PEYTON PLACE

PEYTON PLACE (1957). Director: Mark Robson.

This is a surprisingly entertaining film version of Grace Metalious' once-notorious novel with a screenplay by John Michael Hayes. Constance MacKenzie (Lana Turner), who has a secret and a "past," is afraid that her daughter Allison (Diane Varsi) will follow in her footsteps and become like the town "bad girl" Betty (Terry Moore). "Roddy liked flashy girls so that's what I became," Betty says. Alison's friend Selena (Hope Lange) is raped by her step-father and the town seems to blame her. Norman (Russ Tamblyn) has a domineering mother and may have been intended to be a stereotypical gay character. School teacher Elsie Thornton (Mildred Natwick) is passed over in her hoped-for promotion to principal when the town hires much younger Michael Rossi (Lee Philips) instead. (This sub-plot, unfortunately, isn't developed.) Along with Natwick, Varsi, Lange, and Moore come off best, with nice turns by Arthur Kennedy, Lloyd Nolan, little Scotty Morrow as Joseph, and Lorne Greene as a prosecutor. Contrived at times; admirably frank at others. Beautifully photographed by William Mellor, and Franz Waxman's theme music is a classic. The only problem with the movie is that it's supposed to take place pre-WW 2, but it hardly has any late 30's period atmosphere at all.

Verdict: Sex and suffering soaked in classy sounds and images. ***

THE GREAT RUPERT

THE GREAT RUPERT (1950). Director: Irving Pichel. 

Now here's a weird one. A down-on-his-luck entertainer, Joe Mahoney (Jimmy Conlin), with a trained squirrel act, reluctantly lets the squirrel, Rupert, go off on his own when he finds he can't get them bookings. Louie Amendola (Jimmy Durante), another entertainer who can't find work, moves into the apartment vacated by Mahoney with his family, but is unaware that the squirrel has moved back in. When Mrs. Amendola (Queenie Smith) prays for money, it drops from the ceiling into her hands! She is unaware that the landlord, who doesn't believe in banks, stashes his loot in a hole behind his bed, from whence the squirrel promptly throws it out. Despite the title, and the pivotal role that Rupert plays in the fortunes of the Amendola family, the squirrel -- animated through stop-motion -- hasn't much to do in the movie (although he isn't entirely forgotten either), which is decidedly bizarre, utterly original, and even strangely touching. The cast, including Durante, Sara Haden (as the landlord's wife), Chick Chandler (as an agent) and Terry Moore (Durante's daughter) are all fine, although love interest Tom Drake is strangely devoid of charm. 

Verdict: Really not as bad as you might expect, but certainly not for everyone. ***.

COME BACK, LITTLE SHEBA

Oscar-winning Shirley Booth and Burt Lancaster

COME BACK, LITTLE SHEBA (1952). Director: Daniel Mann. Based on the play by William Inge.

"You didn't know I'd get old and fat and sloppy, but I didn't know it, either." -- Lola to Doc.

Lola Delaney (Shirley Booth) is a housewife who is always afraid that her husband, a chiropractor named Doc (Burt Lancaster), will fall off the wagon again. The couple got married years ago when Lola got pregnant, but she lost the baby, and fears that her husband feels trapped and disappointed with life and marriage. Doc does, of course, but he has a bond with Lola, although trouble appears when they take in a pretty young boarder named Marie (Terry Moore of Peyton Place). Marie becomes a symbol to Doc of lost youth and opportunity, just as Lola's old dog, Sheba (who probably ran away to die), is a symbol of her own faded dreams. When Doc comes to believe that Marie is not the sweet innocent he thought she was, he can't resist going to the bottle ...

Richard Jaeckel and Terry Moore

Shirley Booth played the role on the stage, and it would have been criminal for her not to repeat her part on the screen (she won a well-deserved Oscar for it). As she was not seen as being sufficiently box office, Lancaster was secured for the leading male role. Although Doc was always meant to be an older man, Lancaster is not as miscast as you might imagine. He's quite good, in fact, if not up to Booth. (One has to remember that Lola has become chubby and slovenly over the years, and there have been many cases of couples in which the husband is better-looking, or at least in better shape, than the wife.) Terry Moore also does some nice work, as do Richard Jaeckel [The Dark] as a football hero she dallies with and Richard Kelley as her fiance, Bruce. There are other good character performances in the film as well, including Lisa Golm's [Anna Lucasta] as a sympathetic German neighbor.

Terry Moore and Burt Lancaster

Come Back, Little Sheba is full of lovely and sad touches, such as Lola's phone conversation with her mother, when she desperately wants to come home for awhile, but her father, who has never forgiven her for past indiscretions, won't allow it. An amusing moment occurs when Lola tells Doc that she'll prepare him a hot meal if he comes home for lunch, but the "hot meal" turns out to be cottage cheese and buttermilk! The film is well-directed by Daniel Mann, and there's a nice score by Franz Waxman.

