Classic Films in Focus: THE BEAUTIFUL BLONDE FROM BASHFUL BEND (1949)

If you know much about writer and director Preston Sturges, you might well go into The Beautiful Blonde from Bashful Bend (1949) expecting too much. Sturges, after all, was the brilliant creative force behind smartly daring comedies like The Lady Eve (1941), Sullivan’s Travels (1941), and The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek (1944), but this Western musical comedy starring Betty Grable lacks the punch of those classic films. Despite that, The Beautiful Blonde from Bashful Bend is still amusing enough to be worth watching, especially because of a sprightly supporting cast and several instances of Sturges’ typically outrageous humor.

The story follows Freddie Jones (Grable), a feisty singer in a frontier saloon who gets into trouble when she accidentally shoots a judge in the rear end while aiming for her faithless lover, Blackie (Cesar Romero). Freddie and her pal, Conchita (Olga San Juan), hightail it out of Bashful Bend and impersonate a schoolteacher and her Native American maid in another town further down the railroad line, where Freddie entertains the advances of a wealthy local (Rudy Vallee). Trouble pursues the girls when Blackie discovers their hiding place and the resulting shenanigans cause a shootout in the town.

Grable is fetching as the trigger happy heroine, and her musical number early in the picture is fun, especially as her backup singers react to her plans to finish the song with a bang. Cesar Romero projects his customary charm as her roving paramour, and Rudy Vallee is reliably cast as the fussy golden boy. The romantic relationship between Freddie and Blackie sadly lacks development, and the joke about the judge’s posterior gets old by the end of the picture, but Sturges’ usual crew of character actors liven things up, and Sterling Holloway is hilariously weird as a crazy local youth. There’s also a great cameo appearance by Margaret Hamilton early in the movie. Upstaging all of these comedians is the simply delightful Olga San Juan as Freddie’s Mexican friend, Conchita. Whatever the other failings of the picture might be, her knowing, naughty performance makes the whole thing worthwhile.

Be sure to catch the strains of the old murder ballad, “Frankie and Johnny,” in the score whenever Freddie and Blackie get together. Look for more of Betty Grable in Down Argentine Way (1940), I Wake Up Screaming (1941), and How to Marry a Millionaire (1953). Best remembered today for his role as the Joker on the 1960s Batman series, Cesar Romero can also be found in Wee Willie Winkie (1937), Orchestra Wives (1942), and Vera Cruz (1954). Rudy Vallee plays similar characters in The Palm Beach Story (1942) and The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer (1947). Olga San Juan never became a star, but you can find her in a couple of comedies, including Blue Skies (1946), Variety Girl (1947), and One Touch of Venus (1948). Finally, ask the kids if they recognize the distinctive tones of that maniacal redheaded fellow; Sterling Holloway provided the voice for several memorable Disney characters, including the Cheshire Cat and Winnie the Pooh.

An earlier version of this review originally appeared on Examiner.com. The author retains all rights to this content.

Classic Films in Focus: THE PALM BEACH STORY (1942)

Screwball comedy director Preston Sturges offers a frothy concoction in The Palm Beach Story (1942). It's a light, short film, daring for its day in its treatment of the idea that an attractive woman might willingly use her sex appeal to advance her husband's career. The dialogue is witty, and the characters are certainly charming, but those who are bothered by loose ends will have fits over the way in which the movie leaves much unsaid and even more unexplained in its opening and closing scenes.

Our story involves a young married couple, Tom (Joel McCrea) and Gerry (Claudette Colbert), whose marriage isn't going so well because Tom has yet to get his big break and Gerry is tired of being poor. Gerry decides to help Tom out by divorcing him so that she can romance rich lovers and bankroll Tom's idea for a revolutionary airport design. Despite Tom's confusion over how exactly this is supposed to be a swell plan, Gerry takes off for Palm Beach to get a divorce, proving along the way that she can in fact charm men into giving her just about anything she wants. Her most devoted victim is an alarmingly wealthy bachelor named John D. Hackensacker III (Rudy Vallee), who falls hard for Gerry in short order. Tom pursues his wife to Florida, where Hackensacker's sister (Mary Astor) promptly conceives a passion for him, and the four besotted characters run around making fools of themselves until everything eventually gets sorted out, thanks to a deus ex machina so wild and so unaccounted for that it will either make you roar with laughter or tear your hair out in frustration.

