THE BIGAMIST

Ida Lupino and Edmond O'Brien

THE BIGAMIST (1953). Director: Ida Lupino.

"How could a man like you, successful, respected, get into a situation as vile as this?"

When Harry Graham (Edmond O'Brien) and his wife Eve (Joan Fontaine) apply to adopt a child, Mr. Jordan (Edmund Gwenn), who's in charge of investigating the couple's background, discovers that Graham has another wife, Phyllis (Ida Lupino) in another city where he frequently travels for business. The rest of the film is a flashback as Graham tries to explain to the horrified Jordan exactly how he got into this situation. The Bigamist is completely absorbing, realistically and logically explaining how Graham fell in love with two women, and is beautifully acted by the entire cast. 

Joan Fontaine with O'Brien

Lupino's direction is on the mark, as is her acting, and O'Brien is excellent. The picture is nearly stolen by Joan Fontaine, who has a splendid moment as she reacts to the terrible news delivered to her over the phone by her lawyer. Jane Darwell and Kenneth Tobey have small roles, and there's a nice musical score by Leith Stevens. Very touching movie with an interestingly open-ended wind-up. On youtube there is a beautifully colorized version of the picture. Screenwriter-producer Collier Young was married to Fontaine but had previously been married to Lupino! 

Verdict: Outstanding adult drama with fine performances. ****.

THE CONSTANT NYMPH

Boyer and Fontaine

THE CONSTANT NYMPH (1943). Director: Edmund Goulding. 

This is considered a "lost" film because the rights to the novel, play and subsequent film have all been dispersed and lost over the years. While not the masterpiece I was hoping for, The Constant Nymph is still a good picture with much to recommend it. Lewis Dodd (Charles Boyer) is a modern composer whose work is not very appreciated by the critical establishment. His old friend, the composer Albert Sanger (Montagu Love), thinks that Dodd's music lacks heart and soul and won't become really great until Dodd cries (the old business of the artist must suffer). Sanger has three daughters, one of whom, Tessa (Joan Fontaine) is unrequitedly in love with Lewis. Eventually, after old Sanger's death, Lewis marries Tessa's cousin Florence (Alexis Smith) while Tessa and her sisters are sent to boarding school. But Tessa and her soul mate Lewis won't stay apart for long, leading to painful and romantic complications. 

The movie is handsomely produced (it uses one of the sets from The Old Maid), well-directed and very well acted, but it's perhaps too talky and soapy for its own good. Some will find it more sappy than moving. Whatever the case, Fontaine gives an exemplary performance; Boyer is fine if a notch below Fontaine. Charles Coburn is his usual excellent self as the sisters' Uncle Charles, and Peter Lorre offers his usual distinctive persona as a man who courts and marries Tessa's sister, Toni, well-played by Brenda Marshall. But the big surprise is that utterly gorgeous Alexis Smith gives perhaps the finest performance of her career as Florence, who's desperately afraid of losing the only man she's ever seriously been in love with. She manages to summon up as much emotional fireworks as Davis and Crawford at their best without quite going over the top. The movie has an interesting subtext of the war between romantic (melodious and emotional) and modern (dissonant and mathematical) music, and it's even more interesting that the film's excellent score was composed by Erich Wolfgang Korngold, who composed operas in Vienna before fleeing the nazis and coming to America to "slum" for Hollywood. Korngold's music could be full of noisy, dissonant chords, but he decidedly composed in the romantic idiom. However, it wasn't realistic that Dodd's modern music would have been decried during the time the film takes place, as that's just when that type of music was becoming popular.  

Verdict: A highly interesting curiosity. ***.

CONVERSATIONS WITH CLASSIC FILM STARS

CONVERSATIONS WITH CLASSIC FILM STARS: Interviews from Hollywood's Golden Era. James Bawden and Ron Miller.  University Press of Kentucky; 2016.

