1941 -THE STRAWBERRY BLONDE, charming comedy

Looking for a change of pace from all the action films that he had been making.  Raoul Walsh was able to get Jack Warner the head of Warner Brother's studios to let him make this lightweight but very charming comedy with James Cagney and Olivia de Havilland.  The plot has Cagney playing a man taking a dental correspondent course by mail all the while pining for Rita Hayworth who is the titular character, a neighborhood beauty.

Cagney gets involved with perennial character actor Jack Carlson who also has a thing for Hayworth, but ends up being the fall guy for Carlson's construction business which has been using inferior materials to build homes.  One thing leads to another and Carlson manages to marry Hayworth much to Cagney's disappointment.  However Cagney finally sees the light and ends up marrying the charming de Havilland.   Finally realizing he got the better deal when it came to a spouse. 

The film is really a nostalgia wallow.  The entire film score seems to be made up of old songs from the 1900's. The photography by the legendary James Wong Howe helps set the mood of the story and Raoul Walsh probably the last guy in the world you would think of when it came to directing a romantic comedy does his usual excellent job staging the scenes.

 

The film clearly appealed to an audience that was looking to romanticize a simpler time.  All of the performances are good and Warner Brothers didn't cheapen out on the production.  This is the kind of film that the "Hollywood Dream" factory could turn out when it was firing on all cylinders.

The screenplay was by Julius J. Epstein and Philip Epstein a couple of real pros.  They wrote Casablanca, the movie versions of Arsenic and Old Lace and The Man Who Came to Dinner.  The running time is 97 minutes.

1941 - SWAMP WATER, Jean Renoir's first American film

Jean Renoir, one France's most important filmmakers was invited by Darryl F Zanuck to make a film in Hollywood.  Renoir was a filmmaker who took his time with story and actors,.  Considering Hollywood's production methods, Renoir was in for a big disappointment.  There are numerous memos from Zanuck complaining about Renoir's slow pace and what he called his over attention to detail.

The film is set in Georgia in the Okefenokee Swamp, but other than a few opening shots the film is entirely filmed back in Hollywood at the Fox Studios.  For a film about rural people living in Georgia the film is cast with the usual bunch of Hollywood actors.  Dana Andrews, Walter Brennan,Walter Huston and Anne Baxter.  Ward Bond and Gunn “Big Boy” Williams also show up.  Nothing like using privileged rich Hollywood actors to bring authenticity to a film about poor rural southerners.

I spite of Renoir's battles with Zanuck and the Fox executives the film was one of their bigger moneymakers that year.  However Renoir was obviously not happy with the way it turned out.  The film has a few what I would call poetic touches but for the most part this is the usual Hollywood hokum about the"little people."

 

Written by Dudley Nichols, the running time is 90 minutes.

1941 - ONE FOOT IN HEAVEN

The life of a Methodist minister, William Spence.  The film chronicles his early days as a minster to his assignment in Denver CO. to a church which shall we say is very set in its ways.  Mostly the story shows how Spence's innate good nature has a positive influence on the church despite some of his character flaws.

This is an excellent studio film.  The screenplay by Casey Robinson, the direction by Irving Rapper, a studio guy who was good with actors.  Above all the performance of Frederic March one of Hollywood's consistently best actors really pulls the film together.
 

The scene that usually stands out for a viewer is Spence's attendance at a William S Hart western with his son.  Spense has been convinced that movies are an unsavory force in the world.  As Spense watches the film he begins to enjoy it and eventually changes his opinion.  But the the film really has many fine scenes overall.

 

The film's ending is quite moving, if the Christian religion had more ministers like William Spense...

The running time is 108 minutes.  Again, a very good film.

1941 - I WAKE UP SCREAMING, an early Fox film noir.

This early film noir from 20th Century Fox is a fairly modest production with good noir photography from Edward Cronjager.  One of Fox's contract director H. Bruce Humberstone did a decent job putting the film together, but the film seems more like an excuse to show off three of the studio's stars. 