The cast assembled for this trip to the loony bin is first rate. Colbert is lovely enough to sell the idea that men might fall all over themselves for her benefit, and Joel McCrea excels at comic reaction shots where he gapes open-mouthed in disbelief at the extent of his wife's zany endeavors. Rudy Vallee gets high marks for his amiable blueblood, and Mary Astor is a scream as the loopy sister. Even the secondary players bring plenty of laughs; Robert Dudley gets the movie off to a hilarious start as the generous Wienie King, whose inspection of the couple's apartment sets the plot in motion. Later, we get a whole club car of humorous characters with the Ale and Quail Club, who gallantly give Gerry a ticket so that she can board the train to Palm Beach. William Demarest, Victor Potel, Robert Warwick, Chester Conklin, Arthur Stuart Hull, Sheldon Jett, Dewey Robinson, Jimmy Conlin, Jack Norton, Torben Meyer, Robert Greig, and Roscoe Ates pack the train scenes with their drunken conviviality. A lot of these old character actors were regulars in Preston Sturges' pictures, and the director clearly takes great delight in their antics, literally setting them loose on the unsuspecting passengers and train crew until they eventually end up being set loose in a different way by the conductors.

It is difficult to say much about the beginning and ending of the movie without spoiling it, but it doesn't take two minutes to figure out that The Palm Beach Story opens with a scene from a completely different tale, one that won't be addressed in the scenes that follow. Who is the woman tied up in the closet? Why are both the bride and groom late for the wedding? What the heck is going on? I don't think Sturges means to torture his audience with these mystifying bookends to the main plot; I think that the title's wording is supposed to suggest that this is merely yet another story in the lives of these wild characters, and the beginning and ending show that the Palm Beach adventure is neither the first nor the last time that Tom and Gerry will find themselves doing crazy things. Like the television series Friends, where every episode is titled, "The One...," The Palm Beach Story is one story among many stories for our protagonists, with the only problem being that the other stories never actually get told. Personally, I would have liked to see the story that led up to the film's opening scenes; the comedic possibilities suggested there are marvelous.

If you enjoy The Palm Beach Story, you should certainly try out other Preston Sturges films, especially The Lady Eve (1941), Sullivan's Travels (1941), and The Miracle of Morgan's Creek (1944). For more comedy with Claudette Colbert, try It Happened One Night (1934), Midnight (1939),  and The Egg and I (1947). See Joel McCrea in The Most Dangerous Game (1932), The More the Merrier (1943), and Ride the High Country (1962). Mary Astor is best remembered today as the femme fatale in The Maltese Falcon (1941), but you'll also find her in The Great Lie (1941) and Meet Me in St. Louis (1944). See more of Rudy Vallee in The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer (1947) and Sturges' darker comedy, Unfaithfully Yours (1948).

An earlier version of this review originally appeared on Examiner.com. The author retains all rights to this content.

Laugh and the World Laughs with You: Preston Sturges and the Social Side of Film

Today I began a new First Fridays Film Festival series for the LearningQUEST lifetime learning program at the local library. This term we are looking at the films of Preston Sturges, the writer and director who produced classic comedies like The Great McGinty (1940), The Lady Eve (1941), and Sullivan's Travels (1941). There are 90 people signed up for the course this term, the most I've ever had, but I think about 60-70 actually showed up today. Watching the movie with the group reminded me of one of Sturges' most important lessons, the value of comedy as a communal experience.

Most of my students had never heard of Sturges, much less seen The Miracle of Morgan's Creek (1944), which was today's selection. A brief introduction gave them an overview of the film and its notable aspects, especially its thwarting of the Hays Code. I wanted them to understand why the movie was funny beyond the obvious pratfalls and gags, but I didn't try to oversell it or analyze it too much beforehand. I like to let the film speak for itself as much as possible.

Hearing the audience laugh throughout the movie was absolutely the best moment of my entire week. They chuckled, snorted, and guffawed through the whole film. It reminded me of the scene in Sullivan's Travels where Joel McCrea realizes that people need to laugh and that laughter is essentially a communal experience. What a wonderful thing to be able to share!

It's always fun to show classic movies to an audience, but these are the moments I love most. Thanks, Preston Sturges, wherever you are, for the gift of laughter and the chance to share it.

Classic Films in Focus: THE MUPPET MOVIE (1979)

Like Star Wars (1977), The Muppet Movie (1979) was a watershed event in the formation of Gen Xers' cinematic culture. Jim Henson and George Lucas certainly recognized a common spirit in one another, and their films resonated with their youthful audiences in similarly enduring ways. By the time the first Muppet film appeared, The Muppet Show had already been on television for several seasons, but the movie was something larger and more ambitious, in terms of both puppetry and narrative. The Muppet Movie also shares with Star Wars a deep and pervasive debt to the film traditions that had come before, although The Muppet Movie celebrates its relationship to classic movies more overtly and self-consciously than Lucas' film. This playful awareness of itself as part of the great Hollywood tradition is part of the movie's charm, and it helps to set The Muppet Movie apart as a special kind of family film, both smart and sentimental, both wildly creative and instantly accessible, a film that rewards the adult viewer with different but equal pleasures from those experienced by the child.