I have already posted on the sequel to this book, You Ain't Heard Nothin' Yet, which came out the following year. This is Bawden and Miller's first collection of interviews with famous film folk, and frankly, this volume is superior, with some really solid and interesting interviews. There's a funny piece on the ever-eccentric Gloria Swanson in the section on silent film stars; Joseph Cotten and Melvyn Douglas being rather blunt in their pieces in the section on Leading Men; everyone from Anne Baxter to Dorothy Lamour to Anna Lee and Jane Wyman are covered in Leading Ladies; Audrey Totter and Marie Windsor have their say in Queens of the Bs; and we've got the Singing Cowboys, Gene Autry and Roy Rogers; plus a piece on Bob Hope, and a final section  on not-quite-stars like Keye Luke, Harold Russell, Margaret Hamilton, and Diane Varsi (who did Peyton Place and then pretty much disappeared because she rebelled against her studio). Other stars interviewed include Cary Grant, Kirk Douglas and more.

The stars are frequently scathing in their assessment of other actors, with Melyyn Douglas insisting that both Spencer Tracy and Fredric March were "one-dimensional" (!) in Inherit the Wind (Douglas did a TV version). Joan Fontaine comments on her sister Olivia De Havilland ("it takes two to feud"). You'll also learn that Jane Wyman got so sick of former movie goddesses being hired for her series Falcon Crest, that she laid down the law: "No more international harlots!" I didn't know that beautiful Jane Greer was once married to Rudy Vallee nor that Margaret Hamilton was nearly killed playing the witch in The Wizard of Oz and spent some time in the hospital. The book gets across that most self-absorbed movie stars are simply not normal people.

Verdict: Fun, informative book that is hard to put down. ***1/2.  

FLIGHT TO TANGIER

FLIGHT TO TANGIER (1953). Director: Charles Marquis Warren.

Susan Lane (Joan Fontaine), a reporter, arrives at the airport in Tangier only to see a small plane crash in flames. The pilot was supposed to be her boyfriend, Hank (John Picard), but there are no bodies on board the aircraft. Adventurer and war hero Gil Walker (Jack Palance) helps Susan find Hank and stay out of the clutches of sinister Danzer (Robert Douglas), whose girlfriend Nicki (Corinne Calvet) has a hankering for Gil and a few secrets of her own. Accused of murdering a policeman, Gil goes on the run with the two ladies as they all try to find Hank and whatever booty it is that Danzer is after. The first thing you have to wonder about Flight to Tangier is how on earth a classy actress like Fontaine wound up in this Grade C movie that pretty much utterly wastes her talents. Palance [Torture Garden] is fine, as weird as ever, Calvet [So This is Paris] is beautiful and not bad, although she's not quite up to her tougher scenes, and clean-shaven Douglas makes a fairly bland villain unlike his mustachioed bad guy of This Side of the Law. At least half the movie seems to consist of Fontaine and Palance -- an unlikely pairing -- running and running around occasionally scenic views of "Tangier." Murray Matheson has a small but pivotal role as a passenger on the plane who has something important to deliver. Warren also directed Unknown Terror, which is a lot more fun. If this was actually released in 3-D as the poster suggests, the movie apparently does little with the process.

Verdict: A couple of good scenes but this never amounts to much. **.

FRENCHMAN'S CREEK

FRENCHMAN'S CREEK (1944). Director: Mitchell Leisen.

Dona St. Columb (Joan Fontaine) is tired of the way her witless husband Harry (Ralph Forbes of Convicts at Large) keeps throwing her at the slimy Lord Rockingham (Basil Rathbone) -- who keeps making passes -- so she takes off with the children to a summer retreat where she finds the cuddly old servant, William (Cecil Kellaway), waiting for her. She also finds a notorious pirate named Jean Aubrey (Arturo de Cordova) who claims he's really not such a bad guy as pirate's go. It isn't long before Dona is smitten with Jean and vice versa and longing for a romantic and adventurous life at sea. But can she forsake her children to go off with the man who has so aroused her fiery passion ...? Fontaine, as good as ever, has probably never looked more gorgeous and indeed the whole movie is expertly filmed in especially ravishing technicolor by George Barnes. Rathbone sparkles in his scenes as Rockingham, and the film's highlight is a rousing battle he has on a staircase not with Jean but with a desperate Dona. Mexican actor Arturo de Cordova is not terrible, but this part needed a sexier fellow, like maybe Errol Flynn, to make it believable; de Cordova was a major star in Mexico and South America, however. Victor Young's score sounds like ersatz Debussy. Based on a novel by Daphne Du Maurier.

