PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

London Entertains 1951

London Entertains 1951 Written by Jimmy Grafton and directed by E J Fancey.

Some gals set up an agency called At Your Service after graduating from a Swiss finishing school. Hire them and they'll show you around London and the sites of the Festival of Britain for 1951. You'll also get some entertainment with your tour. The gals get some help from BBC radio presenter Eamonn Andrews. Looking for places to take their customers the gals see variety shows at the Windmill Theatre and Grafton's public house. The later place is owned by film writer Jimmy Grafton. The movie is a mix of travelogue and comedy with musical numbers. There's even a Busby Berkeley sort of number. We meet some singers and comedians. There's even a sketch by The Goons who were known as Crazy People then. The gals in the agency were played by members of the Eastbourne Girls Choir. It's fairly entertaining, despite all the songs, but it's only about average.

Friday Night Movies 862

It Happened Tomorrow 1944 Based on the one act play The Jest Of Haha Laba by Lord Dunsany, unproduced screenplay by Hugh Wedlock and Howard Snyder, ideas by Lewis R Foster, screenplay by Dudley Nichols and René Clair with additional dialogue by Helene Frainkel, directed by René Clair.

Dick Powell plays the obit writer on a newspaper who wants to be a reporter. The man who runs the newspaper's archives gives Dick a newspaper from the next day and that really changes his life, giving him the chance to write a big story. The story gets him in lots of trouble. Linda Darnell plays a medium in a vaudeville show, Jack Oakie is her father and the star of the act. Both of them get pulled into Dick's life.

A second and third news paper complicate Dick's life even more. There's plenty of running about and yelling with some entertaining jokes and characters. Edgar Kennedy, Edward Brophy, Sig Ruman and Paul Guilfoyle were some of the cast that I knew. I hadn't heard of the film before and was glad to have seen it. I downloaded a copy from YouTube, see link above, as I know I'll want to watch it again sometime. There's is a DVD and Blu-ray available for those that want it.

Buccaneer's Girl 1950 Story by Joe May and Samuel R Golding, screenplay by Joseph Hoffman and Harold Shumate, directed by Frederick de Cordova. Fred was Johnny Carson's producer on The Tonight Show from 1970 to 1992.

Yvonne De Carlo plays a singer who gets captured by the pirate Fredric Baptiste. She escapes the ship when it docks at New Orleans and gets a job at Eliza Lanchester's school for young ladies. On an assignment she finds out that the pirate is really Captain Kingston. He's been acting the pirate to sink the ships of a rich man and selling the cargo to fund ships for others.

It's more a romantic comedy musical than a lady pirate movie. We couldn't remember anyone being killed in any of the fights. It's still fairly pleasant and the baddies get theirs in the end. I didn't care much for the songs but enjoyed the rest of the film. There's a nice Blu-ray out from Kino Lorber. I picked it up during one of their sales. I'll probably watch it again someday.

Showtime USA Volume 4

Kentucky Jubilee 1951 Screenplay by director Ron Ormond and Maurice Tombragel. A movie director is in Kentucky looking for talent for a hillbilly movie. He gets kidnapped by the local crooked showman who handles crap acts from Florida's swamps. A Hollywood reporter helps get him out of trouble. Jerry Calonna is the emcee and a kidnap victim. Nothing too exciting, below average  but a bit better than the picture below. This is the last of the Showtime USA series. There wasn't that much that stands out from the lot. I'll be somewhat hard pressed to want to watch them all again.

The Kid From Gower Gulch 1950 Story by Bob Gilbert, screenplay by Elmer Clifton (writing under the name Elmer Pond), direction by Oliver Drake. Spade Cooley is back singing some cowboy songs. Spade gets involved with a local rodeo, he bets his ranch will win, one of his men goes over to the other ranch. There's too much singing and Spade's not much of a singer. The movie isn't much either. Below average.

Showtime USA Volume 3

Hollywood Varieties 1950 Directed by Paul Landres. Robert Alda hosts a bunch of musical and variety acts. All the acts are pretty average, not all of them would get on The Ed Sullivan Show, but it was fun enough.

