Last night's movie was "Lost Honeymoon"(1947) a wild n' crazy bigamy/amnesia mashup starring Franchot Tone as "John Gray", a successful architect engaged to "Lois Evans" (Frances Rafferty), his bosses' daughter. Gray's just designed a new, modern-looking library, he's about to tie the knot, everything is coming up roses, or so it seems. But then he gets a telegram from a woman in England who claims to be his wife. Holy Drunken Night in the Pub, Batman! He was in London as a soldier during WW2, but he has no memory of any woman, much less one he married. Worse, she says in the telegram she's got two children he fathered. The telegram is delivered with his fiance Lois in the room. She watches Gray cringe while reading it, and naturally wants to know what's up.
The Englishwoman (Ann Richards) ends the telegram by saying that she's on her way to New York with the children. "Here's hoping you'll be glad to meet them". Gray's life just went from a 10 to a Zero. A wife and kids in England? He's certain it's gotta be a mistake. The woman must have the wrong John Gray. There's gotta be a hundred of 'em in his borough alone, maybe a thousand in all of New York City. He's sure she's got the wrong man, so he goes to see his doctor to ask about his amnesia, which he's been keeping a secret ever since the war. He kept it to himself because when he returned from overseas he was given a hero's welcome for his battlefield exploits, a tribute he accepted. But he wasn't a hero; the accolades were meant for another John Gray. The old Common Name Mixup again. He confesses to his doctor (Tom Conway) that he wasn't the war hero John Gray, but actually spent the war in London, where he was knocked unconscious by a bomb during the blitz and woke up in the hospital with amnesia. He couldn't remember six weeks of his life. "Now, there's a woman who says I married her during those six weeks and fathered her children. How is this possible, doctor?"
Holy Smokerino and Paul Shortino! What's Mr. Gray to do? The doc suggests he confront the problem head on by meeting with the woman. "Tell her what you just told me, that you were in the hospital during that time." So he meets her at her hotel and lays out his schpiel, but she has corroborating evidence in the form of love letters that are in his handwriting. The doc tries to help by inviting Richards and the kids to a dinner where Gray is being feted for his new library design. Once there, she's treated as a practical joker, a "surprise guest" like at a celebrity roast. "And here's the wife John never told us about", haw-haw-haw. The kids are seen as "plants", brats hired from a talent agency, and Gray tries to write the whole thing off as a joke. But his boss, and future father in law, isn't amused. He storms off with daughter Lois, and tells Gray to look for a new job.
By now, he's exasperated with Richards, and goes back to her hotel again to confront her about the supposed marriage. She explains in detail what happened during those six weeks in London during the war, how they met and married quickly. Then she got pregnant right before he shipped home to America. It was a case of Anglo/American wartime romance; there was probably a lot of Amer/Engiish kids from that era, just like the Amerasian children from Vietnam. As Richards tells him about their romance and subsequent marriage he still has trouble believing it, but her story is detailed, and more than that, he finds himself falling in love with her.
Now his boss and Lois are really teed off. She was all set to marry Gray and now he's ditching her for some Brit bird. But then the immigration officials step in, along with the Red Cross, and would you believe it Mr. Screenwriter? Ann Richards is busted for impersonating the real Mrs. Gray, whose name was Tillie. Now, don't think I was holding out on you, but we've known this since the beginning of the movie. The real Tillie Gray died of typhoid, shortly after giving birth. Ann Richards is really a schoolteacher friend of her mother's, who volunteered to go to America to search for John Gray. Now she's gonna be deported and the kids sent to a Red Cross center to be adopted. Suddenly, Gray's wedding to Lois Evans is back on. Is your brain turned around backwards yet? If not it soon will be, because by now, Gray realises that he's in love with Ann, not Lois, and the only way to get out of his upcoming nuptials is to get amnesia again. So, he runs headfirst into a lamppost, and when he wakes up in the hospital, he doesn't remember who Lois is.
