HOME IN INDIANA

Lon McCallister and Jeanne Crain

HOME IN INDIANA (1944). Director: Henry Hathaway. 

"If you'd been a boy we'd have been the greatest pals!" 

Orphaned "Sparke" Thornton (Lon McCallister), who got into some unspecified trouble in the big city, comes to live on his aunt and uncle's farm in Indiana. His first impulse is to run out the back door but then he discovers there's a stables and track -- and two pretty girls -- next door. His Uncle "Thunder" Bolt (Walter Brennan) himself has only one old and blind filly left, but Sparke contrives to secretly mate this animal with the neighbor's prize stallion, resulting in a possibly champion racing horse. It isn't long before Sparke, with the help of Thunder, "Char" (Jeanne Crain) and the more glamorous "Cri-Cri" (June Haver) -- not to mention stable boy Mo' (Willie Best) and employee Tuppy (George Reed) -- is off to the races! 

Charlotte Greenwood with McCallister

The performances -- by those named as well as a wonderful Charlotte  Greenwood as Aunt Penny -- greatly help put over this somewhat entertaining but unriveting horse drama. It seems Lon McCallister was too often teamed up with horses (The Boy from Indiana) and mules (Scudda Hoo!, Scudda Hey!, which reteamed him with Haver and Brennan) as often as he was with the ladies. He's earnest and appealing in that "gosh oh golly" way of his. He, Haver and Crain, although all three had had bit parts in previous films, were "introduced" in this movie.  McCallister plays very well with both Crain and Haver, although his switching his affections from one to the other occurs rather abruptly and without any real explanation. The girls' fathers are played by Ward Bond and Charles Dingle. Remade as April Love with Pat Boone.

Verdict: Horse lovers will get more of a kick out of this. **1/2. 

SCUDDA HOO! SCUDDA HAY!

Walter Brennan, June Haver, Lon McCallister

SCUDDA HOO! SCHUDDA HAY!  (1948). Written and directed by F. Hugh Herbert. 

"Snug" (Lon McCallister) lives with his father, Milt (Henry Hull), termagant stepmother (Anne Revere), and nasty stepbrother, "Stretch" (Robert Karnes) on a farm. Fed up with his horrible wife, Milt goes back to sea while Snug goes to work for the dyspeptic farmer McGill (Tom Tully). McGill has two daughters: the adorable little "Bean" (Natalie Wood), and the older, curvaceous "Rad" (June Haver). Snug makes a deal with McGill for two mules that the farmer doesn't want, and with the help of old Tony (Walter Brennan), turns the mules into a team that will bring in good money. But McGill and Stretch cook up a nasty scheme to get the mules back -- or will they? 

Is that June -- or Marilyn?

I had heard of this oddly-tilted movie -- the title is actually a kind of mule call -- for decades, but never had that much desire to see it until I discovered the "adorable one" -- Marilyn Monroe -- was in the cast. Alas, her part was cut down so drastically that I couldn't even spot her until I checked again and saw her say hello to June Haver while coming out of church. And that's it! The poster tries to make the flick look as sexy and exciting as possible, and wouldn't you know that June Haver actually looks a lot like Marilyn Monroe in the ad! As for the film itself, it does have some good moments (the two step brothers have a rip-roaring fight; Rad tells off her father) and even a bit of suspense at the end as our hero sort of "bets the farm" on whether or not his mules can pull a tractor out of the mud, but other than that it gets a little tedious. As ever June Haver is bland, pretty, and professional, while Lon McCallister is a combination of charm and petulance. At times Snug hardly seems much nicer than Stretch. Brennan and the rest of the supporting cast are all terrific, and Natalie Wood nearly steals the movie in her very cute turn as the precocious and intelligent Bean. Geraldine Wall subdues her usual feistiness as McGill's wife but is good. Lee MacGregor has a nice scene when he comes to tell Rad that Snug's father died at sea. 

Lon McCallister was an appealing actor who was often cast in these kind of roles. He was the boyfriend of actor William Eythe, who co-starred with Tallulah Bankhead in A Royal Scandal. In this film you will learn that mules are a combination of horses and donkeys but are actually more intelligent than either -- yes, it's true!

Verdict: Way too much about mules! **1/4. 

BACK FROM ETERNITY

BACK FROM ETERNITY (1956). Director: John Farrow.

In this widescreen if black and white remake of Five Came Back (which was also directed by John Farrow), a motley group of passengers survive a crash in the South American jungle, only to realize that only a few of them can fly away and there are headhunters right around the corner. Back from Eternity could have been a terrific, gut-wrenching movie if only all of the dumb "Hollywoodisms" had been excised from the script. True, I've watched plenty of silly if entertaining dumb Hollywood movies, but what makes Eternity worse is that it had so much potential. True, the final few minutes are suspenseful, the acting isn't bad, and the conclusion has a certain power, but otherwise it's not a very good movie. Anita Ekberg [Screaming Mimi] got the lion's share of the publicity, and aside from being beautiful and busty, she's not a bad actress, either [by Hollywood standards, at least], although her American career didn't last long. (She appeared in this before her famous role in Fellini's La Dolce Vita.) Robert Ryan as the possibly tippling pilot is perhaps less effective in this than in other films, but Rod Steiger offers the best performance as a condemned man being brought back for execution. Phyllis Kirk and Gene Barry are effective enough as an engaged couple who have problems, and Beulah Bondi and Cameron Prud'homme are fine as an elderly professor and his wife. Jesse White is Jesse White.

SPOILER ALERT: Now let's talk about those "Hollywoodisms:" Fred Clark is taking Steiger back for execution, but he uses no handcuffs on a supposedly dangerous felon. Kirk and Ekberg have a completely ridiculous "cat fight" over a man that serves only to show the latter in a wet, clinging outfit. Worse still is the whole business with the lovely stewardess, Maria (Adele Mara of Night Time in Nevada). First let's make it clear that Maria is a friend and co-worker of the pilot and his co-pilot (Keith Andes), and is an attractive and really nice person. Saving a little boy (Jon Prevost) from falling out of the plane when a tank smashes open the door, she herself falls to her death in a horrifying moment. There is no scene when Andes tells Ryan what happened. After the plane lands in the jungle, Ryan says to Andes "everyone all right?" to which Andes replies that the passengers were only a little bruised. There's absolutely no mention of brave Maria and her horrible death throughout the rest of the movie, and these are her co-workers!  [A somewhat similar sequence occurred in another plane crash drama The Crowded Sky.] Admittedly, the passengers are having their own problems, but even during a quiet, contemplative moment much later on, when the pious professor and his wife lead everyone in the Lord's Prayer, nobody offers up a prayer for Maria. It's unbelievable, cold-blooded and illogical scenes like this (or the lack of them) and others that make me classify Back From Eternity less as drama than as schlock. Farrow's direction, although the plane scenes are well-handled, also does little to disguise/detour around some moments of really bad acting.

Verdict: The final quarter has its moments but then there's the rest of it ... **.