third?  Katherine Hepburn, of course, playing headstrong elder sister Linda. We first see Johnny barging into the apartment of his friends, an older couple, a college professor and his wife (the second time in recent memory, after The Bishop's Wife, where college professors are presented as wise and genial sidekicks) to announce he's found the love of his life.  They are skeptical, but clearly dote on him.  Off he goes to meet her at her house, having theretofore only seen her at Lake Placid.  He is confused when the cabbie drops him off at the address he's been given and it's an incredibly swank apartment house.  He assumes she must work there, and goes in through the servants' entrance.  But of course, it turns out the Setons are incredibly rich.  This rather throws Johnny, who, you may have guessed, has an ambivalent attitude towards money.  So does this film, as both Ned and Linda are clearly damaged and long to escape, while Julia progressively reveals herself to be a conformist who expects Johnny to come around, fit in, and work for Daddy.  At first the father disapproves of Johnny, 

 

but he knows Johnny's boss (also in finance) who speaks highly of him, so a wedding is planned.  Linda, who is very taken with Johnny and loves her sister (Ned is not so taken) asks only that she be allowed to plan the engagement party, and that it take place in the "playroom" - a room that their (long dead) mother made her own on the top floor of their palatial residence, that is modestly furnished and cozy, with lots of musical instruments from Ned's past career as a prodigy, long abandoned.  Of course, Julia gives in to Daddy's demand to have it instead by a massive affair attended by the best and brightest.  Linda stays upstairs, and is accidentally discovered by Johnny's friends the Potters (whom, in a running joke, everyone mispronounces "Porter").  They have a gay old time until eventually Johnny is sent up to bring down Linda and gets sucked in.  It's when Julia and Pa come up that things go south.  

 

Will Johnny marry Julia, and accede to her demands that he give working for Daddy a couple of years at least?  Or will he join the Potters on a trip to Paris (back in the days when there were funds for American professors to study abroad)?  And what will become of Linda now that she (to her denial but Ned's insistence) has fallen for Johnny?  You can probably guess.  I have to say that this film took me a while to warm up to.  At first I felt a bit annoyed at having to sympathize with Linda's rich-person problems, 

 

but Hepburn's performance, in a role that could have descended into mawkishness, is masterful.  And Grant avoids the mugging he did in his comedy collaborations with Hepburn, while at the same time getting to show off his gymnastic skills.  

 He, too, walks a line perfectly playing a character who is constantly upbeat and refuses self-pity, but who lost both parents as a teen and has a sadness underneath.  Surprisingly affecting.  All's well that ends well - at least for now (can two such damaged people find happiness?) - except for poor Ned, that is.

Lots more photos here.

Holly Rec

Seven Lakes

Frederick gets scoped

Frederick's tum continues to be a worry, as does his periodic weight loss, so we got him referred to a GI specialist who (after Jami took Frederick to see him in the upstairs of the Flint Farmer's Market, of all places) scheduled him for a colonoscopy this Friday.  This, of course, as both his parents could tell him, required a day of "purging" beforehand, where he could only eat gelatine and clear popsicles, while he made frequent trips to the toilet.  Strangely he seemed to find this enjoyable.  Anyway, the day arrived and off we set to Hurley, the place where Frederick was born.  We were allowed to park in the Urgent Care parking lot, despite not being Urgent.

 

Then we followed signs leading us along endless winding passages until we found the actual place.

Here he is, recovering.  I was all set to post pictures from his scope (imagine something that looks like an orange-lit space-tunnel from Doctor Who) but Jami insisted that was "private".  Your loss.

At any rate, they found nothing wrong, which is good news but a bit mystifying.  One of the nurses diagnosed "being a teenager".  Best part: we got to keep the above blanket.  Apparently they get more donated than they can handle.

This was the very nice (and brilliantly empty) waiting room.

Goodbye Hurley!  You almost killed Jami when she had appendicitis, but we escaped more or less unscathed this time.