Verdict: Stick to Rebecca. **.

SEPTEMBER AFFAIR

Joseph Cotten and Joan Fontaine

SEPTEMBER AFFAIR (1950). Director: William Dieterle.

When their plane to New York touches down near Naples for repairs, two strangers -- businessman David (Joseph Cotten) and concert pianist Manina (Joan Fontaine) -- decide to use the time to go sightseeing together, but miss their plane. They decide to continue sightseeing, then learn that the plane they were supposed to be on crashed, killing everyone aboard -- and they are listed in the paper as two of the victims. Unable to get a divorce from his wife, Catherine (Jessica Tandy), David importunes Manina to start a new life with him in Florence, where they rent or buy a villa with the aid of her teacher, Maria (Francoise Rosay). But will this merely be a brief if intense affair, and will the pull of the past prove too much to them?

A major problem with September Affair is the reaction the couple has to the news about the plane crash. They were on the plane, saw the passengers and some of the crew members, yet they never express the slightest pity for these people and their awful deaths, making them seem remarkably callous and self-absorbed. The plane crash and the deaths of over thirty people are simply an "opportunity" for these two losers. The shame of it is that just a brief moment of scripted compassion on their part would have made them more sympathetic and human. A bigger shame is that otherwise September Affair is not a terrible picture, although in the manner of soap operas it ignores certain realities such as remains and making a living. David writes Maria a check so she can cash it for him [considering the size of their palazzo it must have been a mighty sizable check], but he does it two days before the plane crash, making him seem positively prescient [or the check was post-dated].

On the plus side, Cotten and Fontaine, especially the latter, give very good performances, and Jessica Tandy [Adventures of a Young Man] nearly steals the picture as the confused, grieving wife. Robert Arthur also makes a positive impression as David's handsome, sensitive son [David is a selfish and terrible father, however.] The movie is drenched in romantic music, everything from "September Song" from Knickerbocker Holiday [an unofficial theme of the movie] to Rachmaninoff's Second Piano Concerto, which Manina plays in a concert. There are some beautiful Italian settings as well. A nice surprise is the appearance of Jimmy Lydon (Henry Aldrich) as a soldier in a restaurant who betrays a very pleasant voice when he sings "September Song" as Manina plays the piano. The frankly absurd ending seems forced by the production code of the period. William Dieterle also directed Love Letters with Joseph Cotten and many other movies.

Verdict: Lush and classy soap opera in many respects, but with a key flaw, confused and superficial script, and characters you sometimes may find it hard to root for. **1/2.

NO BED OF ROSES: JOAN FONTAINE

NO BED OF ROSES: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. Joan Fontaine. William Morrow; 1978.

