Watchingwell 

                                                                              

                                                             Curated classic films

More on Sacrifice

    Looking back, I see that I thought that last December was the right time it to talk about sacrifice – because we were all in that place where we had to forego many parts of a normal life for the common good – the health of the community.

 

     This year I was thinking about sacrifice in a different light, having heard a lot of whining from the folks who are tired of foregoing normal life.  In fact, some have declared that they are done with the whole health-of-the-community thing – and they are declaring it in very unfortunate ways.  This made me think of my parents’ generation and how I was so glad that they fought Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan and we don't have to.  I don’t know – maybe, people today would come through if push came to shove, but let’s remind ourselves of what another generation had to forego and was willing to do for the common good.

 

     Some people, in Europe and Asia, were meeting life-and-death decisions daily and demonstrating how ordinary people act in extraordinary circumstances. American audiences were fed inspiring tales of their suffering and sacrifice to boost public support of the war effort.

A village in an unnamed country, which seems a lot like occupied France, is the setting for a fine drama from 1943 directed by Jean Renoir.  In This Land is Mine, Charles Laughton plays a timid schoolteacher, babied by his mother, played by Una O’Connor, who secretly loves Maureen O’Hara, and endures fear and scorn under the German occupation of his village until he finds courage at the very end.  It is the tale of a quite ordinary man who undergoes a transformation when the situation requires.  Good supporting performances from George Sanders and Kent Smith.

 

Norway is the setting for two films of resistance to Nazi occupiers, both from 1943. The first, Edge of Darkness, is one of Errol Flynn’s best roles as a fisherman who leads his village in action against the invaders.  Directed by Lewis Milestone, and also starring Ann Sheridan as Flynn’s fiancée, with Walter Huston and Ruth Gordon.

The other film deals with resistance in a less violent, but possibly more dangerous form.  Merle Oberon stars as a woman who is hated as a collaborator, but in reality, is getting information from the Germans that she passes on to the Norwegian underground.  The film, First Comes Courage is notable also because it is directed by Dorothy Arzner, the only female director of her time in Hollywood.

Perhaps the best-known film of ordinary people doing the extraordinary in times of war, Mrs. Miniver, from 1942, swept the Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Actress (Greer Garson), Best Actress in a supporting role (Teresa Wright), and best director (William Wyler), as well as Best Cinematography, Black and White, and Best Writing, Screenplay.  It has been said that it is pure propaganda (and Winston Churchill was supposedly in agreement) – one perfect, plucky English family being bombed, participating in the Dunkirk evacuation, capturing a downed German pilot, and losing a family member, and still winning a prize at the garden show – all designed to win support for U.S. aid to Britain, holding out against Germany.  Nevertheless, one can’t help getting caught up – Greer Garson is so convincing – in this family’s story.

Before we leave the subject of Europeans responding to extraordinary times, I would draw your attention to a little film that I saw in the sixties, while not from the Golden Era, is pretty old and I thought it quite inspiring when I saw it. The film, Conspiracy of Hearts from 1960 is the story of a group of nuns in Italy, led by Lili Palmer, and featuring a fine cast, who hide of group of Jewish children from deportation.  It is actually very exciting, directed by Ralph Thomas.

     

      Sometimes, it was necessary to put Americans in Europe to illustrate the dangers of Nazi occupation.

Cary Grant is a reporter in Once Upon a Honeymoon (1942) who tracks down Ginger Rogers, a Burlesque star, who has just married a German ambassador played by Walter Slezak. It seems that bad things happen wherever Slezak goes and Cary wants an interview to find out his Nazi connections.  Directed by Leo McCarey, who can’t resist a few touches of comedy inserted into the dire situation. But even so, when is Cary Grant not worth watching? 

A professor and his new wife are recruited to contact a colleague in Germany while on their honeymoon, a man who has vital information about a German secret weapon. Above Suspicion (1943), adapted from the novel by Helen MacInnes, stars Joan Crawford and Fred MacMurray, with Basil Rathbone and Conrad Veidt playing his usual villain role. Directed by Richard Thorpe.

