Last night, another movie from the Deanna Durbin Sweetheart Collection : "Something in the Wind"(1947), in which DD plots revenge on a wealthy family over a secret. Durbin plays radio host Mary Collins. One day, a handsome, formal young man named John Read (John Dall) shows up at her studio, demanding she sign some affidavit. She has no idea what he's talking about. "Now see here, Miss Collins", he begins, ".....you are Mary Collins, are you not?....I have here a stack of returned checks, made out to you by my late grandfather. We know he was paying you to keep quiet about your - ahem - involvement with him, but he's dead now and my family is discontinuing your stipend. If you'll please sign here, we're prepared to offer you a generous settlement, provided you drop the matter entirely".
We gather that Dall's filthy rich grandpa was having an affair with DD, but that's not the case. You see, she has an Aunt also named Mary Collins. She tries explaining this to Dall and he bats it right back: "Oh no, don't try pinning this on your auntie. Grandpa liked young beauties such as yourself. You are exactly his type, but it's over now. I'd advise you to accept our offer and go away".
Well, DD is so mad that she storms off, leaving the papers unsigned. Back at the apartment she shares with her Aunt, she tells the older lady what's just happened. Aunt Mary is quiet for a moment, then confirms it's all true. "I am the one they're looking for, but the family doesn't know me. Mr. Read kept me a secret from them all these years. You see, beginning when I was 19, I was his housekeeper. One day, we were alone together in the mansion, and.....". She leaves the rest unspoken, but her meaning is clear. Perhaps there was a pregnancy as well, but this is a musical comedy so we aren't going down that route.
What we are gonna do is wind things up, Screwball style, so that plots get hatched, romances become tangled, and - in classic rom/com style - enemies end up in love. But first, Durbin and Dall have gotta hate each other.
When Deanna hears her Aunt's confession, she decides to play along with the Read family's legal demand. She's outraged at their hypocrisy and wants to hit 'em in the only place it'll hurt - their pocketbook. So she goes over to their mansion and tells Dall she's sorry : "I lied to you......I am the Mary Collins you want". Then she asks to sign the papers, but with one revision in the contract. Instead of the five thousand dollar settlement they're offering, she wants one million.
"A million dollars! Now see here, Miss Collins!......". Dall is outraged, but that's the price and DD ain't budging. Now it's time for some intrigue. Despite his overbearing demeanor, John Dall is something of a ladies' man, with a killer smile. His brother Charlie (the great Donald O'Connor) suggests trying another tactic : "Instead of antagonising her, why don't you make her fall in love with you? Then she'll forget all about the money". Dall agrees with Charlie, and for him, the ploy will serve a dual purpose. You see, he's engaged to the lovely but utterly boring "Clarissa" (Helena Carter), a relationship arranged by his mother. Dall wants out of the engagement; setting up a false affair with Durbin will do the trick. It's also a win-win for O'Connor, because he's secretly in love with Clarissa. So there's your lovers' quadrangle. John Dall isn't sure what he's gonna do with Durbin after she falls for him (if she does), but he'll worry about that later. Now to put the plan into action.
The only problem is that there's another Read to deal with : "Uncle Chester". As played by the classic character actor Charles Winninger, Uncle Chester is one of those great, underhanded-but-sweet "crooked older gentleman" characters that often showed up as relatives in comedies of the '30s and '40s. Uncle Chester is a swindler, the black sheep of the Read family. When we first see him, he's hiding in a basket, listening in on Dall's plan to fool Deanna Durbin. He'll later team up with her to foil it, explaining to DD that "if you can't swindle your own family, who can you swindle"?
There's great comic energy at work, and a half dozen musical numbers as well. Durbin is a sensation, singing in several different styles, from operatic to 1940s pop, to bluesy Broadway. In my opinion, she had the greatest voice in Hollywood. Give her a listen and see for yourself. I first heard of Deanna 20 years ago through my Mom, but I never saw any of her movies until last December when we watched "Christmas Holiday". That was a dark film for her, a noir in which she played a femme fatale, but she was very good and also sang a couple of songs. I remembered, "Oh yeah......that's the singer Mom used to talk about". After that movie, I ordered the Sweetheart Collection which begins with her earlier films, mostly featuring DD as a teenager in the "good girl" roles she was best known for, and ironically, it was those roles she wanted to break out of (and was unable to) that finally caused her to walk away from her career at just 27 years old. In 1949 she got married and moved to France, never to be heard from again.
