1959 - THE HANGING TREE, a western late in the career of Gary Cooper

Produced by Gary Cooper's production company and directed by the very underrated  Delmar Daves, The Hanging Tree is one of those "adult" westerns that were popular in the late 1950's and early 60's.

 Veteran cowboy actor Gary Cooper is a frontier doctor with a mysterious past.  He sets up practice in a boom town where all the citizens appear to have gold fever.  The film is essentially a character study masquerading as a western.  The interactions between Cooper's doctor character, Cooper's servant and a Swiss immigrant played by European actress Marie Schell are the emotional center of the story.

The film also has an impressive supporting cast with Karl Malden as a crooked prospector and George C. Scott in his first appearance as a faith healer.  Ted McCord was the cinematographer, the film has excellent photography on magnificent locations in the state of Washington.

 

The film was written by Wendell Mayes and Halsted Welles, the running time is 107 minutes.

1944 - HOLLYWOOD CANTEEN, Hollywood pats themselves on their collective backs

The Hollywood Canteen was an entertainment center started by Bette Davis and John Garfield to entertain servicemen either shipping out for combat or returning from combat.  Never an industry to pass up a chance to make themselves look good, Warner Brothers produced this butt kissing salute to how wonderful they were.

The film is loaded with lots and lots of 40's star mostly and unsurprisingly from the Warner Brothers studio.   There is actually a sort of plot to this film.  A soldier recovering from war wounds wants to meet his crush Joan Leslie.  This is an excuse for the soldier to run into a lot of stars.  Look it's Peter Lorre, Sidney Greenstreet, Jane Wyatt, Eddie Cantor, Joe E Brown, you get the picture lots of actors that no one remembers today.

The film has a lot of musical numbers and little comedy bits from the stars.  It's harmless stuff, kind of boring and extremely dated.  In 1944, people watching this film could take comfort that "the stars" were ordinary people just like you and me.

Hollywood Canteen is over two hours but seems a lot longer.  Some of the musical numbers aren't too bad but the flag waving looks mighty corny these days.  Oh and the soldier "Slim" does get to go out on a date with Joan Leslie, God Bless America.

124 minutes, the director Delmar Daves also wrote the screenplay.

1943 - DESTINATION TOKYO, 40's war film is way too long

During World War II a U.S. navy submarine improbably sneaks into Tokyo Bay to radio information back to the Doolittle raid pilots for the first raid on Tokyo.

This is a war film that is over two hours long and is full of propaganda and talk, lots of talk.  Cary Grant is probably the handsomest submarine captain in the history of the Silent Service and the crew is the usual cross section of good old American stereotypes.  In other words this is a typical 40's propaganda piece with not one cliche left unused.

The film was written and directed by first time director Delmar Daves, who went on to have a good career directing westerns however Destination Tokyo is not a western.

Warner Brothers must have been pretty high on the script.  Cary Grant was one of the few freelance actors in Hollywood during the 40's so there was nothing cheap about his salary.  The film has high production values although the submarine sets are so big it looks like the crew is on some sort of underwater Carnival Cruise liner.

On the plus side, the sea battles are pretty decent, with cool models and miniatures zipping around in a studio tank.  Cary Grant gives a good restrained performance although he's still Cary Grant in a sailor suit. 

Still the propaganda aspects of the story and the long running time make Destination Tokyo mighty slow going.

135 minutes.

1962 - ROME ADVENTURE, on location love story has the scenic wonders of Troy Donahue's hair

Troy Donahue has awesome hair in Rome Adventure.

Troy's hair, with the assist of a lot of styling gel, whips around on his head in about 3 different ways, It  goes over his head at the top and in the back he's got it perfectly  coiffed coming down behind his head.  Then he's got this side hair thing going which kind of intersects with the other 2 waves of his hair head.  He is also very blonde. 

Angie Dickinson unfortunately made poor hair choices for this film. Angie's hair is really odd looking, it's pulled way back in a beehive thing throughout the film so it looks like she has a really large forehead kind of like that creature from This Island Earth. 

Suzanne Pleshette can't really compete with these 2 hair hogs but she gives it a decent try.  She sticks a ribbon in her hair and some curly thing a ma gigs that she twists around.  Unfortunately she's just not in the ballgame.

It's just hard for the ladies in this film to compete with Troy

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