Note:  Conrad Veidt, pictured above, in between MacMurray and Crawford, recognizable to those familiar with films from the World War II era as the actor most often cast as the Nazi commandant.  His claim to fame before this was starring in the 1920 silent classic, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.  But when the Nazis came to power in Germany, he chose to leave and relocate to England with his wife, and eventually became a British subject.  He was actively anti-Nazi, donating the major portion of his personal fortune to the British government for the war effort, and had it in his contract that he only play Nazis as villains.

Back on the home front, Americans were adapting to shortages of goods and men diverted to the war effort. Women went out to work in factories and tried to manage alone. In Tender Comrades (1942), several women doing war work decide to pool their resources and share a house and housekeeper.  Although the major part of the story is about Ginger Rogers and her romance with new husband, Robert Ryan, who is now fighting overseas, Kim Hunter and Ruth Hussey add different experiences to their little community. Although we can laugh about it now, at the time, it was examined by the thought police of the House Un-American Activities Committee, as a possible endorsement of communism (‘Comrades’ right in the title!) because of the concept of sharing resources and contributing what one is able being so un-American. After hearing this, Ginger Rogers made statements criticizing the picture, even though she turned in a rather good performance. Directed by the very suspect director, Edward Dmytryk.

Housing shortages were most acute in Washington D.C. where the population swelled, directing the war effort.  Jean Arthur thought it was her patriotic duty to sublet a room in her apartment, but hadn’t planned on it being Charles Coburn, or that he would sublet part of his room to Joel McCrea.  So begins the hilarious problems for Jean in The More the Merrier, directed by George Stevens in 1943.  Charles Coburn won an Oscar for actor in a supporting role. One of the great screwball comedies.

Robert Cummings was working in a west coast arms factory in Saboteur, the 1943 Alfred Hitchcock film, when circumstances force him to flee cross-country from a charge of murder. Along the way, he encounters Priscilla Lane, a network of spies, and a plan to do damage to a naval launch, which he decides to foil. Pretty exciting all the way, especially the ending at the Statue of Liberty.

In addition to working in factories, some unlikely sorts become patriotic when they are made to see what is at stake.  Humphrey Bogart stars in All Through the Night from 1942, directed by Vincent Sherman. Bogart is part of a Damon-Runyan-type of New York with a cast of characters who have avoided being bothered by the war. One day, they find German spies are responsible for a murder in their neighborhood and they become involved in uncovering the ring.  A sort of serious approach with touches of comedy from Bogart’s gang:  Frank McHugh, Phil Silvers, William Demarest, and Jackie Gleason, while the menace comes from Peter Lorre and, of course, Conrad Veidt.

Also from 1942, Alan Ladd plays a gangster who is drafted and does all he can to get out of it, to no avail, in Lucky Jordan, directed by Frank Tuttle. Also starring Helen Walker and Sheldon Leonard, Ladd’s character goes AWOL and gets involved with marketing some secret plans to foreign agents. But along the way, he comes to realize that he really doesn’t like the guys on the other side and starts to think it’s worth fighting for something besides himself.

 

While the war was being fought, there were many fine films that paid tribute to the fighting men who had volunteered or been drafted to serve. This certainly was a war of ordinary men being called upon to do extraordinary things.  But there were ordinary women who did extraordinary things at the battlefront.  Two films from 1943 that I have mentioned in previous posts are an illustration of this.  Cry Havoc starring Margaret Sullavan, Joan Blondell, Ann Southern, Fay Bainter, as nurses on Bataan in the days before the surrender.  Directed by Richard Thorpe, its gritty depiction of the conditions under which they worked really affected me as a child when I saw it on TV. Until then, women war heroes were few:  Clara Barton and Florence Nightingale.  

I didn’t see the other film on the subject, So Proudly We Hail until much later, and it has a slightly better reputation because of the production values and the star power of Claudette Colbert, Paulette Goddard, and Veronica Lake. Directed by Mark Sandrich.