Victor Mature who was considered a piece of studio beefcake is a sports agent trying to make a star out of Carole Landis another performer probably more known for him body then her acting.  Also along for the ride is Betty Grable who would be one of Fox's biggest stars during World War II.  The film has a gratuitous scene where Mature and Gable go for a midnight swim a fairly obvious bit to get these two into swimsuits.

The film is essentially about Landis being murdered and Mature becoming the patsy of creepy cop Laird Cregar who is trying to set him up for the crime. There's lots of sneaking around and police interrogations with that good old 40's cliche the bright light pointed at the person being interrogated in order to sweat a confession out of them.

 

The film is for the most part good mystery type entertainment and has that excellent production polish that a major studio could bring to a film like this.

 The film runs a quick 82 minutes and was written by Dwight Taylor and Steve Fisher.

1941 - A YANK IN THE R.A.F., a well made studio WWII propaganda film.

20th Century Fox and all the other Hollywood studios for that matter released lots of World War 2 propaganda films to rally the American public in the fight against fascism and what the heck make a few dollars as well.

A Yank In The R.A.F. is a pretty good example of this type of film.  Fox had two of their biggest stars Tyrone Power and Betty Grable as the romantic leads and Henry King one of their best studio directors sheparding this stuff.

The film is basically a romantic triangle with Betty torn between the upstanding British Officer in love with her and the bad boy American flyer played by Power,  who she is obviously attracted to. Throw in a little shoot em up airplane action and lots of romantic fluff with two attractive stars and how could you miss with this film.

 

Tyrone Power to his credit does try to make his character interesting.  Betty Grable is Betty Grable.  In a film with Betty Grable it's all about her famous legs, so the audience is treated to several musical numbers where she performs in a nightclub while volunteering in the Women's Auxiliary Air Force by day.

 

Anyway, the film is entertaining and runs 98 minutes.  It was written by Karl Tunberg and Darryl Ware, but it has all the imprints of the producer Daryl F. Zanuck all over it. 

1941 - I WANTED WINGS, Army Air Force film with a ridiculous plot.

This film was made as a tribute to the Army Air Corps and shows what is involved in training men to become pilots for the upcoming war.  This film also has one of the most ridiculous soap operatic plots that takes any sincerity the film is trying to promote and crashes it into the ground not unlike some of the pilots during their training.

Ray Milland is the rich kid trying to prove himself by enlisting in the Air Corps.  William Holden looking very young is the grease monkey mechanic hoping to better his social standing.  Veronica Lake is the bad girl they both get involved with.  The plot has Lake attempting to ruin the career of Milland if he doesn't marry her.  To keep Milland out of trouble Holden marries her instead which leads to all sorts of complications.  It ends up with Lake stowing away on Milland's bomber during a training mission in a very ridiculous climax.

As a film production I Wanted Wings looks great.  The special effects, photography and for the most part the acting aren't bad.  But man oh man what a ridiculous story line.  Veronica Lake as the bad girl is hot and this ridiculous part made her a box office star for a brief period during the 1940's.

Needless to say a film as dumb as this made a lot of money.  Never under estimate the movie going public. 

135 minutes, amazingly three screenwriters were involved with this, Sig Herzig, Beirne Lay Jr. and future James Bond screenwriter Richard Maibaum.

1941 - CONFIRM OR DENY, a good 40's war drama

40's star Don Ameche is the editor of a news wire service sort of based on the Associated Press or United Press International.  Joan Bennett is the teletype operator in the office.  Ameche is the brash American looking for a scoop at any price, Bennett is the more reserved British citizen trying to keep Ameche from revealing to much about England's war efforts for the sake of a good story.

This 20th Century Fox film made during World War II was a surprise to me.  It's very entertaining and moves along at a fast pace.  Don Ameche was always sort of a lightweight leading man for Fox but here he's pretty good playing a variation on the Walter Burns character from The Front Page.