Holiday Rhythm 1950 Written by Lee Wainer and directed by Jack Scholl. An executive accidentally knocks himself out and dreams the variety show he wants to put on. I didn't see many names in the cast that I recognized, Tex Ritter, Sid Melton and Peter Marshall. There's music, dance and comedy but they're all about average.

Both of these movies were more entertaining than any of the four films on the previous two sets.

The Good Companions 1957

The Good Companions is a 1957 British musical comedy based on the 1929 novel by JB Priestly. It's been made into numerous stage and radio plays, films and TV programs since 1931. The 1957 film has a screenplay by TJ Morrison, additional dialog from John Whiting and JL Hudson, with J Lee Thompson directing.

The Dinky Doos are a musical road company fallen on hard times. Hardly anyone comes to see their shows anymore. Lucky for them, a rich lonely lady comes to their rescue. Things are rocky for a while but a star emerges and makes good.

There's a good cast in Eric Portman, Celia Johnson, Hugh Griffith, Janette Scott, John Frazer, and several more I didn't know. It's a mix of drama and music with a bit of comedy. I didn't care that much for the music but I got through with the help of the speed control. Could have been a lot worse.

Let's Be Happy 1957

Vera-Ellen stars in Let's Be Happy, it came out in 1957 and it was her 14th and last picture. I've seen her in the Red Skelton picture Three Little Word and Love Happy with the Marx Brothers, I might have seen her in On The Town with Frank Sinatra and Gene Kelly but I can't remember if I've seen it.

Let's Be Happy is based on a play called Jeannie by Aimée Stuart, the screenplay was by Diana Morgan and Dorothy Cooper with Frederic Gotfurt as scenario supervisor, Henry Levin is the director. Henry directed some interesting films, his first picture was Cry Of The Werewolf for Columbia in 1944. I don't recognize much of his work through the 40s and 50s but I have seen a few of his later films: The Ambushers, Murders' Row, Come Fly With Me, The Wonderful World Of The Brothers Grimm, The Wonders Of Aladdin and Where The Boys Are.

There's plenty of singing and dancing with some comedy and romance. Pretty standard stuff. Vera-Ellen is a young woman who inherits just under 5 grand. She takes it and blows it on a trip to Paris and London. She meets up with an American business man played by Tony Martin and and English Lord played by Robert Flemying. It's more charming than humorous and I found I wasn't too keen on the musical numbers. I have it, it's part of The British Film series from Network, so I might watch it again. I bet I'd be fast forwarding through those songs.

Showtime USA Volume 2

Showtime USA Volume 2 has two musical movies. It's part of 4 volume set. I'm not a big musical fan for the most part but these low budget films are sort of interesting. They come from Kit Parker, who has other DVDs, like the Forgotten Noir series I had just watched.

Yes Sir, Mr Bones is a 1951 musical that looks back at the Minstrel Show. Ron Ormond is the producer, writer and director. He was mostly a producer, he produced the other film on this disc. I didn't recognize any of the other 24 films he directed but one, Mesa Of Lost Women, not something to recommend a guy for, that's for sure.

There's not much of a story, a kid looks in the window of a retirement home and gets invited in, the old men tell him about their singing and dancing which we see as flashbacks. There's a big variety of acts, mostly it's singing and dancing but there are comedians. There's plenty of black face on white man but there are also a lot of black performers.

In fact, it's Scatman Crothers first film, he does a comedy bit with another man where one man starts a sentence but never finishes it, the other man answers like he knew what the other man was saying. The same gag, with different dialog, was used by Mantan Moreland and Ben Carter in the 1945 Charlie Chan film The Scarlet Clue. Here's a bit of the gag from TSC.

Birmingham Brown, Chauffeur: Well, if it ain't, uh...

Ben Carter: Ben Carter's my name.

Birmingham: Benjamin Carter! Yeah! Boy, it's been a long time. I haven't seen you since...

Ben: Longer than that.

Birmingham: Yeah?

Ben: The last time I saw you, you was living over...

Birmingham: Oh, I moved from there.

Ben: Yeah?

Birmingham: Sure. I moved over to, uh...

Ben: How can you live in that neighborhood?

Birmingham: I don't know.

Ben: Now where I'm living, I only pay...

Birmingham: It ain't THAT cheep, is it?

Ben: Sure it is.

Birmingham: Hey, looky here.