*Recently, I found this fascinating 27-minute film about the nurses. Check it out to get the real story. https://archive.org/details/WeAllCameHome

Speaking of Claudette Colbert, I will finish with one my favorite holiday films that also could be called the American equivalent to Mrs. Miniver.  Sure, the family in Since You Went Away, is too perfect, too upper-middle class to have to take in a lodger, with the perfect, devoted maid (Hattie McDaniel) who works for no pay, but with the polish of these actors and filmmakers -- director, John Cromwell, music by Max Steiner, cinematography by Stanley Cortez and Lee Garmes, one is drawn into their story.  Colbert's husband is serving overseas, Jennifer Jones and Shirley Temple are her daughters. Joseph Cotten is a friend of the family who visits while on leave and Monty Woolley is the disgruntled lodger whose grandson, Robert Walker, is a great disappointment to him, and who nevertheless becomes romantically involved with Jennifer Jones (At the time, his real-life wife and shortly to separate, but convincing as a couple here.) Agnes Moorehead is the voice of the not-so-patriotic home front, presented as a contrast to Colbert and her girls, who are happy to be doing their part. For all the contrivances to win our sympathy, I defy anyone to watch this completely dry-eyed, especially, the train station farewell.

Happy Holidays!

 

 

Watchingwell 

                                                                              

                                                             Curated classic films

Mind Games

        

       Oh, the various ways the misguided, or the frankly evil, try to fool you! They try to make you believe something that isn’t true, make the truth a lie, see something that isn’t there, or doubt your own sanity. From films that deal with this kind of behavior, can we learn from how the characters hang on to reality?

   One of the best known of these titles has even entered our vocabulary to describe just such a situation. Currently when someone is trying to make you doubt your sanity, you can say they are gaslighting you, from the 1944 classic, Gaslight, directed by George Cukor. Ingrid Bergman, in an Oscar-winning performance, is being driven mad by husband, Charles Boyer, who although evil, still has this enchanting accent – the way he pronounces “Paula” like “Pola”. Swoon. If you haven’t seen this, you should.

    

      Using an inexplicably-popular plot device, there are at least five films that use twins as a vehicle for playing with your mind. Maya Angelou famously said, “When someone shows you who they are, believe them.” Clearly not in these films.

 

No less than the most famous face of the silver screen, Greta Garbo, tried to convince us that she was herself and her sister in her last film, Two-Faced Woman from 1941.  Actually, she tries to convince co-star, Melvyn Douglas, who plays her husband, so that she could see if he was being unfaithful. Not the comedy caliber of their earlier work from 1939, Ninotchka, directed by Ernst Lubitsch, this effort, directed by George Cukor, had the reputation for being so mediocre that it was the cause of Garbo’s early retirement.  But that turns out to be a myth because she was planning another project after this but it fell through, and then the country was going to war, so maybe it seemed to her that audiences would be wanting a different kind of movie. So the film gets a bad rap. Not that Two-Faced Woman is a great movie, but any film with Garbo is interesting.

     Well, we can suspend a lot of disbelief for a comedy, but in dramas, not so much. It’s strange to me that filmmakers thought people seriously can look so much alike that no one in their lives, except the dog, notices that a substitution has been made.  Bette Davis made not one, but two films, where she played twins.  The first, in 1946,  A Stolen Life, directed by Curtis Bernhardt, features Bette as both an evil twin who sets her sights on Glenn Ford, the good sister’s sweetheart, and also the good sister.  Glenn doesn’t know which one he’s dealing with half the time.  The dog knows.

 

    The second one was Dead Ringer from 1964, directed by her co-star from Now Voyager, Paul Henreid, which is given a slightly more realistic treatment.  The sisters have spent a lifetime apart, with very different fortunes. When the rich one dies, the other tries to step into her life. There are more complications than she realizes. And there is the dog.

     Olivia de Havilland plays twins in The Dark Mirror from 1946, directed by Robert Siodmak. A murder is committed by one of them, but neither is telling. The police use a psychiatrist, played by Lew Ayres, to determine which.  Further confusing complications ensue when he falls in love with one of them.

 

     Both actresses appear in the 1942 drama, In this Our Life, directed by John Huston (with an uncredited Raoul Walsh). Bette Davis is the devious sister of Olivia de Havilland and operates as a spoiled, southern belle, indulged by her family, especially her uncle (Charles Coburn), who seems to admire her ruthlessness.  This was a rather bold film for its time, in that there is a character played by Ernest Anderson, a young black man with ambition, who is encouraged by the good sister but set up by the other to take the blame for a crime she commits.  The way Davis plays this is rather chilling, pretending to be his friend, all the while contributing to the case against him. The deception in this case is not from the sisters – they are not twins, but from the Davis character alone.  

