Summer Under the Stars: Bette Davis in DANGEROUS (1935)

This post is part of the Summer Under the Stars blogathon hosted by Sittin' on a Backyard Fence and ScribeHard on Film. Visit their blogs for links to all of the Bette Davis posts in conjunction with TCM's day honoring the star on August 14, 2013.

Bette Davis won her first Best Actress Oscar for Dangerous (1935), a romantic melodrama directed by Alfred E. Green and costarring Franchot Tone. As the title suggests, Davis plays a female who proves fatal to the men who are drawn to her flame, but the story is melodrama than noir because Davis’ anti-heroine knows that she’s bad news and agonizes over what to do about it. With its top-notch Davis performance and excellent darker role for Franchot Tone, Dangerous is a must-see picture for the leading lady’s fans, even if it isn’t as well-known today as most of her other Oscar-nominated films.

Davis plays alcoholic, has-been actress Joyce Heath, whose brilliant stage career collapsed when she became feared as a jinx on her plays. Her lovers have been unluckier still, as architect Don Bellows (Franchot Tone) discovers for himself when he takes Joyce in and promptly falls under her spell. Don breaks his engagement to socially prominent sweetheart Gail (Margaret Lindsay) and puts all of his money into financing a comeback for Joyce, but a terrible secret makes Joyce falter when Don presses her to marry him.

In Joyce Heath, Davis has an early version of the kind of character who would become her signature role, a wounded, emotional woman desperate for love and happiness but far too likely to lash out at those who only want to help her. Early on, Joyce has some of the low-rent, streetworn look of Mildred, the destructive character who had earned Davis her first Best Actress nomination in Of Human Bondage (1934). The drunk scenes are particularly reminiscent of the earlier role, but Joyce’s capacity for redemption prefigures great Davis characters like Julie Marsden in Jezebel (1938) and Fanny Skeffington in Mr. Skeffington (1944). Joyce is, like most of the really memorable Davis heroines, ready to go to extremes, especially in her willingness to take hints from Ethan Frome on how to solve romantic quandaries, but we sympathize with her because she is so unhappy and so ultimately determined to atone for her sins.

Davis has an adept costar in Franchot Tone as the latest lover to suffer for her bad luck. Tone played a lot of playboys and lovers in comedies during the 1930s, with memorable appearances in Bombshell (1933), Dancing Lady (1933), and The Girl from Missouri (1934), but here he gets to transform his happy golden boy into a miserable wreck. His cheerful face becomes gaunt and shadowy, his jaw hard, and his shoulders slumped as he gets deeper and deeper into a dangerous entanglement with Joyce, which eats away at his soul and drives him from the arms of his faithful girl. To her credit, Joyce tries to send Don away multiple times, honestly telling him that she will only bring him heartbreak and ruin, even as she yearns for him herself. Margaret Lindsay makes a plucky good girl foil to Davis’ Joyce, and Alison Skipworth does well in the role of Don’s middle-aged housekeeper. The weak link in the dramatic chain is John Eldredge as Gordon; he has a critical role to play late in the film, and it comes off badly, though to say too much about it is to spoil the plot for first-time viewers.

For more of Bette Davis’ early career, try Three on a Match (1932), The Petrified Forest (1936), and Marked Woman (1937). She continued to work for the rest of her life, making her final screen appearances in The Whales of August (1987) and Wicked Stepmother (1989) before her death in 1989. Franchot Tone stars in Mutiny on the Bounty (1935), Five Graves to Cairo (1943), and Advise and Consent (1962), and Margaret Lindsay also plays opposite Davis in Jezebel. For more from director Alfred E. Green, try Smart Money (1931), Baby Face (1933), and The Jolson Story (1946).

Full reviews to other  Bette Davis films airing on August 14 can be found here:

THE PETRIFIED FOREST (1936) 
JEZEBEL (1938)
THE LETTER (1940)
NOW, VOYAGER (1942)
DARK VICTORY (1939)

TCM Summer Under the Stars: Growing Up with Mickey Rooney

This post is part of the TCM Summer Under the Stars Blogathon hosted by Sittin' on a Backyard Fence and ScribeHard on Film. Visit their blogs to links for all of the blogathon posts!

