Classic Films in Focus: MOON OVER MIAMI (1941)

Walter Lang’s musical comedy is another of the frothy, fun Technicolor amusements produced by Fox during the early 1940s, with the usual assortment of studio players and plenty of eye candy in the form of pretty girls, glamorous costumes, and lively dance sequences. This one actually has more plot than several of its peers, but Moon Over Miami (1941) also benefits from very winning performances by its leading ladies and supporting cast. Fans of Betty Grable will find a lot to like in her turn as the gold-digging heroine, and other notable performers include Carole Landis, Don Ameche, and Robert Cummings, with scene-stealing appearances by character actors Charlotte Greenwood and Jack Haley. Intentionally light and airy, Moon Over Miami promises nothing more than a good time, which it dutifully and energetically delivers.

Grable and Landis star as sisters Kay and Barbara Latimer, who leave Texas for Miami with a plan to snag a wealthy husband for Kay. With their aunt Susan (Charlotte Greenwood) posing as their maid, the girls take up residence in a posh resort, where Kay soon meets the suitably rich Jeff Boulton (Robert Cummings) and his friend, Phil McNeil (Don Ameche). The two men compete relentlessly for Kay’s attention, but Jeff also attracts Barbara’s admiration, and Kay has to choose which suitor to lure into a proposal. All the while, the truth about the girls’ finances and intentions threatens to get out, especially with hotel waiter Jack (Jack Haley) constantly hanging around Susan.

The classic narrative structure of the romantic comedy dictates the course of this story, which has its obligatory pairs of lovers, counterpoint clowns, and Forest of Arden atmosphere. Grable and Ameche, as the primary leads, are of course destined to be together, although their road to union proves riddled with potholes shaped like dollar signs. Landis and Cummings make a more subdued secondary couple; her quiet interest in him is telegraphed early on, but it takes his flighty character a long time to see what’s right in front of him. Of the four principal actors, Landis has the smallest role but also the most nuanced one; disguised as her sister’s secretary in glasses and sensible shoes, Barbara is more introverted than Kay but also kinder, more thoughtful, and more sincere. The funny stuff happens when Greenwood and Haley get together; their big number, “Is That Good?” is a highlight of the picture, with Greenwood launching into her signature high kicks and Haley making those most of his big, expressive eyes.

The movie includes a number of memorable dance sequences, thanks to the efforts of choreographer Hermes Pan, who makes his own appearance on screen as Betty Grable’s partner during the “Kindergarten Conga” piece. Grable does part of the dance for “You Started Something” sitting down, which is an entertaining twist on the usual routines; her partners during this segment are the impressive specialty dancers, the Condos Brothers, who appear again in the Seminole dance near the end of the picture. Don Ameche’s performance of the song, “I’ve Got You All to Myself,” is also fun because it opens a zany montage of the two rivals constantly horning in on each other’s dates with Kay, which culminates with a memorable shot of a shirtless Robert Cummings underwater. Ameche actually sings quite a bit in this picture, more than any other performer, but his delivery is predictably good, and his songs are well-integrated into the flow of the story.

Walter Lang also directed Betty Grable in Tin Pan Alley (1940), Song of the Islands (1942), and Coney Island (1943); he earned his only Oscar nomination for directing The King and I (1956). For more of Betty Grable, Don Ameche, and Charlotte Greenwood, try Down Argentine Way (1940); Grable also stars with Carole Landis in I Wake Up Screaming (1941) and Four Jills in a Jeep (1944). Robert Cummings has memorable roles in Kings Row (1942), Saboteur (1942), and Dial M for Murder (1954). The world remembers Jack Haley as the Tin Man in The Wizard of Oz (1939), but he also appears with Betty Grable in Pigskin Parade (1936) and with Don Ameche in Alexander’s Ragtime Band (1938).

Classic Films in Focus: SUSANNAH OF THE MOUNTIES (1939)

Loosely adapted from a 1936 novel , Susannah of the Mounties (1939) is one of Shirley Temple's lesser films, particularly in comparison with her other 1939 film, The Little Princess. Both pictures came late in Temple's career as a child star and were directed by Walter Lang and William A. Seiter, but The Little Princess remains a favorite with her fans, while Susannah of the Mounties shows how thin the standard Temple plot had worn after so many similar pictures. Moreover, the film's insensitive, stereotyped depiction of the First Nations people of Canada makes it problematic for a modern audience, and children who see the movie will need to have an adult present to discuss its racial issues.

Temple stars as Susannah Sheldon, the only survivor of an Indian attack on a wagon train crossing the Canadian frontier. Taken in by a Mountie called Monty (Randolph Scott), Sue adapts to life with the Mounties and even makes friends with a chief's son (Martin Good Rider), but her new home is threatened by the outbreak of renewed hostilities.

The faults of the film do not lie with Temple, who gives a perfectly good performance as feisty Sue. In fact, Sue proves a rather interesting departure from some of the star's sugary sweet heroines; she is jealously attached to Monty and resents his budding romance with Vicky Standing (Margaret Lockwood). She also has a scrappy relationship with Little Chief, and her scenes with kindly old Pat (J. Farrell MacDonald) are fun, especially when she helps him keep his hairpiece on during an attack. She doesn't sing or dance much this time out, but her acting measures up to her usual standard.