     Let’s not forget the most devious mind-twister, twin plot, The Other, the 1972 film directed by Robert Mulligan. This is an unsettling adaptation of Tom Tryon’s novel. I can say no more without spoiling the effect – if unsettling is the effect you like.

 

     Mind games are played for definite purposes – sometimes criminal, sometimes for pure self-interest, and some for more noble motives.

     James Stewart is targeted for deception because he has a useful malady (acrophobia) for a crime that is planned in Vertigo (1958), directed by Alfred Hitchcock.  Since the deception involves Kim Novak playing two characters, we, the audience, are never fooled, and always wonder why James Stewart is.

But perhaps he is just the kind of actor who can pull it off – look at how he made us believe he was hanging around a giant rabbit in Harvey (1950), directed by Henry Koster. 

 

    There are many instances of deception in the political sphere.  Sometimes it seems there is little else. A prime example is the character, Willy Stark, in All the King’s Men (1949),  directed by Robert Rossen, who begins his political career as a genuine populist, but deceives himself and the public, ultimately betraying all the people who believed in him.  From the Pulitzer Prize winning novel, by Robert Penn Warren, Broderick Crawford, in an Oscar-winning performance, portrays the main character, loosely resembling the career of Huey Long.

 

    The career of crooner-turned-media star on the verge of political influence is a tale of complete deception – a manufactured stardom.  Even though created by those who saw a phenomenon they could use, there is little doubt that Lonesome Rhodes, the character in A Face in the Crowd (1957), is an equal partner in the con.  Directed by Elia Kazan, and played brilliantly by Andy Griffith, who astounds you if you’ve only seen him in his Mayberry persona. Budd Schulberg’s script, as fresh as the headlines, is aided by great supporting performances by Walter Matthau, Patricia Neal, Anthony Franciosa, and Lee Remick.

 

     For deception in pursuit of a worthy cause, Clifton Webb stars in The Man Who Never Was (1956), the true story of British attempts to convince Germany that the Allies would be invading Greece, and not Sicily, as they believed.  The plan was to acquire a corpse and plant him in the sea off Spain, as if his plane had crashed, with credentials and secret plans. Also starring Gloria Grahame, with skilled direction by Ronald Neame.

     Religion is often so fervently felt that it can arouse great public passion and so is vulnerable to the deceiver -- the charlatan who claims piety and sells salvation for personal gain, as in the case of Elmer
Gantry (1960). But sometimes, the deception mesmerizes the seller as much as the audience. Directed by Richard Brooks, Burt Lancaster won the Oscar for his portrayal, as did costar, Shirley Jones.

 

Burt’s competition that year in the Best Actor category was Spencer Tracy for his portrayal of a fictionalized  Clarence Darrow who triumphed over the defender of the Bible’s version of creation in Inherit the Wind (1960), directed by Stanley Kramer. We can take a lesson on how to combat self-deception from the way Tracy’s character logically made his case for the compatibility of freedom of thought and Christian beliefs.

     The one area where you’d think there was no room for deception would be science.   Science has agreed upon principles of determining what is known and what is only hypothesized. And yet, sometimes the scientific evidence supporting a hypothesis is disputed when the theory is inconvenient to the powerful.  Henrik Ibsen’s play about this subject, An Enemy of the People was made into a motion picture in 1978, directed by George Schaefer, with Steve McQueen in the role of the main character, a doctor who discovers the water supply for the town’s tourist attraction is dangerously polluted, and is prevailed upon to keep it quiet for the fortune of the town and its powerful people. Considering that the play was published in 1882, we seem to have progressed very little in how these competing interests are weighed. Substitute climate change for polluted springs.

    Last, we come to what is, in my opinion, the most inspiring tribute to the responsibility of scientists to seek the truth, The Story of Louis Pasteur, from 1937. Directed by William Dieterle, it stars Paul Muni as Pasteur, in one of his best “biography” roles, winning an Academy Award for the portrayal. This is a respectable account of Pasteur’s research and the resistance of the medical and scientific community to his theories about “microscopic” causes of disease. In one scene, he is forced to renounce his own theories about bacteria in exchange for the medical services for his daughter from one of his most scornful critics. He asks only one favor – that the doctor washes his hands. In this scene we have a microcosm of how self-interest often thwarts progress, and the lesson that we should never display such hubris as to believe that we know all there is to know.

