THE HAPPY TIME

Charles Boyer and Bobby Driscoll

THE HAPPY TIME (1952). Director: Richard Fleischer. Produced by Stanley Kramer.

Three brothers -- (Jacques) Charles Boyer, (Desmond) Louis Jourdan, and (Louis) Kurt Kasznar -- interact in 1920's Ottawa, but the focus in this film is more on Jacques' son, Robert or "Bibi" (Bobby Driscoll). Bibi develops quite a crush on the maid, Mignonette (Linda Christian), although Desmond and Mignonette are attracted to each other. Louis is a wastrel and drunk who is married to a seeming shrew, Felice (Jeanette Nolan), who fears her daughter, Yvonne (Ann Faber), will become an old maid. The brothers' father, Grandpere (Marcel Dalio), just wants to have a good time in what time he has remaining. Then Bibi is accused of lying to the principal, Frye (Jack Raine), and the three brothers, united, decide to have a serious talk with the man.  

Louis Jourdan and Linda Christian

The Happy Time settles most of the characters' problems in predictable fashion, but there is a pleasant time in getting there. The performances are uniformly excellent. Based on a Broadway show, the film's two biggest problems are its trivialism of alcoholism and its treatment of some of the female characters. Louis is clearly a hopeless drunk, but no one ever spares any compassion for his wife, whose shrill personality didn't come out of nowhere; her daughter is never developed at all. Marsha Hunt is fine in her brief screen time as Jacques' wife and Bibi's mother, but she also seems under-developed. Mignonette fares a little better, as does the next-door neighbor girl, Peggy (Marlene Cameron), who has an unrequited crush on Bibi and lies to the principal to get even with him.  

Richard Erdman and Kurt Kasznar

Two scenes stand out in the movie. The first is a farcical and funny bit between Louis and Alfred (Richard Erdman), a tight-assed bank clerk who wants to marry Yvonne and accidentally gets drunk on wine that Louis keeps in a cooler. The second is a very well-played scene between Jacques and Bibi which temporarily becomes a little more sophisticated than the rest of the film. Jacques explains to his son that (sexual) desire has caused so many problems in the world that people -- such as the principal -- have come to see desire itself as being evil, but he assures his son that "nothing is wrong with desire." Linda Christian was married to Tyrone Power for a time. Richard Fleischer later directed Fantastic Voyage and many others. 

Verdict: Overly cute at times, but very well-acted, entertaining, and often charmingly sentimental. ***.

MY SISTER EILEEN (1955)

Janet Leigh and Bob Fosse

MY SISTER EILEEN (1955). Director: Richard Quine.

Ruth Sherwood (Betty Garrett) and her younger and prettier sister Eileen (Janet Leigh of The Spy in the Green Hat) come from Ohio to Greenwich Village to pursue careers as, respectively, a writer and an actress. Eileen becomes entangled with lunch counter waiter Frank (Bob Fosse) and on-the-make reporter Chick (Tommy Rail), while Ruth is involved with prominent magazine editor, Bob Baker (Jack Lemmon). Will the sisters find success and romance?

Bob Fosse and Betty Garrett

My Sister Eileen was originally filmed in 1942 with Rosalind Russell playing Ruth. Russell then reprised the role in a Broadway musical version entitled Wonderful Town with music by Leonard Bernstein. Columbia Pictures, which owned the rights to the original film, wanted to do a film adaptation of Wonderful Town with Judy Holliday stepping into the lead, but the show's producers wanted too much money. Therefore they decided to remake Eileen and add a completely new and different score by Leo Robin and Jule Styne. Meanwhile, Judy Holliday became unavailable and Betty Garrett, oddly, was signed to the part.

Jack Lemmon

Garrett, who was married to the blacklisted Larry Parks, is pleasant and competent enough as Ruth, but she can't hold a candle to Rosalind Russell. My Sister Eileen did not lead to major stardom for Garrett, who had bigger successes on television (All in the Family; Laverne and Shirley). Aside from a film noir feature some years later, Eileen was, in fact, Garrett's last starring role. Everyone in this remake is a step downward from the cast in the earlier film with the exception of Bob Fosse, who is very appealing, and Tommy Rail, who is handsome and adept, although, like Fosse, better known for his dancing (and in Fosse's case, choreography and direction). Ironically, Fosse's role in the original picture was played by Richard Quine, who co-wrote (with Blake Edwards) and directed this remake. Jack Lemmon is also quite nice as the editor, Bob Barker. Lemmon and Quine reunited for How to Murder Your Wife ten years later.

Kasznar, Leigh, Garrett, York

Other roles are filled by Kurt Kasznar as the landlord and Dick York as the off-season football player (which the skinny York scarcely resembles) who lives upstairs. The roles of the sisters' father and grandmother have been eliminated, along with the fortune teller Effie. This remake is not only in Technicolor and CinemaScope but it's been opened up with scenes in Frank's drug store, the El Morocco nightclub, and even the Brooklyn Navy Yard, although the apartment and Village scenes are clearly filmed on a sound stage. The Portuguese merchant marines have become Brazilian sailors. Expanding this sequence just creates a ridiculous scene in which these guys all chase after the not-very-sexy Garrett, something not handled quite so blatantly in the original. The conga scene from the original movie becomes a big production number but loses most of its charm. Another change has Ruth pretending that her stories about Eileen are really about her, an unnecessary development that goes nowhere.

