ONE TOO MANY

Ruth Warrick contemplates her next drink

ONE TOO MANY (1950). Director: Erle C. Kenton.

Helen Mason (Ruth Warrick of Guest in the House) was once a well-known concert pianist who gave it up when she married reporter Bob (Richard Travis of The Man Who Came to Dinner) and had a daughter named Ginger (Ginger Prince). She has substituted booze for her career while Bob is what Dr. Phil would call an "enabler." Helen is convinced she is not an alcoholic and can get off the sauce without going to AA. But in this she is kidding herself. Helen and Bob find their lives spiraling out of control as Helen not only continues to drink but to drive drunk, endangering herself, her daughter, and everyone else on the road ... 

The Harmonaires pad out the running time

One Too Many probably has its heart in the right place although its polemical approach to the material is not as dramatic as intended. Much of the movie has Bob and others arguing that alcoholism is a disease that needs treatment and special hospital wings, dismissing the notion that all addicts are just weak-willed drunks of low character. Unfortunately these sequences turn the movie into a lecture that makes some good points but is not terribly entertaining. Strangely, the movie is padded with a long concert sequence at the end when the black group the Harmonaires do three numbers, and Warrick plays "The Minute Waltz" and a more contemporary number on the piano in a nightclub. 

An enabler? Richard Travis

Warrick gives a good performance in this although she's not the kind of riveting actress who can give an added bite to the picture a la Stanwyck or Crawford. Travis is, as usual, likable and pleasant and laid-back even when his world seems to be falling apart. William Tracy, who plays a photographer, is given a long, tedious sequence -- more padding -- as he waits outside the window in the maternity ward where his wife is having a baby. Ginger Prince is a talented child actress who can also sing and dance. Rhys Williams, Mary Young, Thurston Hall, and Victor Kilian are all good as Sully the bartender and his wife, newspaper publisher Simes, who hates drunks, and Emery, a mayoral candidate who gets caught in an inebriated state in a bar. Larry J. Blake is fine as Helen's old friend, bandleader Walt Williams. Erm Westmore appears briefly to give Warrick a makeover. Little did audiences of 1950 know that the scourge of drugs would almost replace alcoholism as a social ill. Erle C. Kenton also directed Why Men Leave Home, which also has Westmore and Prince in it and is even worse. From Hallmark. 

Verdict: A long commercial for AA -- a cocktail might help. **. 

WHY MEN LEAVE HOME

Gross: The Fat Twins --  Zoe and Chloe Borden

WHY MEN LEAVE HOME (aka Secrets of Beauty/1951). Director: Erle C. Kenton.

In this oddball theatrical film from Hallmark, Dr. John Waldron (Richard Denning) is put out because his wife, Ruth (Julie Bishop of Lady Gangster) won't, well, put out. He thinks she puts too much effort into her housekeeping and not enough into keeping herself lovely and satisfying his needs. [In one scene it is very obvious that John is hoping for and expecting some bedroom action until Ruth puts curlers in her hair and smears cold cream on her face.] The couple have a little daughter, Ginger (Ginger Prince), who is sent out to Hollywood for a screen test along with other youngsters, such as the Fat Twins. [Not only are these gals corpulent and plain, they have absolutely no talent and should not be seen on an empty stomach -- or a full one! Four years later, blond but still disgusting, they appeared on one of the least memorable I Love Lucy episodes with Tennessee Ernie Ford]. Then the movie turns into an ad for Ern Westmore of the famous make-up family, who demonstrates beauty tricks on different ladies as his wife, Betty (actually actress Virginia Merrick) stands by and urges him to lose weight. [Betty Westmore was a sometime actress herself, but for some reason doesn't play herself in this movie.] Meanwhile Ruth mistakenly believes that John is carrying on with his sexy nurse, Kay (Myrna Dell), who is in love with him, while she's in Hollywood with Ginger and the Westmores. (At one point John actually spies on Kay as she's changing her clothing  -- talk about unprofessional, even sleazy, behavior!) Should this couple divorce, or will tubby Ern Westmore pull some tricks out of his hat and turn Ruth once again into a ravishing beauty? The movie stops dead now and then while Ern and other "experts" deliver lectures. Poor Albert Glasser [Monster from Green Hell] wrote the score for this. Erle C. Kenton also directed many Universal horror flicks, a few Abbott and Costello comedies, and Search for Beauty in 1934. It's unlikely he ever made a worse movie than this, however.

Verdict: Why people leave the theater. Atrocious! *.