 

Watchingwell 

                                                                              

                                                             Curated classic films

Wedding Season 

     Weddings are back. People are gathering again. Joy is commencing. But in the movies, wedding joy often has obstacles to overcome first. It's not too easy to get to happily-ever-after, because writers need the work.

The Bride Came COD (1941) directed by William Keighley, stars James Cagney as an out-of-work pilot who is hired by an oil tycoon to kidnap his heiress daughter, Bette Davis, to keep her from marrying a bandleader, a twist on It Happened One Night. The script needs more comedy energy than Davis gives it, but Cagney is never without energy.

 

While we’re on the subject, It Happened One Night (1934) directed by Frank Capra, stars Claudette Colbert as another thwarted bride whose father is against her marriage.  He imprisons her on his yacht. She runs away, or rather swims away, and meets reporter, Clark Gable, who agrees to help her get to her groom in exchange for the exclusive story. Unbelievably, Clark Gable beats out her original choice.

 

Then there’s The Philadelphia Story (1940) directed by George Cukor, and stars Katherine Hepburn as yet another socialite who has chosen a man who obviously will never survive to the end of the picture, in a competition with Cary Grant, her ex-husband and James Stewart, a reporter, who is there to cover the wedding. The script has not aged well, but the scene where Hepburn introduces herself to Stewart and Ruth Hussey is etched in my comedy brain. (Remade as a musical in 1956, High Society stars Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, Grace Kelly and Luis Armstrong.)

The Bride Walks Out (1936) directed by Leigh Jason, stars Gene Raymond and Barbara Stanwyck as newlyweds who have difficulty living on his surveyor’s salary after she gives up her successful modeling career. She secretly goes back to work to supplement the family funds so excessively proud husband won't find out.  Good supporting cast makes this entertaining.

Double Wedding (1937) directed by Richard Thorpe, is
about business woman, Myrna Loy, who plans (as in controls) her sister, Florence Rice’s life down to every detail, including her wedding to John Beal. Finally, sister rebels and takes up with artist, William Powell, a free-spirit who lives in a trailer.  Loy and Powell are annoying to each other, as Loy tries to fix things, but not to us. Great fun.

Honeymoon in Bali  (1939) is directed by Edward H. Griffith. Fred MacMurray lives in Bali. While visiting New York, he falls for and proposes to Madeleine Carroll, an up-and-coming department store executive. She can’t give up her career and move to Bali, but when he leaves,  she has doubts. It’s not totally surprising but it does keep us guessing to the end.

Haunted Honeymoon (1940) directed by Arthur B.
Woods and Richard Thorpe (location), stars Robert Montgomery and Constance Cummings.  An adaptation of the Dorothy Sayers mystery, Busman’s Honeymoon, where Lord Peter Wimsey marries Harriet Vane and naturally finds murder at their honeymoon retreat. Book is better, but this is fun.

 

They All Kissed the Bride (1942) directed by Alexander Hall, and stars Joan Crawford who runs the family trucking firm.  She  meets Melvyn Douglas, a reporter who is doing a story on the firm while at her sister’s wedding. Of course she eventually realizes that running a company can’t really make her as happy as Melvyn Douglas.  A comedy.

 

The Bride Wore Boots (1946) directed by Irving Pichel,
stars Barbara Stanwyck, as a member of a country-club-horsey-set who marries Robert Cummings, a New York writer who hates the country and horses. Patric Knowles and Diana Lynn are their respective compatible matches who keep reminding Babs and Bob of their big mistake.

 

June Bride (1948) directed by Bretaigne Windust, with Robert Montgomery and Bette Davis as ex-lovers employed by a magazine on a photo shoot of a wedding in Indiana.  All does not go as planned.  In fact, nothing does. Not much chemistry between the stars, but Robert works the comedy better than Bette. The script has one of my favorite lines of all times, delivered perfectly by Montgomery.  See if you can guess which it is.