The very talented star of Rebecca, Suspicion, Letter from an Unknown Women, and many others proffered this very well-written and absorbing autobiography in the late seventies. The "feud" between her and her sister Olivia de Havilland seems to be attributed to a fairly childish sibling rivalry that existed since childhood, this despite the fact that both women won Oscars and became acclaimed, highly successful actresses. Fontaine was born in Japan, but she came to the US after her parents' marriage broke up, and had a comparatively privileged if often unhappy childhood. She intimates that both her father and stepfather had an unhealthy sexual interest in her. She married Brian Aherne even though Howard Hughes wanted her for a wife, this despite the fact that Olivia was practically engaged to the man at the same time, another blow to their relationship. Fontaine had other marriages and boyfriends, and along the way made quite a few movies: This Above All with Tyrone Power; Beyond a Reasonable Doubt with Dana Andrews; Kiss the Blood Off My Hands with Burt Lancaster; and The Constant Nymph with Charles Boyer. Fontaine has little to say about some of her films, such as Something to Live For and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, aside from the fact that she thought very little of them. She appeared in The Bigamist only because her husband at the time, Collier Young, produced it; Young had been married to co-star and director Ida Lupino previously. As Fontaine puts it: "After shooting all my scenes, director Ida saw the rushes, didn't like the photography, and changed cameramen before actress Ida began her own scenes!" The book concludes with a moving open letter from Fontaine to her late mother, with whom she had a relationship just as complicated as her relationship with her sister. Despite Fontaine's fame, what comes across to the reader is the damage that parents can inflict on their children, no matter who they might be or what becomes of them.

Verdict: Fascinating look at one lady's life in and out of Hollywood. ***1/2.

SOMETHING TO LIVE FOR

Ray Milland and Joan Fontaine

SOMETHING TO LIVE FOR (1952). Director/producer: George Stevens.

Alan Miller (Ray Milland) is a recovering alcoholic with a wife, Edna (Teresa Wright), and son. An elevator boy (Harry Bellaver) he knows calls him in to council a drunken hotel guest whom Alan assumes is male, but turns out to be a woman; Alan nevertheless decides to speak to her. Jenny (Joan Fontaine) is an actress who is letting alcohol strip her of her career and her dignity. Almost against their own wishes the two discover a mutual attraction, but there is the problem of Alan's marriage -- and his torment over his conflicted feelings ... Some contemporary critics saw Something to Live For as pure schmaltz, but for the more romantic-minded, it's an interesting picture with very good [if not necessarily great] performances from the leads. Teresa Wright with her expressive face offers a sensitive portrait of the wife who knows more than Alan realizes, and there's nice work from Richard Derr [When Worlds Collide] as an obnoxious, self-centered director with whom Jenny was once involved. Paul Valentine and Douglas Dick are also in the cast in smaller roles. One could argue about which classical composer influenced Victor Young the most, but his lovely score for the film is a decided asset. The ending may seem a little abrupt and simplistic, but it works beautifully. Stevens also directed Giant and many, many other notable films.

Verdict: While this is certainly not on the level of Brief Encounter, which it resembles in some ways, it is a worthwhile romantic picture. ***.

KISS THE BLOOD OFF MY HANDS

KISS THE BLOOD OFF MY HANDS (1948). Director: Norman Foster.

In post-WW2 England Bill Saunders (Burt Lancaster) -- who thinks with his fists -- lashes out at a middle-aged bar owner simply because he says it's closing time and inadvertently kills the man. He runs off -- and hides out in the apartment of lady doctor Jane Wharton (Joan Fontaine). Jane tries to resist her attraction to Bill, but gets drawn deeper into his unsavory life, and winds up committing an act  of violence herself. Does this screwed-up couple have any hope? Frankly, it's hard to care about this romance of two unsympathetic people. Jane makes dumb excuses for Bill, and Bill never gives a thought to the man he killed or his family. Thrown into the mix is a creepy guy named Harry (Robert Newton of Obsession) who wants to get Bill involved in criminal activities, but whose chief purpose is to introduce someone Bill can feel morally superior to. It's as if the film is telling the audience: "See, Bill isn't so bad. Now this guy is a rotter." [But as far as we know Harry was never responsible for anyone's death.] Then there's the casting. Joan Fontaine can certainly play a woman who is obsessed with one man -- witness Letter from an Unknown Woman -- but she simply seems too intelligent to fall so hard for this loser, the vagaries of love notwithstanding. Lancaster also gives a good performance, by Hollywood standards at least, getting across the man's violence but not necessarily the aspects that make him a love object for Jane. Although only 80 minutes long the movie eventually becomes tedious, which is a shame because it has atmospheric photography by Russell Metty [The Omega Man], a nice score by Miklos Rozsa, adroit direction and editing -- but, sadly, a script that is lacking, to say the least. Norman Foster also directed the film noir Woman on the Run and many others.