Film review: She Done Him Wrong (1933)

 Criterion has a collection of Mae West films that are leaving at the end of the month, so I figured, why not give this one a shot.  It's based on a play of hers called "Diamond Lil" and she, naturally, plays the titular Lil.  It also features a very young Cary Grant, and I understand she's effectively responsible for launching his career, so that was another reason to watch it.  

Well... it's 65 minutes long and it still managed to drag.  There is no way in hell you wouldn't know this was originally a play, because it's incredibly stage-y.  And a lot of the acting (Cary excepted) is at best amateurish.  There are some good lines from West (I know she never actually said "Come up and see me sometime" but she says some variant of it many times in this) but the best one by far is uttered by her piano accompanist early on in this.  She says "this tune haunts me" and he zings her with "it should, considering you just murdered it".  I'd be proud forever if I came up with that one.  The actual play is a bunch of shenanigans: Lil is with a bar-owning district "boss" (i.e., political influencer) who showers her with diamonds that he pays for with some decidedly shady side-business (effectively trafficking of vulnerable women from the mission next door, done with an oleaginous Russian couple), but she was with a violent criminal ("Chick") who is currently behind bars.  There's another unsavory customer who has his eye on Lil and who informs her that a copper called "The Hawk" has gone undercover investigating her current beau's business and will bring him down.  Meanwhile Grant plays the person who runs the mission which is struggling financially (kind-hearted Lil arranges to buy the building off the outrageous Jewish caricature landlord to ensure that the mission is not shut down) but who is secretly [SPOILER FOR THE VERY GULLIBLE}... THE HAWK!  Chick (who quite rightly doesn't trust Lil to be faithful) breaks out of prison to check up on her, she gets into a tussle with the distaff side of the Russian couple 

(because the young man falls for her) and accidentally stabs her to death (!), the Hawk closes in...  It's exhausting.  Throw in a couple of song numbers from Lil (one of which is Frankie and Johnnie, hence the film title) and you've got a picture.  I've never seen West before, and I have to say... she's not my type.  It's almost comical how every man in the movie acts like a Tex Avery cartoon wolf every time she sashays (well, "lumbers" might be more apt - she moves rather like John Wayne, perhaps because she was very tiny (Cary Grant TOWERS over her) and wore giant heels) into view, even though she reminds me rather of a plump middle-aged Coronation Street character.  Literally every man finds her irresistible, which is what can happen, I guess, if you write your own material.  Her delivery is familiar, mostly because it's been parodied so often, but her lines are hit and miss.  There are some that are genuinely funny (when she visits Chick in prison, 

every old lag knows her, and one of them says "will you consider going out with me when I get out? and she says "how long are you in for?" "15 years" "It's a date!") but others haven't aged well.  There's a lot of fairly tame double entendres (we managed to miss the notorious "is that a gun in your pocket or are you just pleased to see me"), but you wonder how salacious she really was, since she set this in the 1890s, and you never even see a hint of ankle (or giant shoes, which might be the point).  Perhaps more progressive was the idea that she was an unrepentant user of  men, who was cheerfully upfront about looking out for #1 and collecting as much bling as possible.  It also has decidedly melodramatic elements, which differentiate it from the screwball comedies that were breathing hard on its heels.  The contrast between this and, say, The Good Fairy, which came only 2 years later, is instructive.  Still, now we can say we've seen a Mae West film.

Film review: The Good Fairy (1935)

I ordered this on Blu Ray having researched Herbert Marshall films after the last one we enjoyed, and boy, it did NOT disappoint. (Which shouldn't really be a surprise, as it's scripted by Preston Sturges and directed by William "Roman Holiday" Wyler (who went on to marry the leading lady, albeit briefly) - but then why isn't it better known?) Marshall is excellent indeed - more antic and in general less suave than usual, he reminded me a bit of Jack Lemmon in fact - but the whole cast is amazing.  Perhaps most impressive is Margaret Sullavan, whom we'd seen before because we've seen The Shop Around The Corner, but she is a real revelation in this one.  If I had to think of a contemporary analogue for her, it would probably be Amy Adams (Enchanted is one of the movies in Frederick's rotation) in that she manages to be totally innocent and decent and unaffected (and a completely natural performer) without being remotely cloying.  And as we first see her character Luisa Ginglebusher (no, really) as an orphan in the Budapest Municipal Orphanage for girls (the movie is based on a play by the Hungarian playwright Ferenc Molnár, and does not attempt to relocate it, perhaps because some of the plot points involve the oddities of the Bulgarian political system, and perhaps so they don't have to explain why half the cast sounds American and half  English), where she is beloved by the younger girls because she tells engrossing fairy stories to them, which helps them take their minds of the drudgeries they are asked to perform.  