Now his boss and and would-be father in law is ready to murdalize him, and Lois is left standing at the altar while Ann Richards marries Gray in the amnesia ward. This movie gets exponentially nuttier as it goes along, which is why we're giving it Two Huge Thumbs Up. It also doesn't hurt that Frances Rafferty prances around in a curvy wedding dress. "Lost Honeymoon" is highly recommended and the picture is very good. ////
The previous night, we found another Zasu Pitts comedy, though she's relegated to a supporting role and is subdued compared to the other films we've seen her in, but its really Slim Summerville's movie, which shouldn't be surprising considering it's called "Uncle Joe"(1941). Slim worked with Zasu before in "Miss Polly", and as in that movie, he's once again an inventor of wacky, Rube Goldberg contraptions. This time he's got an automatic dishwasher that fills up his kitchen with suds.
Zasu is (guess what?) a dreamy-headed spinster who was once Joe's girl when they were young, but the way she remembers it, "he knew more about appliances than he did about women." Joe is part country bumpkin, part science nerd, but he's nice, and when his relatives the Days send his niece Clare Day (Gale Storm) to stay with him, he agrees to take her in.
And really, it's Gale's movie even more than Slim's. When it starts, she's posing as a model for "Paul Darcey" (John Holland) an abstract painter. It's 1941, so Modern Art is all the rage in New York, where she lives with her wealthy parents. She's swathed in silk for Darcey's portrait, but the finished work is just a bunch of shapes and swirls. "I've captured your inner soul!" he declares. but when she takes the painting home and shows it to her folks, they don't agree. To get her away from Darcey, they send her out to to stay with Uncle Joe at his farm where she'll get some good old country influence.
When she arrives, four local boys find out she's visiting. They haven't seen Clare since she was a Skinny Kiddo, and she remembers the horrible nicknames they had for her, like Spindle Shanks. But now she's Gale Storm, a bona-fide All-American Sweeheart, so suddenly all the boys, teenagers now themselves, wanna hang around Uncle Joe's house, so he lets 'em, by giving them barnyard chores to do! Then he gives in, because he knows they're there to see Clare, but she has now found out that Uncle Joe's old flame "Aunt Julia" (Zasu Pitts) is gonna lose her house cause she can't pay her mortgage. To help her, Clare and the boys enter a radio contest, sponsored by a soap company, in which contestants have to finish the last line of an advertising limerick (no, not that kind of a limerick; it's about dish soap!). They brainstorm at Uncle Joe's dinner table to try and win the contest, so they can give the 1000 dollar prize money to Aunt Julia and save her house. During all of this, Paul Darcey the abstract painter "just so happens" to be visiting the countryside. He picks up Clare and takes her on a drive, to the chagrin of the local boys who very much like her. But Darcey turns out to be a citified, intellectual snob, who thinks country folk are rubes, and because Clare likes her new surroundings, he leaves and the boys win. But they aren't good limerick writers, so its up to Uncle Joe to win the contest. He comes up with a line that wins the prize and gives the money to Aunt Julia, who's been carrying a torch for Uncle Joe all this time. They get married and presumably live happily ever after, while the boys return to competing for Clare Day. 10 minutes of the 50 minute movie is given to musical performances, one by Gale Storm accompanying herself on accordion. A real-life singer named Honey Lamb sings "The Land of Nod" on the radio, and a third song is performed by an Andrews Sisters-type harmony group who were fantastic but went unlisted in the credits. As for Zasu, she's as good as always but has minimal screen time, so the Two Big Thumbs are mainly for Gale Storm, Slim Summerville, and the actors playing the boys, and the various extra singers. If we love 60 minute movies, we love fifty minuters even more! "Uncle Joe" is highly recommended and the picture is very good. ////
And that's all I've got for tonight. I'm listening to a Porcupine Tree mix on Youtube ("Drown With Me" is on right now), my late-night is "Parsifal" by Wagner, and I hope your day was a good one. I send you Tons of Love, as always. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
No comments:
Post a Comment