Verdict: At least it has a good -- if kind of gross -- title. **. 

REBECCA

The unnamed heroine (Fontaine) and Mrs. Danvers (Anderson)

REBECCA (1940). Director: Alfred Hitchcock.

"[Rebecca's underwear] was made especially for her by the nuns at the Convent of St. Clair." -- a rhapsodic Mrs. Danvers

An unnamed young lady (Joan Fontaine) is in Monte Carlo as the companion to the horrible dowager Mrs. Van Hopper (Florence Bates) when she meets the handsome Maxim de Winter (Laurence Olivier), and the two are instantly attracted. The young lady agrees to become the second Mrs. de Winter -- Maxim's first wife, Rebecca, was drowned -- and they set off for his beautiful estate, Manderlay. There the nervous new wife sees evidence of the much more sophisticated Rebecca everywhere, and has to deal with a housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers (Judith Anderson), who loved Rebecca and sees the new Mrs. de Winter as a usurper. Eventually a number of secrets about Rebecca and her death are uncovered ... If there's any problem with this smoothly made and entertaining romance it's that the heroine is a bit too mousy -- after one especially cruel trick played on the unsuspecting victim by Mrs. Danvers, most women would have insisted the termagant be fired, for instance, but Fontaine lets it slide [although she does confront the housekeeper]. However, Fontaine is perfect and lovely in the role, although Olivier's performance, while good, is probably not one of his most outstanding. It could be argued that Judith Anderson overplays a bit too much, bristling "evil" at the very first confrontation, and one suspects Cloris Leachman based her portrayal of Frau Blucher in Young Frankenstein on Anderson in this. It has been suggested that Danvers was in love with Rebecca, but it's just as likely that, like a lot of old-school servants, she loved her mistress platonically and came to strongly, obsessively identify with her. In any case, Danvers' performance is basically good, which is also true of Florence Bates; George Sanders (as Rebecca's "cousin"); Gladys Cooper as a relative of Max's; Nigel Bruce as her husband; Reginald Denny as Max's associate, Frank; C. Aubrey Smith as a colonel; and Leo G. Carroll as Dr. Baker. The finale leaves you feeling somewhat sympathetic towards the unseen title character, and wondering if she was quite so "evil" and what she might have had to put up with as far as Maxim was concerned.

Verdict: Smooth, memorable picture from Hitchcock and producer David Selznick. ***1/2.

SUSPICION

Lina (Joan Fontaine) suspects her husband wants to kill her

SUSPICION (1941). Director: Alfred Hitchcock.

Lonely heiress Lina (Joan Fontaine) meets the charming mountebank Johnnie (Cary Grant) and finally falls in love. The two get married and move into a huge house that Johnnie can clearly not afford. Lina discovers that her husband has an aversion to work of any kind, and an addiction to gambling, even selling antique chairs given to her by her father as a wedding present, for money. A friend named Beaky (Nigel Bruce) shows up and lets slip further information that unsettles the discomfited wife. After Lina fears that her husband might be involved in a death that occurred in Paris, she then suspects that he is planning to do away with her. But is she right -- or this time does two and two add up to five? Suspicion is a smooth, beautifully photographed [Harry Stradling] and handsomely produced thriller that features an outstanding performance from Fontaine and also boasts Grant at his best, never quite giving away whether he's a total rotter or not. Other notable players include Dame May Whitty and Sir Cedric Hardwicke as Lina's parents, and Leo. G. Carroll as Johnnie's cousin, from whom he embezzles. It's been said that the ending is tacked on and a bit of a cop-out, but it still works. Unusual scoring by Franz Waxman.

Verdict: Another smooth suspenser from the Master. ***1/2.

CHECKMATE Season 1

McClure, Cabot and George of Checkmate, Inc.

CHECKMATE Season One. 1960. Created by Eric Ambler.