Turner Classic Movies celebrates Mickey Rooney on August 13, 2013, with a full day of films starring the perpetually energetic but rather unlikely leading man. Even if it's a cliche, Mickey Rooney can really only be described as a living legend. Born in 1920, the 93 year old actor has more than 300 film and television appearances to his credit and is still working, with six roles in 2011 and 2012 combined. In a career that has spanned 87 years (so far), Rooney has been the classic Hollywood face that generations of viewers have grown up with and literally known all their lives.

Think about it. If every star born in 1920 were still alive and working today, you'd be seeing Yul Brynner, Gene Tierney, Walter Matthau, Ricardo Montalban, DeForest Kelley, Shelley Winters, Toshiro Mifune, Jack Webb, Denver Pyle, Virginia Mayo, Jack Elam, and Montgomery Clift turning up in the movies of the last two years. Maureen O'Hara, also born in 1920, has stuck around with Rooney, but she made her last TV movie appearance in 2000, more than a decade ago. Whatever you might think of Rooney's personal life (and it has been a doozy), you have to admire the willpower and determination of a man who entered the world that long ago and has been making his mark on it ever since.

The first audiences to grow up with Rooney saw him as a child himself in the Mickey McGuire shorts of the 1920s, which is where the young Joe Yule, Jr. picked up his new first name. In the 1930s, viewers knew him as the teen protagonist of the Andy Hardy films and other boys' stories, including Boys Town (1938), which is one of the films in the TCM lineup. You can also see Rooney in the Andy Hardy role in Family Affair (1936), and you can catch some of his other youthful performances in the early hours of the day on Tuesday. The TCM schedule includes two of the "kids putting on a show" pictures that Rooney made with Judy Garland: Strike Up the Band (1940) and Girl Crazy (1943).

Many of the later films on the TCM roster show Rooney's more adult, dramatic side, with performances inQuicksand (1950), The Strip (1951), and Requiem for a Heavyweight (1962). Youngsters who grew up in the 1970s, however, won't know Rooney from Pulp (1972) but will remember him in TV specials like The Year without a Santa Claus (1974) and Disney movies like Pete's Dragon (1977). The first movie that I really remember noticing Mickey Rooney in is The Black Stallion (1979), which I saw in the theater as a little girl and found utterly enthralling. I didn't know then that Rooney's role as a trainer was a tribute to his performances in Thoroughbreds Don't Cry (1937) and especially National Velvet (1944).

Even kids who are still growing up in 2013 have seen Rooney. He had a memorable role in Night at the Museum (2006) and a cameo in The Muppets (2011). That makes Rooney a great choice for some family viewing time on Tuesday. If your youngsters haven't gone back to school yet, try A Family Affair, Boys Town, Strike Up the Band, and Girl Crazy as some quality together time. If you miss them on TCM, you can find them on DVD and on streaming in various places. Watch with the kids and ask them if they recognize that funny guy and his distinctive voice. Maybe he sounds like Tod in The Fox and the Hound (1981)? Does he sound a lot like Sparky in Lady and the Tramp II: Scamp's Adventure (2001)? Maybe they remember that mean little old man who gave Ben Stiller a hard time in Night at the Museum. Then amaze the whippersnappers with the story of a little boy who grew up and grew old in front of the whole world, who made more than 300 movies and is still making millions of people laugh and cry today, thanks to the special, magical power of film.

For more about Mickey Rooney, see this post: "Putting on a Show: Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland," from the recent Dynamic Duos blogathon hosted by Classic Movie Hub.

TCM Summer Under the Stars: Doris Day in LOVE ME OR LEAVE ME (1955)

This post is part of the 2013 TCM Summer Under the Stars Blogathon hosted by Sittin' on a Backyard Fence and ScribeHard on Film. Visit their sites for all of the blogathon posts for each day in August!

I normally turn to Doris Day when I'm feeling down and need the cinematic equivalent of a cupcake - something light, sweet, and fun to chase the blues away. Musicals like Romance on the High Seas (1948), It's a Great Feeling (1949), and Calamity Jane (1953) - all airing on Turner Classic Movies during the Doris Day Summer Under the Stars marathon - certainly fit that bill, and they're the kind of picture Day is best known for today, along with her romantic comedies costarring Rock Hudson. Still, Doris Day could turn on the dramatic power when the role called for it, and Love Me or Leave Me (1955) is a great example of the darker side of Day.