This makes it sound as if it's a kind of Annie/Oliver Twist situation, but in fact, the orphanage (or, asylum, as she refers to it later, to the humorous consternation of her interlocutor - again, I wondered if this joke was included in the original Bulgarian and made more sense there) is run by the kindly Dr. Schultz (whose femaleness bemuses the first blustery male character we encounter), 

 

who clearly dotes on the girls even though the place looks very poor and underfunded.  Said blustery male arrives to recruit bellhops for his palatial cinema, and is taken by Lu, even though he first encounters her hanging from a light fitting because her ladder has collapsed in the course of an enthusiastic fairy-story-telling. 

 

So she ventures out into the world, ignorant of its ways, and has the job of wearing the personally designed costume ("are the pants tight?" asks the worried Dr. Shultz of the boastful manager "that depends on the girl - all the pants are the same size") and holding an illuminated arrow to direct customers into alternating sides of the cinema.

While here, she meets a man who is to have an outsize influence on her life for reasons that are unclear.  He is a waiter called Detlaff, (wonderfully) played by English actor Reginald Owen, probably best known for being the dotty Admiral who sets off cannons in Mary Poppins.  

 

His motivations are unclear, but essentially he takes her under his wing in a purely paternal way, apparently just wanting her to have a good life (a bit sad that I should find this behavior so bizarre).  Her first meeting with him is a bit inauspicious, as he seems drunk and she confuses him with her arrow-pointing, and is unable to answer his question as to why he should follow the arrows.  They bump into each other inside the theater as Lu gets caught up in the film, which is a hilariously over-the-top melodrama involving a weeping leading lady 

pleading with her husband ("Meredith") not to throw her out, while he repeatedly (and I mean repeatedly) responds sternly with a simple "Go!".  As we alternate between "Meredith!" and "Go!" we see Lu and Detlaff dissolving into tears, while more heartless patrons either fall asleep or give up and leave.  The next meeting is after she leaves work and encounters a lecherous young man (the almost unrecognizable Cesar Romero) loitering outside and escapes him by claiming that Detlaff (whom she spots on the street) is her husband.  The young man offered to take her for music, beer and sandwiches, and she responded with horror, but when Detlaff makes the same offer she is ecstatic.  (It is while they're eating that we have the aforementioned "asylum" exchange.)  Turns out Detlaff works at a hotel, a much classier establishment than the joint he takes Lu to, and (once he has been reassured about the whole asylum business, and returned her utensils) he wants her to experience the high life of a party at said hotel, so he gets her an invitation (and an outfit, because she doesn't really have many clothes).  "Aha," you say, "this must be where she meets Herbert Marshall!"  WRONG!  It's where she meets meat-shipping magnate Konrad, played (wonderfully, again) by Frank "Wizard of Oz" (and he actually makes jokes about being a wizard in this - talk about foreshadowing) Morgan.  He falls instantly for her, as does inebriated government minister Dr. Metz - a hilarious Eric Blore -

who delivers possibly my favorite lines in the film, when one of the hotel staff, noticing how drunk he is, offers help managing the stairs down into the main ballroom: "Unhand me varlet, lest I cleave thee to the brisket!  Alone I shall navigate yon precipice!" (he then goes on to inveigh against the architects who insist in filling their buildings with these inconveniences), but Konrad is a less drunk and more determined suitor. He manages to chivvy Lu into a private dining room, despite Detlaff's increasingly frantic (and very funny) attempts to separate them, to protect Lu's honor, and although at first she's having a wild time of it