This detective/suspense program aired for two seasons in the early sixties and took place in San Francisco. The premise was that Checkmate Inc., an agency, did its best to stop crimes before they occurred, thus in quite a few episodes they were hired to find out who was trying to kill a particular individual. Don Corey (Anthony George) was the head of the outfit, with able assistance from girl-happy Jed Sills (Doug McClure) as well as from consultant criminologist Dr. Carl Hyatt (Sebastian Cabot). Late in the first season Donna Douglas [The Beverly Hillbillies] became their secretary, but she was given little to do and eventually just disappeared.The three leads all had a different style, played well together, and were very well-cast.

The show was respected enough to sign up some pretty hefty guest stars, including Anne Baxter, Jane Wyman, Joan Fontaine, Peter Lorre and even the inestimable Charles Laughton! [Betty Garde, who played the tough maid on a classic episode of The Honeymooners, has a good dramatic turn in "Hot Wind in a Cold Town."] Most of the episodes were solidly in the "B+" category but there were a number of "A"s as well: In "Face in the Window" Joseph Cotten cancels his engagement to Julie Adams after he sees a man whom he presumed dead looking in at him through a shop window. In "Deadly Shadow" a grown-up Margaret O'Brien is a marine's widow plagued by a shadowy assailant. Barbara Rush plays a troubled woman with two distinct personalities in "The Dark Divide." In "Mask of Vengeance," with Janice Rule and Cloris Leachman, the Chinese community is outraged after a diplomat's daughter claims immunity after running over a child. In "The Murder Game" a dying defense attorney, beautifully-played by John Williams, plans to kill the one guilty client that he got off. In "Terror from the East" Charles Laughton superbly plays a missionary who's come to San Francisco to warn a man who has been targeted for death. [This episode also marks the first appearance of Hyatt's adorable daschund, Bismark, who figures in an especially cute prologue in "Tight as a Drum."] "Melody for Murder" has pop singer Jimmie Rodgers threatened by an unknown female out for revenge. "Voyage into Fear" guest stars Joan Fontaine as a neurotic woman who is convinced her husband has sent a hit man after her on a cruise ship, but is she right or is she nuts?

Verdict: Memorable crime drama with fine performances and an especially interesting guest cast. ***.

BEYOND A REASONABLE DOUBT (1956)

BEYOND A REASONABLE DOUBT (1956). Director: Fritz Lang.

After viewing an  execution in a prison, writer Tom Garrett (Dana Andrews) and newspaper publisher Austin Spencer (Sidney Blackmer) have a discussion in which the latter wonders if the dead man, convicted on purely circumstantial evidence, could have been innocent. While Spencer is very much opposed to the death penalty, Garrett is thinking more of what a great book it would make if the two of them conspired to make it look as if the latter were responsible for the unsolved murder of a show girl. The idea is to get the innocent Garrett convicted and then whip out photographs Spencer has taken of Garrett planting phony evidence. (It doesn't occur to either of them that by tampering with evidence and obstructing justice they would both be committing serious crimes.) The biggest problem is that the two men don't include Spencer's daughter Susan (Joan Fontaine), who is engaged to Garrett, in the loop. While the whole movie has to be taken with a grain of salt, Beyond a Reasonable Doubt moves at a brisk pace and is quite entertaining, offering a neat twist that most viewers won't see coming. Andrews' stoicism serves him well as Garrett, Blackmer is as good as usual, and Fontaine is simply outstanding in her strongly emotional scenes as Joan. Arthur Franz, Shepperd Strudwick, Barbara Nichols and Philip Bourneuf are also solid in supporting roles. Remade -- quite well -- in 2009.

 Verdict: Invigorating suspense film with neat finale. ***.

LETTER FROM AN UNKNOWN WOMAN (1948)

LETTER FROM AN UNKNOWN WOMAN (1948). Director: Max Ophuls.

"I came to offer you my whole life -- but you didn't even remember me."