NOTE: I could only get a few minutes into a 1977 TV version of the play in which, incredibly, Laurence Olivier is even more miscast (and less effective) than Lancaster, and Joanne Woodward, also miscast, doesn't come even close to approximating Booth's genius. Booth had a pixilated, almost pathetic quality that made her just perfect for Lola.

Verdict: "Some things should never get old" -- A strong and touching drama. ***1/2. 

BLACK SPURS

Rory Calhoun and Linda Darnell

BLACK SPURS (1965). Director: R. G. Springsteen.

In Texas in 1885 Santee (Rory Calhoun of Night of the Lepus) is engaged to pretty Anna (Terry Moore) but he wants to wait to marry until he's made his fortune. He bids adieu to Anna and sets off to capture or kill the notorious bandit, El Pescadore (Robert Carricart), something he succeeds at. After this Santee becomes a full-time bounty hunter with many kills to his credit. Many. many months later he returns to his lady love only to learn that she has understandably married another, Sheriff Ralph Elkins (James Best) of Lash, Kansas. An embittered Santee decides to help a certain entrepreneur named Gus Kile (Lon Chaney Jr.) bring gambling and loose ladies to Lash no matter who gets hurt, but does the man have a chance at redemption?

Lon Chaney Jr. and Rory Calhoun

Black Spurs certainly has an interesting cast. Although Calhoun mostly shows the emotion of a rock, his co-players tend to be better, and this includes Linda Darnell in a small role as a madame. Darnell is a bit zaftig but not unattractive. She died in a fire before the film was released. Scott Brady plays, of all things, a priest, Richard Arlen owns the local saloon, and Bruce Cabot is an enforcer who zestily throws people out of town with a sneer or a heave. Patricia Owens and Jerome Courtland [Kiss and Tell] play lovers who aren't really married, and there is a brief appearance by pre-Star Trek DeForest Kelley as another sheriff.  Handsome Joseph Hoover has a rare (if small) speaking role as another one of Arlen's associates. Manuel Padilla Jr. [Tarzan and the Valley of Gold[ is cute as the little boy, Manuel, who loves to sing and eventually becomes disenchanted with his hero, Santee.

Black Spurs is by no means a great western but it features a basically sound storyline (albeit probably one that has been used in different variations many, many times over) and has some flavorful performances. Courtland and Owens each had one more theatrical film before doing some TV work; Courtland became a director. Calhoun and Moore had a great many more credits, and the latter is still acting today. Director R. G. Springsteen amassed nearly 100 film and TV credits, mostly working on westerns.

Verdict: Okay western for devotees. **1/2. 

BERNARDINE

Pat Boone and Dick Sargent

BERNARDINE (1957). Director: Henry Levin.

Some high school pals in a club imagine the perfect woman and for unaccountable reasons call her "Bernardine." One afternoon Sanford Wilson (Dick Sargent) meets a beautiful young lady named Jean (Terry Moore of Mighty Joe Young), and he is instantly smitten -- she is his Bernardine. The other guys in the club also think Jean is special, but her relationship with Sanford hits the rocks when she meets Langley (James Drury), the handsome older brother of Sanford's friend, Beau (Pat Boone). With a little help from his friends, Sanford tries to win the hand of fair lady.

Terry Moore and Dick Sargent

Although Pat Boone and Terry Moore are top-billed in Bernardine, the main character and the one who gets the most running time, is Dick Sargent's Sanford. Pat Boone, playing a very unlikable person (although most of the boys in the film are unlikable) does have some screen time and gets to warble three numbers, the okay title tune, the highly sexist "Technique," and the more memorable "Love Letters in the Sand," which I believe was a big hit for Boone, who kind of imitates Der Bingle a bit. Terry Moore actually has very little to do in the film considering she is the leading lady. Bernardine asks us to accept Sargent, Boone, Ronnie Burns, and others as high school students when they have clearly left their teenage years far behind them. This makes their behavior at times seem borderline grotesque. They are particularly obnoxious to a nerd named Kinswood (Hooper Dunbar), although eventually he's somewhat accepted by the others.

Janet Gaynor

Natalie Schafer plays Boone's mother in a couple of brief scenes, but the stand-out in this is Janet Gaynor [Sunrise], who plays Sargent's mom and is given a couple of strong moments. "It's crazy, it's wild, it's improbable -- but don't tell me you passed!" she says to Sanford, who is not a great student. Sargent has some good moments, too, but again he's too old, his character isn't very appealing, and the more serious moments when he's dealing with heartbreak are almost worse than the comedy sequences. Although Sargent subsequently appeared with Boone in Mardi Gras, his film career never really developed and he mostly did television. Walter Abel and Dean Jagger are also in the film. This was Pat Boone's first movie and Janet Gaynor's last; she had two television credits after that.

Verdict: In spite of "Love Letters in the Sand," this is so bad it's depressing. *1/2. 

MIGHTY JOE YOUNG (1949)

Joe goes into his dance while Jill plays piano

MIGHTY JOE YOUNG (1949). Director: Ernest B. Schoedsack.