The plot follows a classic Hollywood line: Kermit the Frog, talented, generous, and completely inexperienced, sets off for Hollywood to become a star. Along the way he picks up a menagerie of companions, including Fozzie Bear, Miss Piggy, and The Great Gonzo. They encounter a number of obstacles on the way to realizing their dream, chiefly embodied by the greedy Doc Hopper (Charles Durning), who intends to use Kermit as the spokesfrog for his fried frogs' legs restaurant chain, whether Kermit likes the idea or not.

The plot of The Muppet Movie combines elements of two popular Hollywood genres, the show business picture and the road picture. The show business plot ties it to films like A Star is Born (pick a version), Singin' in the Rain (1952), and a host of other movies in which starry-eyed kids arrive in Tinseltown looking for their own "standard rich and famous contracts," while the road elements connect it with films like the Hope and Crosby vehicles and even The Wizard of Oz (1939). Both genres can be played as either comedy or drama, and The Muppet Movie incorporates both, although its drama is generally tinged with enough surreal weirdness to render it palatable to the youngest members of the audience. Thinking about it now, it seems to me that the classic film The Muppet Movie most resembles is Sullivan's Travels (1941), with its emphasis on the importance of making people laugh combined with its picaresque adventures and Hollywood self-reflection. There are times in Preston Sturges' brilliant comedy when Sullivan does not feel like laughing at all, becoming downcast and even in despair, and Kermit shares those moments during his own journey. Still, both stories insist on the belief that it will all come right in the end.

The Muppet characters have their own indebtedness to classic films and types, having been created to reflect the values and conventions of Vaudeville and other old school entertainment institutions, and in The Muppet Movie those relationships get more play because of the opportunities presented by the sustained narrative. While Kermit, for example, possesses a certain affinity with Sturges' Sullivan, he might rightly be called a Capraesque hero, as well. Henson could have named his picture Mr. Frog Goes to Hollywood and summed it up pretty handily. If Kermit were a human being and not a frog, he would be played by Jimmy Stewart (Roger Ebert has called him "Mickey Rooney in a frog suit," but I think he has more romantic charisma than that implies). The sense of common ground between Henson and Capra characters becomes particularly obvious in It's a Very Merry Muppet Christmas Movie (2002), which more or less recreates the entire plot of It's a Wonderful Life (1946) with Kermit as its amphibian George Bailey. Miss Piggy has her own classic movie roots; with her diva's ego and talent for self-transformation, she channels the glamor and hard-edged determination of stars like Bette Davis and Joan Crawford. In The Muppet Movie, her lust for fame causes her to abandon Kermit, the frog of her heart, but her porcine melodrama brings her back to him in time to share in his success.

The scores of cameo appearances that populate The Muppet Movie shore up these affiliations. We get, in no particular order, Bob Hope, Edgar Bergen, Milton Berle, Mel Brooks, James Coburn, and Orson Welles, just to name a few of the veteran performers who appear in the film. The presence of Welles is probably the most interesting from a classic film perspective; imagine the man who made Citizen Kane (1941), arguably the greatest movie of all time, appearing in The Muppet Movie! It's the cinematic equivalent of the Pope's blessing. Many of these stars were better known for their television careers, but all had experience in the movies, including Milton Berle, who had been appearing in silent films in Hollywood since the age of 5.

The Muppet Movie was a collaborative effort, as were all of Jim Henson's productions; director James Frawley, writers Jerry Juhl and Jack Burns, and the entire crew of puppeteers all had to share a dream as much as the Muppet characters themselves in order to make the film a success. What they also shared was a very sharp eye for what made classic Hollywood films so good, their energy and spirit, their familiar types and universal themes. They drew from the best that had been done before, and it gave their felt and fur characters a kind of gravity even when they were being the most ridiculous, the way that characters are in the films of Sturges and Capra and Hawks. In that sense, The Muppet Movie is a true classic, and it's just as worthwhile to watch it today as it was more than thirty years ago.

For more films that share the themes and spirit of The Muppet Movie, try 42nd Street (1933), Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933), Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936), and Babes in Arms (1939). Round out the classic Muppet trilogy by watching The Great Muppet Caper (1981) and The Muppets Take Manhattan (1984) before moving on to films made after Jim Henson's death, including The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992), Muppet Treasure Island (1996), and Disney's The Muppets (2011).

An earlier version of this review originally appeared on Examiner.com. The author retains all rights to this content.

Postscript
My author copies of The Wider Worlds of Jim Henson just arrived today, which reminded me that it was time to revise and reprint this review of the original Muppet film. The Wider Worlds of Jim Henson is the second anthology of essays I have edited with my friend and colleague, Anissa Graham. It's now available on Amazon and through numerous other book retailers, along with our original anthology, Kermit Culture. Both books were published by McFarland. In case you're wondering, my favorite Muppet is The Great Gonzo, which might explain why I try to do so many different things "while and at the same time!"