Letter from an Unknown Woman is a movie that it seems you either love passionately or feel complete dispassion for, although on previous viewings I've always held the middle ground. I've finally begun to see this as a very good picture, but it has to be taken with a grain of salt. To those people who feel that there's no such thing as a one-man woman (or vice versa) -- or that such women are mentally diseased [and they may be right] -- Letter from an Unknown Woman  may seem more of a pathological study that a moving romantic movie.

The film is based on a story of the same name by Austrian writer Stefan Zweig, which is one of the most powerful and moving studies of unrequited love and romantic obsession ever written. [It is highly recommended for any lover of the short story/novella. It also explains a lot of Lisa's decisions that have appalled the film's detractors.] This Hollywood film version changes the object of desire from a writer to a composer and makes some other changes as well -- Lisa never gets married to anyone in the story --  although the basic substance remains the same. Lisa Berndle (Joan Fontaine) has loved a neighbor Stefan Brand (Louis Jourdan) since childhood. At first she worshiped from afar, but when she becomes an adult she has an affair with Brand, and even gives birth to his son (unknown to him). Unfortunately, Brand goes away for "two weeks" and she never sees him again ... until years later. The title refers to a letter Lisa sends Brand which forms the story of the movie, told in flashback.

Jourdan is excellent as the not evil but simply unknowing Brand. Fontaine is also excellent, although she's perhaps too sophisticated in the second half of the movie to make us believe she would fall for the same old lines from Brand [once bitten, twice shy, and all that].

Letter from an Unknown Woman was remade twice, first for French television in 2001 as Lettre d'une inconnue and then in 2004 in China. I will post about these in the near future, but for now I'll say that the Chinese version, despite changes in setting and era, is a actually more faithful to Zweig's story. 

Verdict: Memorable and moving. ***1/2.

THE ALFRED HITCHCOCK HOUR SEASON 1

THE ALFRED HITCHCOCK HOUR [1962 - 1965]. First season. 

The half hour Alfred Hitchcock Presents expanded into an hour with a name change to match but with the same droll introductions by the inimitable Alfred Hitchcock. As usual the stories ran the gamut from chillers to crime dramas to suspense stories to murder mysteries. Surprisingly, many of them lacked a final twist or other clever aspect, but were more matter-of-fact, rescued by a good plot or excellent performances. Most of the episodes of the first season were in the "B" or "C" category -- with a couple of "D's" -- but there were also several outstanding "A" episodes. These include: "Captive Audience," with a superb James Mason as a writer losing his grip on reality over a beautiful woman (Angie Dickinson); "Hangover," with Tony Randall trying to piece together the past few days with the help of Jayne Mansfield (whose appearance and solid non-sex kitten performance are a very pleasant surprise); "Paragon," a strange story about a completely self-absorbed woman played winningly by Joan Fontaine; the very moving "Lonely Heart," in which Nancy Kelly is convinced that Gena Rowlands was accidentally given her own baby [both actresses are excellent]; and the completely unpredictable "Death and the Joyful Woman," in which Gilbert Roland ferociously plays a monster father and Lorraine Day is equally good as the secretary who is in love with him. Even the less interesting shows are quite entertaining and well-acted. 

Verdict: Good show, Hitch! ***.

VOYAGE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA

VOYAGE OF THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA (1961). Director: Irwin Allen.

