Screen Savers Movies » Vintage Comedies

Hail the Conquering Hero (1944)

Jon Hansen, Publisher — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 04:01:32 +0000

As the war continued, screen content was increasingly informed by it. Preston Sturges, forgoing the glamorous trappings of the rich and would-be rich, brought his screwball sensibility to small-town America and made two farces that dealt directly with the homefront. The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek (1944) is about a young woman (Betty Hutton) who goes to a soldiers’ send-off party only to find herself married and pregnant with no memory of who her husband is. Instead of hunks Fonda or McCrea, Sturges’s new leading man was nerdy Eddie Bracken, playing a stuttering milquetoast who sees spots every time he attempts a war physical and, therefore, remains miserably stateside. Even better is Sturges’s Hail the Conquering Hero, again starring Bracken, who gives the best, most rounded performance of his career. It would be the final triumph of Sturges’s too-hot-not-to-cool-down career, and it’s the least known and revered of his big five. (Is it because sex doesn’t figure into it very much?) It’s short on physical slapstick, though its plot is every bit as deliriously convoluted and anarchic as anything Sturges ever concocted. Hail the Conquering Hero both celebrates and good-naturedly pokes fun at American conventions, ideals, and values.

excerpted from John DiLeo’s
Screen Savers: 40 Remarkable Movies Awaiting Rediscovery
© 2008 Hansen Publishing Group. All Rights Reserved.

Learn more about Hail the Conquering Hero

Pat and Mike (1952)

John DiLeo — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 04:01:03 +0000

Pat and Mike has an unusually modern premise for a 1950s romantic comedy, examining the psychological barriers that prevent people from achieving their goals. (Adam’s Rib, better known than Pat and Mike, covers more conventional turf: it’s a classic battle-of-the-sexes comedy.) Pat and Mike is every bit as good-spirited and timeless as Woman of the Year is unfair and old-fashioned. Made with an all-pervasive air of effortlessness, and clearly an inexpensive production, Pat and Mike can unjustly be dismissed as slight or minor. It has no scenes of sidesplitting hilarity and its pace isn’t rapid-fire. It’s the kind of comedy that provokes a long, sustained smile because everything about it is so right. No garden-variety romantic comedy, in either plot or character, it’s about hooking up with the person who helps you be your best self.

Learn more about Pat and Mike

The Half Naked Truth (1932)

Jon Hansen, Publisher — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 04:01:32 +0000

One kind of 1930s comedy didn’t last very long or become a source of ongoing imitation. I’ll call it the comedy of merry insanity, which is different from the screwball comedies that dominated the second half of the decade and the first half of the 1940s. However nutty, screwball comedies revolve around reasonably recognizable issues of love, class, and bank accounts, while the merry-insanity comedies are far more anarchic, audacious, and eccentric, refusing to allow “real life” to rein them in. The two best, and most famous, of these would be Million Dollar Legs (1932) and Duck Soup (1933). Bordering on the surreal, each is set in a fictional country: the first in Klopstokia; the second in Freedonia. Million Dollar Legs, which revolves around the Olympics and features W.C. Fields and Jack Oakie, and Duck Soup, with all four Marx Brothers immersed in politics and war, are among the funniest movies ever made, partly because of their unwillingness to contain themselves. (The earliest Marx Brothers films, The Cocoanuts [1929] and Animal Crackers [1930], belong, instead, with the aforementioned stagebound adaptations.) The Half Naked Truth isn’t as well known as these two classics, and it isn’t set in a mythical land, but it does share their wackiness, nose-thumbing, and anything-goes surprises: it’s adorable and ruthless. It’s a comedy that can accommodate, among its pleasures, a hotel-room lion, a mock nudist colony, and a sham princess (complete with eunuch). It has the unbound visual freedom of a silent comedy, combined with the verbal dexterity and quickness of the new era, depending equally on these traits to get its laughs. And it really builds, consistently accelerating its zaniness and risk-taking, swooping the viewer along on its brassy, outrageous ride.

excerpted from John DiLeo’s
Screen Savers: 40 Remarkable Movies Awaiting Rediscovery
© 2008 Hansen Publishing Group. All Rights Reserved.

Learn more about The Half Naked Truth

It Started with Eve (1941)

Jon Hansen, Publisher — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 04:01:35 +0000

Deanna Durbin had matured from teenage roles in, among others, the 1936 Three Smart Girls and its 1939 sequel, when director Henry Koster and producer Joe Pasternak asked her to star in It Started with Eve. The movie’s three songs may not qualify it as a musical, but the antics of Durbin and co-star Robert Cummings, as they conspire to please his dying father (the great Charles Laughton) on his deathbed with their mock engagement, will leave audiences with the same feel-good sensation.

