SHE WROTE THE BOOK

Mischa Auer and Joan Davis

SHE WROTE THE BOOK (1946). Director: Charles Lamont.

Jane Featherstone (Joan Davis of Around the World) is a prim and proper, intellectual science professor at the conservative Croydon College. She and everyone else on the faculty are appalled by the publication of a banned tell-all memoir entitled "Always Lulu," in which a woman's many amours are recounted in detail. No one knows that the author is actually the Dean's wife Phyllis (Gloria Stuart of Titanic). Phyllis can't collect the considerable royalties for the book unless she appears in person in New York, so she importunes her friend Jane to impersonate her. But when Jane is knocked out and becomes an amnesiac, she believes what everyone tells her, that she is Lulu, and takes on a whole new glamorous persona.

Joan Davis as "Lulu"

Given the excellent premise of this movie, as well as the cast members, one would think that She Wrote the Book was a laugh riot, but instead it's a disappointment. Joan Davis certainly gives it her all, and she gets some good support from Jack Oakie as the publisher's advertising manager; Mischa Auer as a man hired to woo her for money; Kirby Grant [In Society] as Eddie, a nice young guy who is attracted to Jane but definitely not to Lulu; and Thurston Hall as a wealthy ship builder who is mightily attracted to the supposedly oh-so-sexy and highly experienced "Lulu." John Litel is the dean and Jacquline deWit [The Damned Don't Cry] is the ship builder's jealous wife who threatens more than one person with a gun. The trouble with the film is not necessarily with the players but with a screenplay that lacks wit and never really pulls off the solid laughs it deserves, although there are a few amusing moments here and there. She Wrote the Book still manages to hold the attention and you do wonder how it will all turn out.

Verdict: Cute idea but the execution is only so-so. **1/2. 

THE WHISTLER

Richard Dix

THE WHISTLER (1944). Director: William Castle.

This is the first of several Columbia films (and later a TV series) based on the radio show where a weird, whistling figure narrates mystery stories, as he does in this film. Earl Conrad (Richard Dix) is despondent after the death of his wife, Clair, and arranges to have a hit man murder him. Then Conrad discovers that Clair is still alive, and tries to call off the hit man. Unfortunately the go-between, Vigran (Don Costello),  has been killed by the police, and the hit man (J. Carrol Naish), who has been paid, thinks it is a point of honor to finish his assignment. The basic premise of the film was undoubtedly used in other movies both before and after The Whistler, but it has effective variations, Castle's direction is adroit, and the acting is generally good. Naish is a bit miscast as the hit man, a role that would have been better played by Peter Lorre. Joan Woodbury has a vivid turn as Vigran's angry wife, who blames Conrad for her husband's death, and Trevor Bardette scores as a sinister bum in a men's shelter where Conrad is hiding out. Billy Benedict, Byron Foulger, Cy Kendall, Alan Dinehart, and Gloria Stuart (as Conrad's secretary, who is secretly in love with him) also have roles of varying importance. One puzzling aspect of the film is it is never fully explained how a woman, Claire, who supposedly drowns on a vacation winds up in a Japanese POW camp. Later Whistler films include The Secret of the Whistler and The Return of the Whistler.

Verdict: Interesting low-budget suspense film. ***.

SECRET OF THE BLUE ROOM

SECRET OF THE BLUE ROOM (1933). Director: Kurt Neumann.

"It must be terrible to be a man and have to pretend to be brave."