This was one of Twentieth Century-Fox's big CinemaScope "thrill"pictures that all the kids had to see. The amazing thing is how entertaining the darn thing is. Meteors have set the Van Allen belt aflame and it looks like the world could be doomed. Many scientists feel that the fire will simply burn itself out, but Admiral Harriman Nelson (Walter Pidgeon) is convinced that the only way to save Earth is to fire a missile into the fiery belt about a day before it's predicted that the flames will expire. So Nelson sets sail with his fancy nuclear sub the Seaview and heads for the Marianas, where the missile can be fired. But he has to contend with a disgruntled crew, saboteurs, waters full of mines, a bad-tempered squid, a giant octopus, a nutty religious fanatic, and mutineers before its over. The movie works up a considerable amount of suspense as Nelson makes his mad dash to save the planet. The special effects work is uneven but generally credible. There's a terrific shot of Manhattan with a sky full of flames overhead. The squid is phony-looking and has limited movement, but the octopus is a better actor. Robert Sterling (as Captain Lee Crane) Barbara Eden, Henry Daniell, Joan Fontaine. Michael Ansara, and the inimitable Peter Lorre are all fine in supporting roles. Sterling is given a good speech in which he tells off Ansara for preaching fatalism -- accepting the inevitable -- to the sailors when he needs them to be at peak strength to pull off the impossible. Best scene: Joan Fontaine falls into the shark pool! Good script, fast pace, and effective musical score help enormously. Although this was clearly inspired by Disney's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, it's actually more entertaining. 

Verdict: More fun than it has any right to be. ***.

THIS ABOVE ALL

THIS ABOVE ALL (1942). Director: Anatole Litvak.

Prudence Cathaway (Joan Fontaine) appalls her snooty uppercrust British family by enlisting in the WAF during WW 2. She meets and falls in love with a bitter, disillusioned soldier, Clive Briggs (Tyrone Power), who has come to feel he's only fighting to preserve the unfair and hypocritical class structure -- although Prudence argues that the Germans must be defeated (oddly the term Nazi is never used. The film probably started production before the U.S. entered the war). Briggs has decided that he's going to be a deserter no matter what the consequences. This Above All (to thine own self be true) has some uncompromising attitudes in its depiction of Briggs, but the first half is superior to the second half. Once Prudence learns Briggs' secret, the picture veers a bit from romance into soap opera and becomes jingoistic. The business with Briggs encountering an unctuous priest who sets him straight is tiresome. However the performances are good and Alfred Newman's sensitive musical score embellishes every sequence. Fontaine is lovely in the film, although some may feel that she's borderline cloying at times. Power's performance is not so much great as rigorously earnest. Gladys Cooper is snippy and exact as Prudence's disapproving Aunt, and Nigel Bruce is excellent -- and nearly unrecognizable -- in the character part of an inn owner that is quite different from his Watson in the Sherlock Holmes movies. Certain scenes, such as a bar scene with melancholy songs, are imbued with the brave, sad, hopeless atmosphere of London during the Blitz, and an Air Raid sequence is chilling and well-done.

Verdict: Compelling if imperfect romance. ***.

BORN TO BE BAD

BORN TO BE BAD (1950). Directed by Nicholas Ray.

Joan Fontaine is Christable Caine, a scheming blonde who steals away the wealthy fiancé (Zachary Scott) of a friend, Donna (Joan Leslie), but who dallies with her true love, Robert Ryan, even after her marriage. A part that seems tailor-made for Bette Davis or Joan Crawford – even Barbara Stanwyck – works beautifully with the less "bitchy" (but equally talented) Fontaine because she’s able to exude an innocence that makes her conniving ways seem even more atrocious. She sends her lonely and loving aunt away even though Scott is happy to have her in his home, and refuses to go see her when she’s ill because of a party. Ryan, playing a novelist on the verge of success who can’t compete financially with Scott, gets some of the best lines. Regarding Scott (after he marries Fontaine) he says, "How can anyone be happy with a hook in his throat?" and says to Christabel "I love you so much I wish I liked you!" Mel Ferrer plays Gobby, a painter who may have been intended to be a gay character, based on certain remarks he makes about his "harmlessness" to wives and his complete lack of interest in the women in the cast (although he paints Fontaine’s portrait he exudes absolutely no romantic or sexual interest in her). When a man pokes his head into the gallery where Gobby’s paintings are exhibited, and rapidly retreats, Ferrer yells after him "Peasant!" This is a pretty classy, entertaining, well-acted soaper, it’s only deficit being the fact that the characterizations are rather superficial. RKO.

Verdict: Watchable and well-acted. **1/2.