I Was a Male War Bride (1949) directed by Howard Hawks, starring Ann Sheridan and Cary Grant. I’m a great fan of Howard Hawks and also Cary Grant and Ann Sheridan, and some people really like this film, so I recommend a viewing.  My problem with it is I can’t laugh when normally competent people do things that are too stupid to be believable.  I mean, this is not a Laurel and Hardy film.

 

Father of the Bride (1950) directed by Vincente Minnelli, stars Spencer Tracy, Joan Bennett and Elizabeth Taylor. All about the anguish of a loving family whose biggest problem is a dad who doesn’t cope well with change while planning their daughter’s wedding. You probably haven't seen this for a while. A classic.

 

 

 

 

 

Watchingwell 

                                                                              

                                                             Curated classic films

Funny Ladies

     

     Women in comedy were a treasure of the classic era. Some were cast specifically for the comical character they regularly portrayed:  Marjorie Main, Betty Hutton,  Martha Raye, Judy Canova, Mary Wickes, for examples.  Some were skilled at any role they were given to play, funny when they had a funny script.  A number of fine actresses could be dramatic in dramatic roles, but had a particular gift for making a comedy script work by being willing to be un-glamorous, undignified, or just zany. 

Carole Lombard, whose career was cut short in 1942 at the age of 33 by a plane crash, created some brilliant comedy performances. In Twentieth Century (1934), directed by Howard Hawks, she plays an actress trying to escape John Barrymore as an outrageously, manipulative director.

The Princess Comes Across (1936), directed by William K. Howard, is a combination screwball comedy and murder mystery, pairing Lombard with Fred MacMurray, with whom she made four pictures, and they had great chemistry.

Lombard’s dizziness plays off the sensible butler-in-disguise, William Powell, in My Man Godfrey (1936), directed by Gregory LaCava, for which she received an Academy Award nomination and Ernst Lubistch’s To Be or Not to Be (1942) with Jack Benny (remade in 1983 with Mel Brooks and Anne Bancroft), as members of a Polish theater group outsmarting Nazi occupiers, are both classics and not to be missed, but the lesser-known, Mr. and Mrs. Smith (1941), is a gem with Robert Montgomery who had a real talent for comedy, directed by Alfred Hitchcock (his only real comedy).

With a unique voice, which some (well, me) could call whiney, Jean Arthur could play dramatic roles convincingly, like Saunders in Frank Capra's Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939) opposite James Stewart, and in love with Charles Boyer in History is Made at Night (1937), directed by Frank Borzage.  But her voice is a little different in comedy -- slightly higher, more tentative and exasperated. 

I liked her Miss Shelley, torn between Ronald Colman and Cary Grant in The Talk of the Town (1942), directed by George Stevens. (Guess who she ends up with?)  But my favorite George Stevens comedy, The More the Merrier (1943) pairs Arthur with Joel McCrea in one of the most enjoyable romantic comedies.  Also starring Charles Coburn, who along with McCrea, end up as apartment mates in Arthur's flat in Washington during the war, when rooms were scarce.  Hilarity ensues, particularly when Arthur's fiancée enters the story.

She was also in another of my favorite comedies, Easy Living from 1937.  Directed by Mitchell Leisen from a screenplay by Preston Sturges, this is a prototypical screwball comedy with Jean playing her innocent, dizzy self, accidently drawn into the family drama and finances of father, Edward Arnold, and son, Ray Milland.  Besides having some crazy, funny scenes, it is a look at a New York City long gone -- who remembers the automat?

Speaking of distinctive voices, but one that is on the other end of the scale, Rosalind Russell had a low, authoritative voice that she modulated skillfully to portray sophisticated, unflappable women.  In His Girl Friday (1940), the Howard Hawks direction makes it all about the dialogue:  the breakneck speed, the breathless overlapping, the sarcastic tone -- all perfect for Russell's skill.  Paired with Cary Grant, who is no slouch at comedy, and with Hecht and MacArthur's script (from their play, The Front Page, which was first made into a film in 1931 with Adolphe Menjou and Pat O'Brien), and a terrific supporting cast, this cynical look at the world of the big city newspaper biz is over-the-top funny. This is a film that I have seen dozens of times and am still discovering bits of dialogue or nuances of performance each time.  One of my five fave films  of all time.