It's one of the most unusual stories in show biz, because as I've remarked, at one point she was the highest paid female star in Hollywood and bigger box office than Shirley Temple. In this movie, she's all grown up ("Something" was one of her final films), and as you watch her, you think that - had she stayed - she'd likely have become a screen legend on the same level as Judy Garland. She has that kind of talent and charisma. She's also drop-dead gorgeous. But because she quit the business, she's been mostly forgotten, and that's a crying shame (though it apparently didn't bother her much). At any rate, make sure to check out some of her movies, she's fantastic. As for John Dall, he might become our new John Agar. He can do the Smarmy Handsome Guy just as good as Agar, and he even adds a backhanded, toothy charm. He's a one-of-a-kind actor (the kind where you instantly go "there's John Dall, oh boy"!), who you may already have seen in the famous noir "Gun Crazy" (partially filmed in Reseda), or in Hitchcock's "Rope", where he played one of the Leopold/Loeb killers. Yep, he smiled all the way through that role, too!
"Something in the Wind" is a "let's entertain 'em" flick featuring major talent from a Studio System that just doesn't exist anymore. I've also gotta mention Donald O'Connor, who we're gonna have do a retrospective on. Though he's only in a supporting role here, he gets enough screen time to perform a couple of amazing dance numbers, involving pratfalls and unthinkable acrobatics. He was in a league of his own as a dancer (he's the guy who ran up the wall in "Singin' in the Rain"), and was also a talented comedian, too. Definitely more to come from him. But the star here is Deanna Durbin, who - after only three films that I've seen - goes straight to the top of my list of Hollywood's Greatest. Two Huge Thumbs Up for this movie. //////
The previous night we watched a Western with a theme of social justice. Am I talking about a new movie, made for Woke America? Or perhaps a film that's 90 years old? If you said the latter, your chicken dinner is waiting. "Cimarron"(1931) is the epic saga of a crusading newspaper publisher and his family. Set in Osage, Oklahoma, it begins at the start of the land rush in 1889 and finishes 40 years later, after the state has been transformed by an oil boom.
Our pal Richard Dix stars as "Yancey Cravat", publisher of the only newspaper in Witchita. He's outspoken, a champion of Indian rights among other causes, which doesn't endear him to his conservative in-laws. Yancey's also restless. He's never stayed in any one place for more than five years. Now he's heard about the Land Rush in Oklahoma and wants to move there. "It's free land", he tells his wife (Irene Dunne). She's a proper lady and doesn't want to leave Kansas for the dirt of unknown territory, but being dutiful she agrees to follow Yancey once he stakes out a claim. With their servant Isaiah in tow, he rides to Oklahoma and prepares to engage in the Rush.
It is there that he meets "Dixie Lee", a single woman who is also in the race. She's more than capable on her own, and beats out Yancey for his piece of land. He has to settle for a less-than-prime plot, but comes to admire Dixie Lee for her independence. Later in the film, Yancey will use his training as a lawyer to defend Dixie from charges leveled by the local church ladies, who think she's a prostitute. These two sequences bookend the film and depict it's social message, which stands for inclusion and equal rights. Along the way, Yancey will stand up to the new town's outlaws, befriend a Jewish merchant, and hire a stutterer as his publishing assistant. When his wife arrives, he'll make her co-editor of the paper. He's a very progressive guy.
He eventually leaves town, to fight in the Spanish-American war, so she takes over the paper and ends up running for Congress. So there's a "women in politics" angle, too. Imagine all of that in a movie from 90 years ago.
I'm leaving out a ton of story, including the oil boom which looms large, but I'll leave you to discover it on your own. "Cimarron" plays like the early sound picture it is, and there are traces of Silent era style in it's production. Dix, for instance, uses exaggerated stage gestures to "play to the back row" as it were, a technique employed in Silent film to substitute for dialogue. He also wears eye liner to highlight his expressions. He's very good in the lead role, however, forthright and spirited as the liberal-minded newspaperman, who also becomes the de facto sheriff and lawyer of Osage, the boomtown resulting from the Land Rush. "Cimarron" won Best Picture in 1931, and though it shows it's age, the story seems brand new. There's also some great camera work in the Land Rush scenes, following the proverbial "cast of thousands" of riders who participate. Based on a book by New York author Edna Ferber, it's worth seeing just for it's historical value, but it's also very well produced and acted, with decades worth of story to digest.
It's the story of one man who gives a damn, and by doing so he helps change the culture of the Old West. Late in the film, his now adult son decides to marry an Indian girl. Yancey has returned by then, and he's fine with it, shocking the townsfolk once again. But by this time, they've started to catch up with him, and even have a fancy French hotel to entice tourists.
Two Big Thumbs Up, then, for "Cimarron", a must-see for Oscar historians, fans of early Westerns, and the Great American Saga. Highly recommended. ////
That's all for the moment. I'm gonna head out to the store for some essentials (avocados, chips, salsa, etc), then for a hike. Tonight I'm gonna listen to the new Blackmore's Night, and I'm still working on my book, "The Ancient Giants Who Ruled America". I hope you have a great afternoon. I send you tons of love as always. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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