eventually he proposes, and she panics.  She instantly resorts to the tried-and-true "I'm married!" defense, but then is startled when he accepts this and says that he will make her husband wealthy if she insists on resisting his largesse.  This reminds her of the directive Dr. Shultz gave her as she left the orphanage that she was to do good deeds for others wherever possible, and she decides on the spot to act as the titular Good Fairy for some random man who will be her "husband" and get instantly rich as a result.  After some hemming and hawing, under increasingly bemused questioning from Konrad, she decides that he's a lawyer, and while Konrad is temporarily out of the room, she looks through the phone book for a suitable candidate, landing randomly on a Dr. Sporum (whose presumed poverty is confirmed by Detlaff's insistence that the street of his address is in a disreputable part of town).  THAT (finally) is Herbert Marshall, whom Konrad meets with the very next day to make him the European counsel for his (South American) meat-packing firm.

Sporum is initially incredulous, then suspicious, but is finally brought round by the wads of cash, and then becomes convinced that his long-time penury-inducing commitment to honesty has finally paid off.  He is ordering new furniture when Lu turns up with the intention of explaining everything to him

She finds she cannot, but she also finds him rather amusing and decides to encourage him in his extravagant spending, and takes him out to buy suits and a car (of which he is an enthusiastic driver, although he insists on staying in the middle of the road for safety).  She also wears down his resistance and gets him to agree to shave off his beloved beard.  While he is in the barber, there's an interlude while she wanders around a department store and happens upon a "real foxine" stole, which she delightedly models (imitating the "Meredith!" actress) in the dressing room mirrors:

Of course, when she sees the newly-shorn Sporum, she falls for him, but her little ruse seems to be about to collapse.  She admits to Sporum that she can't have dinner with him because she has to have dinner with a rich gentleman, which he huffily misinterprets, and when Detlaff finds out about this follow-up dinner with Konrad, he decides it's his duty to break it up, and a now-sober Konrad decides he can't go on with his plan of having her as his mistress, and has to marry her, and... it all gets very complicated.  Detlaff gives Konrad a black eye, and somehow everyone ends up at Sporum's, 

where he's about to find out that it wasn't his honesty or his lawyering skill that got him his money.  Will it all work out?  Well, she is a Good Fairy...

Our recent walks

We haven't been doing anything much of note, hence no posting recently, but Frederick and I still go for a walk most days, so here are some pics of that (most are duplicated on Instagram, but you can embiggen them more easily here).  You can usually work out how cold it is by what hat/coat Frederick is wearing.  If it's the red coat or grey hat, it's not that brutal.  Fake-fur-trimmed hat or green parka = cold. Fake fur hat UNDER a hood = Jack-London-short-story-esque.

 January 23rd, Holly Recreational Area:

January 24th, Highland Recreation Area (we parked at the entrance for the first time ever to avoid skidding, and thus visited the gatehouse to Edsel Ford's old estate, which was no great shakes):

January 26th - Fresh fall of snow, so we just walked down to the old Pierce Park golf course and round it and back.

February 27th - No Frederick!  It says NO SWIMMING! (Metamora-Hadley)

February 2nd, Seven Lakes:

February 3rd: Walking on the lake at Holly:

February 4th, we drove all the way out to Shiawassee Reserve and had it all to ourselves, bleak and beautiful:

I believe Frederick is standing on a Beaver Dam:

February 5th - this looks like Grand Blanc Commons:

February 6th: Back to Metamora Hadley (probably because it's the safest place to visit when the roads are terrible):

February 7th, a glorious sunny day, so back we go to Holly.  Frederick's boot went through the ice, which was not comforting, as we were out on the lake and I thought it was thick enough:

February 9th, Seven Lakes again:

February 10th, no sun, so bleak again at Holly:

Sometimes it's hard to know which way up the photo goes:

February 11th, Seven Lakes again.  This time we felt sure on the ice because there was somebody out there already, drilling a hole to do ice fishing (not a hobby I'll be taking up):