In 1942, Roz sparkled in a witty, career woman role that only she did so
well.  Mitchell Leisen directs Take a Letter, Darling with Fred MacMurray as a struggling artist who takes a job as Russell's secretary/companion, because in 1942, as the head of an advertising agency, she needed a man sometimes to fend off admirers or disarm the wives of clients.  The business arrangement becomes complicated as MacMurray grows resentful and Russell becomes jealous when the pair try to land an important account.

Russell had a lock on these types of roles: a judge in Design for Scandal in 1941, a literary agent in What a Woman in 1943, a psychiatrist in She Wouldn't Say Yes in 1945 and an attorney in Tell it to the Judge (1949). Lesser known, A Woman of Distinction (1950), directed by Edward Buzzell, shows college dean, Russell, willing to give her all for the comic effect, in a love/hate relationship with co-star, Ray Milland.

The blonde bombshell, Jean Harlow, another actress whose life was tragically short – she died at 26, was actually more effective (imo) in comedy than in dramatic roles.  She had a knack for playing with her image, as in – Bombshell from 1933 in a story that could be seen as a self-parody of her own private life, with Lee Tracy as a studio press agent who won’t allow her to stray from her sexy image, thwarting her attempts to adopt a baby and take on serious roles. Directed by Victor Fleming, this is pre-code comedy at its best with Franchot Tone and an impressive supporting cast.

Harlow's comedy skills are not at all diminished by the top-notch cast in Libeled Lady  from 1936. Harlow plays the continually-postponed bride of editor, Spencer Tracy, who persuades her to pretend to be married to William Powell in a scheme to get heiress, Myrna Loy, to retract a 5 million-dollar lawsuit for libel. It gets even more complicated than it sounds. And funny. Directed by Jack Conway.

Can't overlook 2 funny ladies:  Eve Arden in Doughgirls,(1944) is worth a look just to see her as Sgt. Natalia Moskoroff, a hoot of a  Russian soldier forced to share quarters in wartime Washington with an all-star cast. 

In Tea for Two (1950) she perfects the wisecracking character, tossing off one-liners in that droll voice, as Doris Day’s best friend, that she displayed in The Kid from Brooklyn 1946, the early Danny Kaye film.  

 

Lucille Ball, who most people associate with the most iconic TV comedy, had an unusual film career – and not always funny. She had a few good lines in star-studded Stage Door (1937) but I think one of her best roles was not in a comedy. In Without Love  (1945), the stars are
Hepburn and Tracy, but in a supporting role, she has some good lines and delivers them in a sophisticated tone. Watching, one feels that it was too bad that she was not given more of this kind of role.

Ball is probably at her comic best in Easy to Wed from 1946, a remake of Libeled Lady, --  a good comic performance by Ball even though the film is nowhere near as good as the original.

 

Need to mention one other film star who made us laugh and at the same time took herself seriously enough so that at one time she was the highest paid woman in the U.S. (1936), and basically saved Paramount studios from going under.  I’m speaking, of course, of Mae West. She adapted the plays she wrote to film, so most of her lines were her own. Her innuendos eventually brought on the censors and she used tone and expression with more discreet lines that slipped by the censors but somehow sounded risqué.  Her mission was to ridicule puritanical society and although she only made 12 films, she made an impact, her one-liners still quoted often because she was very much ahead of her time. Probably, her best work in film, She Done Him Wrong , directed by Lowell Sherman, and I’m No Angel (When I’m good, I’m very good, but when I’m bad, I’m better), directed by Wesley Ruggles, both written by West from 1933.

 

A few of her best lines:

 Ya know it was a toss-up whether I go in for diamonds or sing in the choir.  The choir lost.  

Goodness had nothing to do with it. (Goodness, what beautiful diamonds!)

His mother should have thrown him away and kept the stork.

 A woman in love can't be reasonable -- or she probably wouldn't be in love.

To err is human - but it feels divine. 

JUDGE: Are you trying to show contempt for this court? MAE WEST: I was doin' my best to hide it. 

She's the kind of girl who climbed the ladder of success wrong by wrong.

I generally avoid temptation unless I can't resist it.

Between two evils, I always pick the one I never tried before.

Those who are easily shocked should be shocked more often.

Too much of a good thing can be wonderful.

I used to be Snow White, but I drifted.