Garrett, Fosse, Leigh, and Rail

Then there are the songs. Jule Styne, the composer of Funny Girl, Gypsy and Darling of the Day can be counted on for some nice numbers and he delivers such good tunes as "I'm Great But No One Knows It," "There's Nothin' Like Love" and "Give Me a Band and My Baby." One of the best scenes in the movie has Fosse and Rail doing a dancing dual as Eileen goes off for an audition.

Verdict: On its own terms, this can be entertaining, and the musical interludes are generally nice, but on a whole it's a cut below the original. **1/4.

ANYTHING GOES (1956)

Bing Crosby and Donald O'Connor clown around

ANYTHING GOES (1956). Director: Robert Lewis.

Broadway veteran Bill Benson (Bing Crosby) and hot shot TV star Ted Adams (Donald O'Connor) are teaming up to do a Broadway show. They each decide on a leading lady, unaware of what the other has done. So on a boat back to New York from Europe, they have to contend with the fact that they promised the plum role to two different women: Patsy (Mitzi Gaynor) and Gaby (Zizi Jeanmaire). Complicating matters is the realization that each man has started to fall in love, not with the woman they chose to star with but with her rival!

Mitzi Gaynor and Donald O\Connor

Twenty years earlier Crosby did a previous version of Anything Goes that co-starred Ethel Merman. This new version throws out the plot of the Broadway musical it was based on but uses some of Cole Porter's songs, along with a few new ones by Cahn and Van Heusen. (You can tell which are whose fairly easily). This is a one-gimmick plot but it does add some suspense to the proceedings, and Paramount studios manages to give the flick some of the gloss you associate with MGM, thanks to Technicolor, VistaVision, some excellent art direction, and cinematographer John F. Warren. More importantly, the performances by all are adept and enthusiastic.

Zizi Jeanmaire with chorus boys

Zizi Jeanmaire (billed in this only as "Jeanmaire") was a French dancer and actress who did most of her work in Europe. She is quite good in Anything Goes and is given one zesty number as well as a featured ballet with little boys, sailors and several lookalikes. The production numbers include the title tune choreographed by Ernest Flatt, "I Get a Kick", and the finale, "Blow, Gabriel, Blow," which features the four stars in a striking tableau.

"Blow, Gabriel, Blow." Jeanmaire, Crosby, Gaynor, O'Connor

Anything Goes, however, goes on for a little too long, and there are some dull stretches, including a nightclub bit wherein Crosby plays a mind-reading Rajah that becomes tiresome rather quickly. In spite of that, the movie is fun and colorful for the most part. Phil Harris [The Patsy] is cast as Gaynor's father, Steve, and Kurt Kasznar [Land of the Giants] as Crosby's agent, Victor Lawrence.

Verdict: Talented cast helps put this over. ***. 

FLAME OF THE ISLANDS

FLAME OF THE ISLANDS (1956). Director: Edward Ludwig. In Republic Trucolor.

Rosalind Dee (Yvonne De Carlo) is given a substantial check by the widow, Evelyn (Frieda Inescort), of her boss, with whom Evelyn believes Rosalind was "involved." Insulted, Rosalind takes the check, quits her job, and uses the money to buy into a club-casino in the Bahamas. Alas, little does she know that her partner, Cyril (Kurt Kasznar), who has a hankering for her (as does every other man she meets), is in league with a pack of gangsters. She brushes off wanna-be boyfriend Wade (Zachary Scott), when she re-encounters old flame Doug (Howard Duff), who once got her pregnant but now doesn't even remember her. Then we have Doug's disapproving mother, Charmaine (Barbara O'Neil of Stella Dallas), and even the Widow Evelyn shows up again at an inopportune moment. We also mustn't forget the island captain and part-time preacher, Kelly (James Arness), who also develops a longing for Rosalind. Which man will Rosalind wind up with, or will her gangster partners make sure she winds up at the bottom of the sea? Flame of the Islands, which has enough plot for ten movies, is very entertaining and well-acted by all. Lester Matthews [Life Begins for Andy Hardy] plays the lead hoodlum, Gus, and Donald Curtis is one of his associates. With a sexy De Carlo [Criss Cross] cavorting, singing and dancing, and of course, going after all the men (and vice versa), Flame of the Islands is a lot of fun.

Verdict: The Bahamas were never like this! ***.

LEGEND OF THE LOST

LEGEND OF THE LOST (1957). Director: Henry Hathaway.

The strange trio of Joe January (John Wayne), Paul Bonnard (Rosanno Brazzi) and Dita (Sophia Loren) trek from Timbuktu into the Sahara desert in search of a lost city and treasure that Bonnard's father went to look for -- although he never returned. There's a sand storm, a big spider that crawls over Loren's body, and not a hell of a lot of action in a dull, leisurely "adventure" film that never catches fire. There's some good art direction when it comes to the lost city itself, but it makes no sense that it wasn't spotted from the air long before! Wayne looks tired and bored. At one point Dita shouts out the hilariously cliched line: "I'm no good -- everything I touch turns rotten!" [The weak script is by Ben Hecht and Robert Presnell Jr.] Hathaway directs as if he was half asleep throughout filming. Sexy Loren's hair cut makes her sort of look like a plucked chicken, not an image you normally associate with the busty Italian actress. Her acting is fine, as is Brazzi's and Kurt Kasznar's in a small role as a policeman. All in all, however, the whole enterprise is just a waste of time.

Verdict: For insomniacs only. *.