It's almost refreshing to see a film that doesn't have a torrid office romance going on between Ameche and Bennett.  The film stays focused on the story and the background of the London Blitz.  Frankly all this lovey dovey stuff always seems out of place in these war movies when people are supposedly fighting for their lives.

Confirm or Deny was actually started by Fritz Lang who directed it for a couple of weeks before he either got sick or quit the film.  Archie Mayo a decent studio director finished the film.  A very entertaining film.

74 minutes, written by Joseph Swerling.

1941 - DIVE BOMBER, is a tribute to the Navy flight surgeon and actually a good movie

Dive Bomber is a highly entertaining war film that came out before World War 2.  It was written by "Spig" Wead who John Wayne played in The Wings of Eagles.  Erroll Flynn is the flight surgeon attempting to solve all the fighter pilot problems of blackouts and you name it.  Fred MacMurray is one of the Navy's top pilots who doesn't like Flynn and can't see the value in his research.  Of course MacMurray comes to see the light as a true Navy bromance is born.

This film was directed by Michael Curtiz and photographed in stunning technicolor by Bert Glennon and Winton Hoch who both worked with John Ford.  The film looks great.  The flying sequences are particularly vivid.

A fairly impressive achievement considering the subject matter and the technical challenges of shooting with the gigantic technicolor camera during the early 1940's.  The film is also very entertaining.

Written by Frank "Spig" Wead and Robert Buckner, the running time is 133 minutes.

1941 - MANHUNT, Fritz Lang's pre World War II spy thriller.

An English hunter on a "sporting stalk," decides to make Hitler his target.

After two indifferent but fun westerns of all things, Fritz Lang was lucky enough to direct this espionage thriller with a pretty good screenplay from Dudley Nichols.

Probably the World War II propaganda aspects and some of the portrayals of the British as shall we say stereotypical Englishmen date the film, but this spy stuff is a film genre that Fritz Lang practically invented on his own.
 

All of Fritz Lang's trademarks are here, shadows, fog, a secretive spy network, a larger than life hero and the beginning of Lang's infatuation with the actor Joan Bennett who he used in several films.  If the film was kind of a bunch of cinematic cliches even in 1941, Lang really knew how to use those cliches. 

Since the United States was officially a neutral country for most of 1941, Lang was forced to make a number of changes in the finished film, playing down the Nazi torture scenes and the bad Nazis. In spite of those compromises this seventy year old film has a number of pretty good scenes.

The ending of Manhunt is still pretty effective.

105 minutes.

1941 - THE WOLF MAN, classic Universal horror film is pretty lame

The Wolf Man probably has a higher reputation than it deserves.  This is mostly bargain basement Universal horror movie stuff with a better cast than usual which really doesn't help the case.

Pretty standard stuff, Lon Chaney Jr. is bitten by Bela Lugosi playing a gypsy with a werewolf curse who naturally turns into a werewolf himself.  A lot of time is spent with psychological explanations of Chaney's conditions but all the kids in the theater knew he really was under a curse, blah, blah, blah. blah.

Pretty indifferently made, the direction by George Waggner is strictly by the numbers almost TV style direction.  This isn't surprising considering Waggner finished his career directing lots of TV shows.  The cast does what but they can but it's pretty much a going through the motions kind of film.

The film has a nice foggy atmosphere since it was shot on nice foggy sets with the nice fog making machine they always liked to use at Universal for these things.

71 minutes.

1941 - CITIZEN KANE, some random thoughts.

A few random thoughts about Citizen Kane.

Obviously the most noticeable aspect of the film is the photography of Greg Toland.  Toland used a process called deep focus or as he called it "fixed focus."  Toland kept the f stop of the camera down allowing him to keep everything in focus. This really overly simplifies Toland's contribution to the film.  The photography in Citizen Kane hasn't dated one bit in 70 years and can certainly match anything being done today.

Orson Welles made his name in radio drama, he understood how to use sound to tell a story.  The sound recording and the use of sound and dialog as transitions between scenes is almost as important as the photography.  The creative use of sound as an editing tool still seems unparalleled in film.