Learn more about It Started with Eve

Lady for a Day (1933)

Jon Hansen, Publisher — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 04:01:05 +0000

Lady for a Day is based on Damon Runyon’s short story Madame La Gimp. Capra and Runyon are an ideal match, with their knack for balancing sentiment with humor and in their affection for underdogs. Runyon’s surefire tale is prime fodder for Capra, and the meeting of material and director produces a disarming work full of feel-good schmaltz and well-tossed wisecracks. It’s unquestionably the best film ever made from a Runyon piece. Call it Capra-corn if you like, but it was made long before the uplift in the director’s movies became mechanically obvious and more than a little smug (as in his State of the Union of 1948). Lady for a Day’s plot is a reworking of Pygmalion, that is if Eliza were a decrepit geriatric and a drunk. It’s a “makeover” movie, made long before that concept became a cultural staple.

excerpted from John DiLeo’s
Screen Savers: 40 Remarkable Movies Awaiting Rediscovery
© 2008 Hansen Publishing Group. All Rights Reserved

Learn more about Lady for a Day

Pat and Mike (1952): Tracy and Hepburn and Gender Equality

John DiLeo — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 02:25:23 +0000

Pat and Mike has an unusually modern premise for a 1950s romantic comedy, examining the psychological barriers that prevent people from achieving their goals. (Adam’s Rib, better known than Pat and Mike, covers more conventional turf: it’s a classic battle-of-the-sexes comedy.) Pat and Mike is every bit as good-spirited and timeless as Woman of the Year is unfair and old-fashioned. Made with an all-pervasive air of effortlessness, and clearly an inexpensive production, Pat and Mike can unjustly be dismissed as slight or minor. It has no scenes of sidesplitting hilarity and its pace isn’t rapid-fire. It’s the kind of comedy that provokes a long, sustained smile because everything about it is so right. No garden-variety romantic comedy, in either plot or character, it’s about hooking up with the person who helps you be your best self.

excerpted from John DiLeo’s
Screen Savers: 40 Remarkable Movies Awaiting Rediscovery
© 2008 Hansen Publishing Group. All Rights Reserved.

Hail the Conquering Hero (1944): Screwball Comedy’s Last Triumphant Gasp

John DiLeo — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 02:20:07 +0000

As the war continued, screen content was increasingly informed by it. Sturges, forgoing the glamorous trappings of the rich and would-be rich, brought his screwball sensibility to small-town America and made two farces that dealt directly with the homefront. The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek (1944) is about a young woman (Betty Hutton) who goes to a soldiers’ send-off party only to find herself married and pregnant with no memory of who her husband is. Instead of hunks Fonda or McCrea, Sturges’s new leading man was nerdy Eddie Bracken, playing a stuttering milquetoast who sees spots every time he attempts a war physical and, therefore, remains miserably stateside. Even better is Sturges’s Hail the Conquering Hero, again starring Bracken, who gives the best, most rounded performance of his career. It would be the final triumph of Sturges’s too-hot-not-to-cool-down career, and it’s the least known and revered of his big five. (Is it because sex doesn’t figure into it very much?) It’s short on physical slapstick, though its plot is every bit as deliriously convoluted and anarchic as anything Sturges ever concocted. Hail the Conquering Hero both celebrates and good-naturedly pokes fun at American conventions, ideals, and values.

It Started with Eve (1941): When Quasimodo Met Cinderella

John DiLeo — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 02:13:15 +0000

One of the least regarded of these peripheral comic winners is Universal’s It Started with Eve, a box-office hit given little respect. Best known for Dracula (1931) and Frankenstein (1931), Universal was rescued from its financial woes of the mid 1930s when producer Joe Pasternak, director Henry Koster, and plucky teen soprano Deanna Durbin collaborated on Three Smart Girls (1936), thus beginning this trio’s well-attended series of frothy musicals. Not only a smash hit, Three Smart Girls was a Best Picture Oscar nominee. It helped that Durbin—whose singing voice was clear and mature rather than shrill—was girl-next-door pretty and had a nonchalant flair for comedy. It Started with Eve was the sixth and final (and best) picture for the Pasternak-Koster-Durbin combo and, though it features three songs, it’s not a musical. Durbin was by now a young woman of 19, and the studio was hoping that the adult Durbin could sell as many tickets as the pubescent Durbin. It Started with Eve brought smiles and made money, surely, but it turned out to be a real sleeper. Aided immensely by the casting of esteemed Charles Laughton, it’s a smartly scripted, flawlessly cast, and enchantingly played comedy that continues to deliver enormous pleasure to those who discover it.

Lady for a Day (1933): In Defense of Capra Corn

John DiLeo — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 02:05:49 +0000

The Half Naked Truth (1932): Lee Tracy and the Fast-Talking Talkie

John DiLeo — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 01:59:19 +0000