The treatment of the native characters bears a lot in common with that seen in Peter Pan (1953), with a lot of stilted dialogue about "palefaces" with "forked tongues" punctuated with grunts. The chief, Big Eagle, is played by Jewish actor Maurice Moscovitch as a living cigar store statue, while swarthy Victor Jory, who was, at least, actually Canadian, plays the villainous Wolf Pelt. The film depicts native resistance to the settlers and the railroad as unreasonable, and the peace treaty reached at the end is really more a voluntary surrender on the part of the chief, a tacit acknowledgement that the whole conflict was just a foolish mistake on the part of the Indians. Cultural and racial problems of this kind pop up in many classic movies, of course, and they're even present in a lot of Temple's better films, but here there's little else going on to rescue the story from its dated imperialism. Canadians might also find fault with the film's version of the story as an American Western; there's really nothing about the movie that reflects its ostensible setting in a meaningful way.

For a more enjoyable Temple outing with cowboy star Randolph Scott, try Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (1938). Margaret Lockwood appears in the Hitchcock thriller, The Lady Vanishes (1938), and in Carol Reed's Night Train to Munich (1940). You'll find character actor J. Farrell MacDonald in hundreds of small or uncredited roles; here at least he gets a number of good scenes. Walter Lang also directed Temple in The Blue Bird (1940), while William A. Seiter directed two of her 1936 films, Dimples and Stowaway. For more (and better) Shirley Temple pictures, try Heidi (1937), Wee Willie Winkie (1937), The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer (1947), and Fort Apache (1948).

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

Classic Films in Focus: CHEAPER BY THE DOZEN (1950)

Tolstoy might have thought that happy families are all alike, but he didn't live during the era of Hollywood family films like Cheaper by the Dozen (1950), where the sheer diversity of happy families generated picture after picture about different domestic clans with their own unique stories. Thus we have movies like Meet Me in St. Louis (1944), Life With Father (1947), and I Remember Mama (1948), as well as many others, often adapted from non-fiction memoirs or thinly veiled autobiographies. Cheaper by the Dozen is no exception; based on the popular memoir by Frank B. Gilbreth, Jr., and Ernestine Gilbreth Carey, the original movie has nothing beyond its title in common with the purely fictional 2003 remake starring Steve Martin and Bonnie Hunt, and it certainly outshines the later picture in charm, poignancy, and inoffensive family amusement. While Cheaper by the Dozen is not among the greatest classic films ever made, it offers a very entertaining view of family life in the 1920s that both children and adults can enjoy, and its nostalgic presentation of parents as thoughtful, funny, and understanding people provides a welcome tonic to the way in which mothers and fathers are so often depicted in "family" films today.

Directed by Walter Lang, the movie stars Clifton Webb and Myrna Loy as the Gilbreth parents, whose own work in industrial engineering and efficiency has not prevented them from generating a family of twelve children, six boys and six girls. Jeanne Crain plays their eldest daughter, Ann, whose transition to womanhood creates some drama and humor within the family, as poor Ann is the first of the offspring to have to persuade her parents to let her grow up. The story of the family's life, leading up to a major event that alters it forever, is told through a series of vignettes spread out over several years.

Like many films of this sort, the vignette model for story-telling leaves something to be desired in the plot department; the sketches that we see are interesting and funny but don't really build the story's tension to a climactic height. If you have seen a number of family stories, or if you already know the history of the real Gilbreth family, you can see the major event of the movie coming, but the earlier parts of the film don't necessarily emphasize a movement in that direction, and the film uses the event as an endpoint rather than a climax. Some of the best scenes are the shortest and least consequential ones, like the father's interview with the principal at the children's school or the family's acquisition of a dog in spite of their patriarch's objections, but they demonstrate the family's love for one another and the father's intense pride in and devotion to his numerous brood. Even the smallest families will recognize the affectionate truth about parents and children living together in these scenes, and they may well prove productive starting points for conversations about important family decisions and situations.

Classic movie fans will appreciate Cheaper by the Dozen primarily for its leads; this is a chance to see Clifton Webb and Myrna Loy, both strong performers with illustrious careers, in some rather different roles. Webb rose to fame as the urbane villain of Otto Preminger's noir hit, Laura (1944), but he was also well known in the late 1940s as the snippy title character of the Mr. Belvedere films (which inspired the later television series). Webb's performance as the benevolently eccentric Frank Gilbreth makes for an interesting contrast with these other roles, and his version of the old-fashioned pater familias rounds out those of Leon Ames in Meet Me in St. Louis and of Willam Powell in Life With Father.

Loy, who began her career in silent films, was a major star in the 1930s whose biggest role came when she played Nora Charles opposite William Powell in The Thin Man movies. By the end of the 1940s, she had aged out of the vampish parts that opened her career and was playing more mature characters, including the loving war wife of The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) and the career-minded older sister in The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer (1947). As the Gilbreth matriarch, Loy combines her ladylike bearing and visible intelligence with the soft, angelic vision of maternity so often associated with motherhood in these sorts of films. That she does it without becoming a wan sort of martyr to domesticity is a testament both to her own acting talent and to the real Lillian Gilbreth, who held a doctoral degree in industrial psychology and was tremendously influential in her field, so much so that she is sometimes called "The First Lady of Engineering" and even had a US postage stamp issued in her honor as a Great American in 1984.

If you enjoy movies about large families or Americana, Cheaper by the Dozen offers a good choice that the entire family can watch together. If you find yourself really interested in the story of the Gilbreth family, you'll be happy to know that the first film was popular enough to warrant a sequel, Belles on Their Toes (1952), adapted from the follow-up memoir written by the Gilbreth children. Both of the memoirs are currently available in print, and those who want to know more about Lillian Gilbreth might enjoy Jane Lancaster's 2006 biography, Making Time: Lillian Moller Gilbreth - A Life Beyond "Cheaper by the Dozen." For more from director Walter Lang, try the Shirley Temple version of The Little Princess (1939), the musical classic, The King and I (1956), or the Tracy and Hepburn comedy, Desk Set (1957).

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