Bernard Herrmann's first score for films was also trendsetting.  Herrmann had gotten his start in radio drama so he understood when and when not to use underscoring to develop the drama.  Herrmann primarily used the leitmotif approach in Kane,  small musical phrases mostly played between scenes.  No smothering the film in syrupy music like Max Steiner or Herbert Stothart.

Welles directs and rehearses himself in the musical number

Finally there is Orson Welles.  A man who was possessed of a tremendous ego to put it mildly.  Charleton Heston considered him one of the few geniuses he had ever worked with but also commented on the strange streak of self destructive behavior that he possessed.  It was as if Welles couldn't or wouldn't control himself.  He antagonized the head of almost every Hollywood studio,  the same people who would have to finance his films.

Welles was born to make films and if Welles felt that he "started at the top and worked himself down" he still made some very interesting pictures during his life. 

I had to do it.

In 1971, the critic Pauline Kael attempted to shift a lot of the credit for Citizen Kane to the co-writer Herman J. Mankiewicz.  Mankiewicz was a screenwriter who was usually involved with light comedies and was probably responsible for a lot of the clever and amusing lines in Citizen Kane.

Kael provoked a mini critic war between herself and some of Welles's biggest supporters.

Looking back now it's difficult to see how Kael could have come to the conclusion that an alcoholic screenwriter like Mankiewicz deserved much of the credit for Citizen Kane.  It was almost like she hadn't ever seen an Orson Welles film.

119 still dazzling and impressive minutes.

1941 - WESTERN UNION, a Fritz Lang Western?

If you are looking for signs of the personality of the great German director Fritz Lang, better keep looking.  Lang was an auteur in the purest sense of the word, but this was strictly a studio project all the way.  

Fritz Lang was always a difficult person to deal with.  He had an explosive Teutonic temperament and Hollywood tended to steer away from him like he was a plague carrier.  Lang attempted to show he could be a team player, so he signed a 3 picture deal with 20th Century Fox and tried to behave himself.

For whatever reason, Daryl F. Zanuck assigned Fritz Lang, one of the acknowledged masters of noir and suspense films and a man who practically invented modern science fictions films with Metropolis and Woman On The Moon, to make a film about the building of the Western Union telegraph service across the American west. 

If Western Union doesn't look or feel like "ein Fritz Lang film," it's still a very enjoyable and fast paced film coming in at around 90 minutes.  Western Union was filmed on location in the painted desert in early 1940's technicolor which gives it an interesting if slightly unreal look to it. 


The film has the benefit of being a very classy studio production.  There is an exciting forest fire sequence towards the end of the film and an equally exciting shoot out in a barber shop of all places.  The film also has an interesting plot twist involving the hero and the villain.

A highly professional and enjoyable film.

90 minutes, written by Robert Carlson.

1941 - HELLZAPOPPIN features the comedy team of Olson and Johnson whoever they are.

A zany anything goes comedy from a very successful Broadway show of the 1940's. Hellzapoppin was apparently a comedy revue that was almost surrealistic on stage.

 

Universal bought the rights and then proceeded to stick a story on in because they were obviously very nervous about the out of control aspect of the play. Still it appears that a lot of the original nature of the play did make it onto the screen, and it's still some pretty nutty stuff. It has a Citizen Kane joke, for god sakes. and the opening number set in Hell is pretty weird.

  

The stupid love story that the studio stuck onto the film slows the action down, but things pick up towards the end, with an all out anarchistic assault on Broadway and film musical numbers. Mel Brooks obviously got a lot of his ideas from this film. Frankenstein's monster watching in the audience gets things back on track when things get really out of control. Towards the end of the film the stars Ole Olson and Chic Johnson take their curtain call riding pigs.

 

Hellzapopin is proof that even in the 1940's during the rah rah war years, when "truth, justice and the American way" was the clarion call, satire was alive and kicking somewhere.

84 minutes, written by Nat Perrin,  Warren Wilson and Alex Gottlieb.