At a birthday party for his beautiful daughter, Irene (Gloria Stuart), Robert von Helldorf (Lionel Atwill) tells his guests -- Walter (Paul Lukas), Frank (Onslow Stevens) and Thomas (William Janney) -- the story of the blue room in the old castle in which he resides: over the years more than one person has been found dead in the locked room, including his own sister. Thomas suggests that each man (all of whom are in love with the quite lovely Irene) spend the night in the room to prove their bravery. Of course it's no surprise when the first of them turns up missing in the morning, the room still locked. [Without giving anything away, everyone assumes he's gone out the window into the moat twenty feet below, yet he had a key which worked on either side of the door and could easily have exited the room and locked the door behind him.] Then another of the suitors spends the night in the room and ... A police commissioner (Edward Arnold) is called in to find out what's up, and the suspects include the butler, Paul (Robert Barrat of Lily Turner), the maid, Betty (Muriel Kirkland), the chauffeur, Max (Russell Hopton), and the very nervous cook, Mary (Elizabeth Patterson). There's also a weird stranger on the loose scaring the wits out of Irene. The secret of the Blue Room doesn't come as that big of a surprise, but the climactic chase in long-forgotten tunnels beneath the castle is exciting. Secret of the Blue Room is entertaining, atmospheric, and reasonably well-acted by all. Neumann also directed Kronos and many others.

Verdict: A bit creaky but fun. **1/2.

TITANIC (1997)

TITANIC (1997). Director: James Cameron.

James Cameron's Titanic sort of combines the first two films about the disaster (Titanic; A Night to Remember), but doesn't add a blessed thing to them except even more harrowing detail of the final moments, and eye-popping special effects work. There is little suspense or atmosphere and the long love story is never that compelling because these are not people whose relationship has a lengthy, interesting history (as is the case with Webb and Stanwyck in the original), and -- let's face it -- Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet are not in the same talent league as the first picture's stars. (And, to be honest, Gloria Stuart is no Katharine Hepburn.) In the final moments they never register the kind of terror they would have been feeling, only the alarm they probably experienced being hung up on whatever wobbly device the FX department cobbled together for the sequence. The effects are marvelous, but a picture about the Titanic tragedy is not supposed to be The Poseidon Adventure -- "Wow! Watch The Ship Flip Over And People Die!" -- but a moving human document. The problem isn't just the screenplay, but that director Cameron, a very capable action/FX helmsman, is not the kind of filmic genius who could have turned this picture into a masterpiece. He muffs a lot of sequences, such as when the ship's officer shoots at the crowd and then commits suicide -- imagine what Jean Negulesco could have done with that! And why did he allow Winslet and other actors to wade around through supposedly frigid water without reacting to it (until DiCaprio finally says something about it in a later scene.) Titanic certainly isn't a bad film, and it does hold the attention for more than three hours, but considering that forty years have gone by since the last Titanic movie, you would think we'd have something that improves upon its predecessors in more than just special effects (which were actually perfectly good in the earlier pictures). On that horrible night in 1912, 1500 people died terrifying deaths in what must have seemed to them like Hell on Earth. It's doubly awful that they seem to have died just so James Cameron could declare himself "King of the World" and an utterly mediocre singer like Celine Dion could have herself a hit record.

Verdict: One can only imagine what the victims would think of all this "Titanic" exploitation. **1/2.

THE INVISIBLE MAN (1933)

THE INVISIBLE MAN (1933). Director: James Whale.

The small British town of Iping is visited by one John Griffin (Claude Rains), whose scientific experiments have caused him to become invisible. Even as he desperately tries to find a way back to normalcy, one of the ingredients he used is slowly turning him into an insane megalomaniac. Soon he's not only frightening and terrorizing people, he's committing murders and derailing trains. The Invisible Man is well-made, fast-paced, and has excellent effects by John P. Fulton, but one senses that director James Whale didn't take the material all that seriously. While it's not quite an almost-parody like Bride of Frankenstein, which Whale did two years later, it does have a surplus of comedy (the novel had its humorous passages, of course) and not as much dark atmosphere as it needs. If we're meant to be chilled by Griffin's actions or the very notion of invisibility, Whale fails to work up any sense of dread or horror. Still, the picture is entertaining. Una O'Connor is as loud and hysterical as she was in the later Bride, but Gloria Stuart makes little impression as Griffin's nominal love interest. Claude Rains is excellent, definitely making an impression with his voice, as we never actually see him until the movie's closing scene! Followed by The Invisible Man Returns.

Verdict: Not all that it could have been, but not bad. **1/2.