Ben: What?

Birmingham: Is you still married...

Ben: No, I divorced her.

Birmingham: Yeah?

Back in Yes Sir, Mr Bones the boy's mother comes along and takes him home. I enjoyed some of the acts but some weren't too good. Some are rather cringeworthy but I expected that. There was a really good whistling act. It's a pretty short movie, only an hour, so it was over quickly. There's an interesting commentary by Richard Roberts, Brent Walker and Randy Sketvedt. I didn't know much of anything about the history of that sort of entertainment and they fill in a lot of detail about the performers. They mention that Mantan inherited the routine from another performer and did it onstage before doing it in The Scarlet Clue.

I wound up enjoying Square Dance Jubilee better than the first movie. It came out in 1949 and it's a musical with a typical Western story. It's produced by Ron Ormond who co-wrote the screenplay with Daniel B Ullman. William L Nolte is credited with the story. Paul Landres is the director. Paul directed all sorts of TV in the 50s and 60s, working on all the popular shows.

Don "Red" Barry and Wally Vernon are talent scouts for a New York TV show. They travel to the West to find some new acts. They get mixed up in a cattle rustling plot. There's more music than most of the Westerns that have a musical component. Like a film with Roy Rogers or Gene Autrey. I thought it was about average. I'd watch it again. I enjoyed the commentary with Richard Roberts, Brent Walker and Randy Sketvedt. They have a lot of detail.

Showtime USA Volume 1

Showtime USA is the title of a series of DVD double features from VCI. There are 4 volumes and each DVD has 2 musical films from the 1940s and 1950s. The acts are varied though they might follow a theme. Volume 1 has a Western themed movie, the other movie is is more generic, much like you'd imagine vaudeville would be like. Other volumes, and I've got the lot, feature a minstrel show, plenty of western music, some international bits, another variety show and a square dance.

Everybody's Dancin' 1950 Western Swing musician Space Cooley made the film and Robert L Lippert released the film. Spade and A Robert Nunes wrote the original story and Dorothy Raison wrote the screenplay. It was the second film Cooney and Lippert made together and it's also known as Western Varieties. In 1961 Spade was sentenced to life in prison for the brutal murder of his second wife. He only served 7 years before the parole board scheduled him to be released in 1970. Not much of sentence for beating your wife to death in front of your kid, the times, I guess. Spade wasn't to get his parole, he was furloughed for a benefit concert for the Deputy Sheriffs Association of Alameda County, he suffered a fatal heart attack after preforming.

Richard Lane is a layabout who tries to help set up a big show in the failing Waltzland Ballroom. Spade's dad had worked there in the old days and he's a friend of the owner, Mary Berne played by Barbara Woodell. Richard has no money so he tricks people into working for free. It all works out in the end and he doesn't go to jail. There's music and celebrity guests. Lyle Talbot is a contractor, Sid Melton is an agent, Sons of the Pioneers play themselves, so do Roddy McDowall, Adele Jergens, James Ellison and Russell Hayden. There's plenty of music and it's pretty ordinary stuff. It wouldn't make me want to see the movie again, neither would the story. I only gave it a 4.

Varieties On Parade 1951 The IMDb gives Ron Ormond the directing credit but lists no writers. There isn't really any story here, the movies is only 54 minutes long. Jackie Coogan, Eddie Garr, Tom Neal, Eddie Dean, Iris Adrian and Lyle Talbot plays themselves and they provide the hosting and comedy parts of the program. There's a big parade of acts, juggles, cyclists, acrobats, musicians and singers, dancers, a dog act, and a lady with a pantomime horse. I enjoyed it better than the other movie, the acts were a bit more entertaining. It kind of reminded me of the old Ed Sullivan show. Not sorry to see the movies, wish they were better. Mind you, you cna't expect much from this low end sort of product.

Tom Thumb 1958

I hadn't seen the 1958 Tom Thumb musical since the 1980s. I had a memory of enjoying it but this time I was really didn't care for it at all. I didn't like the characters much and I sure didn't care for the songs. The dancing was OK but I don't watch movies for dancing. It's produced and directed by George Pal and the screenplay was written by Ladislas Fodor. I wouldn't want to see it again. Glad I got it from the library.