Hoping to incorporate a wild new theme into his new nightclub, entrepreneur Max O'Hara  (Robert Armstrong) travels to Africa wherein he encounters a huge gorilla who goes by the name of Joe Young. From infancy Joe has been the pet of Jill Young (Terry Moore), the only person who can control the very big ape [not quite of King Kong-proportions, but much large than the normal gorilla]. Smitten with a cowboy named Gregg (Ben Johnson), who works for O'Hara, and starry-eyed at all the thoughts O'Hara puts into her head, Jill agrees to take Joe and fly off to Hollywood. The two do an act that involves a rising piano, and in a great scene Joe plays tug of war with a dozen famous strongmen [leading to a brief and funny fight between him and Primo Carnera], but when patrons start throwing coins -- and then bottles -- at him, Joe gets a little upset. Jill isn't too thrilled by the fact that he can't roam free as he did on her ranch but has to be kept in a cell every night. Before long you know there has to be a disaster and Joe eventually runs riot in the nightclub in a rousing sequence ... Mighty Joe Young taps into the King Kong mystique but never achieves its mythic stature [and probably wasn't meant to] but on its own terms it's a wonderful picture with superb special effects and a certain amount of sentiment. Brought to life via stop-motion by Willis O'Brien, Ray Harryhausen, and others, Joe is a memorable creation, equally frightening and pitiable, with priceless sensitive facial expressions. The harrowing conclusion, which features a fire in an orphanage and is in color, is notable. Along with Joe, the three human leads all give good performances, and child actress Lora Lee Michel is a charming stand-out playing Jill as a little girl [she was also in The Snake Pit]. Schoedsack co-directed King Kong. Nice score by Rob Webb. Regis Toomey plays Jill's father in the opening sequence, and Nestor Paiva is a drunk in the nightclub who plays a role in the riot that occurs.

Verdict: King Kong "lite" perhaps but very entertaining and well-done. ***1/2.

HE'S A COCKEYED WONDER

HE'S A COCKEYED WONDER (1950). Director: Peter Godfrey.

Freddie Frisby works as a tomato sorter in a plant owned by Caldwell (Charles Arnt) and supervised by the grumpy Bob Sears (William Demarest). Freddie has to date Sears' daughter Judy (Terry Moore) on the sly, because Sears hates him, and would much prefer Caldwell's son Ralph (Ross Ford) as a son-in-law. Frisby figures he has little chance with Judy after he gets fired, but then learns that his uncle, a magician, has left him his entire estate ... He's a Cockeyed Wonder certainly has possibilities, and the movie is fun whenever Rooney, who's fine, is in charge, but it, unfortunately, goes way off in the wrong direction. While a lot of laughs could have been milked out of Freddie's hapless magic act, instead the picture brings in a gang of robbers, has the two main characters kidnapped and threatened with death [!]  -- all of it quite tedious and not especially funny. The performances are good, however, including Douglas Fowley as the nasty head of the gang of thieves, and there are a few genuine laughs along the way. Godfrey also directed Please Murder Me and others and seemed to divide his time between comedies and thrillers. Fowley had a long list of credits and made a strong impression in Desire in the Dust.

Verdict: A little too cockeyed but Rooney fans may enjoy. **.

TWO OF A KIND

TWO OF A KIND (1951). Director: Henry Levin.

Brandy Kirby (Lizabeth Scott) hunts down bad boy "Lefty" Farrell (Edmond O'Brien) because she needs him for a certain project, but only if he'll agree to snip off the end of one of his fingers. Seems there's this long-lost missing heir whom Lefty resembles ... There's some minor suspense to Two of a Kind as you wonder if Lefty will get away with his impersonation, or if thieves will fall out and completely shatter their chances. Terry Moore plays a niece of the wealthy old man the conspirators are hoping to fleece, but while her performance is good her character is so improbably naive and stupid that the movie takes a real reality dive when she appears. With his homely mug O'Brien is miscast as a lover boy who supposedly gets all the ladies hot, but he's a good enough actor to get his character across convincingly in spite of it; Scott merely seems disinterested in the material [or in O'Brien] and it's not one of her more memorable performances.

Verdict: Film noir of a minor kind. **1/2.

SUNNY SIDE OF THE STREET

SUNNY SIDE OF THE STREET (1951). Director: Richard Quine.

Frankie Laine plays himself, a singer with a TV show whose sponsor, a peanut brittle company, is represented by Gloria Pelley (Audrey Long). Gloria's old boyfriend, "Stretch" or Ted (Jerome Courtland) is hoping to make it in show business, and he has a pretty agent Betty (Terry Moore of Mighty Joe Young fame, pictured with Laine) who has a big crush on him. Naturally she's jealous of the attentions of Gloria, who wants to sign Ted up for the Frankie Laine show. Moore and Courtland are cute and competent, Pelley has a little more spice, and Frankie Laine was simply not cut out for success in the movies. Lynn Bari plays Betty's older roommate Mary and is given all the sardonic lines, but she's not in the class of Eve Arden when it comes to delivering them. One singer does an hysterically overwrought version of "I Get a Kick Out of You" -- awful! Very minor musical is as insubstantial and gooey as cotton candy.

Verdict: Try and miss it. *1/2.