Our leading lady stars as real life jazz singer Ruth Etting, who makes her way from 10 cents a dance girl to Hollywood star thanks to her own talent and the relentless efforts of her Chicago gangster promoter, Martin Snyder, played in the film by the terrific James Cagney. Ruth eventually marries Martin out of a sense of obligation to him (and perhaps fear of his jealous temper), but her heart really belongs to Johnny (Cameron Mitchell), a handsome pianist who finds his own route to Hollywood success. When Ruth and Johnny meet again in Hollywood after several years apart, Ruth's marriage to Martin reaches a violent climax.

Of course Day is an obvious choice to play a great singer, but she also does an excellent job depicting the unhappiness and bitter resignation that Ruth endures during her marriage to Martin. During the second half of the film, she manages to show the miles traveled through Ruth's expressions and body language without actually being one bit less attractive, and she really holds her own in the tense scenes with Cagney's powder keg Martin. The movie also shows off Day's more usual charms with a series of memorable song numbers and some gorgeous costumes, but the dramatic story is the heart of Love Me or Leave Me, and that's where Day really comes through.

Cagney gives his costar plenty to work with as the volatile Martin; he manages to convince the audience that his character really does love Ruth but has no idea how to show it without being a domineering brute, and that delicate balance helps to justify the way the story ends. It's ironic to see Cagney, himself such an accomplished hoofer, limping around as a man often known as "The Gimp," but the role does recall his gangster characters from the 1930s; he was 56 when this film was released, but he still has the powerful presence of a much younger man. Cagney earned an Oscar nomination for Best Actor for his performance in this film; it was his third and final nomination for the award, with his only win for Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942) more than a decade earlier.

Love Me or Leave Me garnered a total of six Oscar nominations, but it won only for Best Story. You'll have to be a real night owl or a DVR user to catch Love Me or Leave Me during the TCM event, since it airs at 3:45 AM Eastern time, but it's well worth the effort. Catch some of the lighter Day films for the sake of contrast earlier in the lineup, especially the popular favorite, Calamity Jane (1953), which airs in the prime time spot at 8 PM on Friday, August 2. Check out the TCM website for a full schedule of films that will air during the Summer Under the Stars event.

TCM celebrates Gene Kelly on August 23

TurnerClassic Movies celebrates the 100^th birthday of musical legend Gene Kelly with a full day of Kelly films on Thursday, August 23, 2012. Part of the ongoing Summer Under the Stars event, the programming features Kelly in a dozen movies throughout the day, including his signature roles in An American in Paris (1951) and Singin’ in the Rain (1952).

The day starts at 6 a.m. Eastern with Kelly’s first screen appearance in For Me and My Gal (1942), which also stars Judy Garland. Frank Sinatra plays Kelly’s shipmate and pal in Anchors Aweigh (1945) at 8 a.m. The musicals make way for swashbuckler action with The Three Musketeers (1948) at 10:30 a.m., featuring Kelly in heroic mode as D’Artagnan. An all-star cast, including Van Heflin, Vincent Price, June Allyson, Lana Turner, and Angela Lansbury, backs Kelly up for the period adventure.

The afternoon begins with baseball in Take Me Out to the Ball Game (1949) at 1 p.m. Esther Williams, Frank Sinatra, Betty Garrett, and Jules Munshin costar. Kelly is reunited with Judy Garland for The Pirate (1948) at 2:45 p.m. Kelly directs himself in the musical fantasy, Invitation to the Dance (1956), at 4:30 p.m.

Sinatra and Jules Munshin join Kelly as three sailors on leave in New York City in On the Town (1949) at 6:15 p.m. At 8 p.m., Kelly stars with Rita Hayworth in Cover Girl (1944). Kelly’s most memorable pictures air during the late night hours, with An American in Paris (1951) at 10 p.m. and Singin’ in the Rain (1952) at 12 a.m. The courtroom drama, Inherit the Wind (1960), follows at 2 a.m., and the final film of the schedule, Black Hand (1950), starts at 4:15 a.m.

Summer Under the Stars continues all month, with each day showcasing a different classic movie actor or actress. Other upcoming stars of the day include Irene Dunne on August 24, Tyrone Power on August 25, and Gary Cooper on August 26. Check the official TCM website for more information about the month’s schedule.