Vivacious Lady (1938)

Some reasons I love this movie:

1. When Professor Peter Morgan (Jimmy Stewart) falls in love at first sight with night club singer/dancer Francey (Ginger Rogers), I believe it.
2. So many crazy scenarios are made possible by Peter's decision to wait before telling his very conservative university president father that he has married the unknown Francey during a trip to New York. Unfortunately, Peter doesn't manage to tell his family about Francey for a long long time.

3. Although Peter's cousin Keith shows early signs of wanting Francey for himself, when Peter and Francey are forced to spend their first night apart, Keith brings them each one of the toppers from their wedding cake to keep them company.

4. Ginger Rogers is tough. As Francey, she takes the woman who wants to be Peter's fiance and flips her right over her shoulder. She was provoked. A very funny scene.
5. The dance scene...
Three stars because the acting was great and the plot was really very funny. It think it lost that fourth star just for being a little too long. There were just a few too many crazy hijinks keeping the couple apart. Apparently TCM agrees. They called it "everlong." But I would definitely see this again.

It's a Wonderful World (1939)

Turner Classic Movies is really a wonderful thing... So many movies not available on Netflix or from the library... Like this one with Jimmy Stewart. Stewart is detective Guy Johnson, arrested for hiding a client who has been framed for murder. While in a train en route to prison, Johnson notices a newspaper ad that may just be the clue he needs to lead him to the real killer. Johnson's dramatic escape from the train is witnessed by poetess Edwina Corday, played by Claudette Colbert. The rest of the movie is one crazy hijink after another.

There is the kidnapping of the poetess,

The handcuffing of the poetess to himself,

The poetess's realization that Johnson is not a dangerous escaped convict, but a noble detective trying to save his client from death row... a realization that leads to many misguided attempts to help him,

And a stolen disguise.
Apparently Claudette Colbert was unhappy with the bickering road trip similarities between this movie and It Happened One Night, but I didn't mind. Three stars just for reminding me that Jimmy Stewart can be good in laugh-out-loud comedy. I would be happy to see this again. "I swear by my eyes."

My Man Godfrey (1936)

Eccentric rich people can be very funny. Especially if one of them is played by Carole Lombard, who is wonderful at appearing effortlessly nutty in a variety of situations. In this situation, Lombard plays Irene Bullock, one of two Bullock sisters in a family in which each member is insanely eccentric in their own special way. Irene is an expert at throwing fits, sobbing, fainting, and overdramatizing. She is very good at getting her way, even if it takes drawing out her fits over months. Irene's sister Cornelia is more sinisterly eccentric. She is good at making biting comments and scheming up ways to destroy the lives of others. Mrs. Bullock is just dotty. She sees pixies when she's hung over, and she keeps a protege named Carlo, who spends his days eating the family's food and pretending to practice his music. He also can do an intensely accurate gorilla impression to try to cheer up Irene when she's having a fit. Mr. Bullock, the apparent long-suffereing man in a family of loopy women, is only slightly less eccentric than the rest of his family. His eccentricity seems to be that he is incapable of keeping the rest of his family in check. Enter into this crazy family the dignified butler Godfrey (William Powell), and you have My Man Godfrey.

Of course even Godfrey has his eccentricities, though. Before becoming the butler for the Bullocks, he was a living in a New York City dump. How did he end up working for the Bullocks? He was picked up in a scavenger hunt. Mrs. Bullock earned points by finding a goat... Irene Bullock managed to get the catch of the evening, a "forgotten man." After Godfrey helps Irene win the scavenger hunt, she impulsively hires him as the family's new butler, and he enters their crazy home...

...Irene falls almost immediately in love: "Oh, you're more than a butler. You're the first protege I've ever had."

...Mr. Bullock loses all semblance of control over the family finances: "Why should the government get more money than your own flesh and blood?"

...Cornelia seethes over the fact that Godfrey did not help her in the scavenger hunt and plots revenge: "Godfrey knows I'm not being personal, but after all, none of us would like to wake up some morning stabbed to death."

...and Mrs. Bullock demonstrates her crazy thinking about the world: "[Godfrey's] the first thing [Irene's] shown any affection for since her Pomeranian died last summer."

Godfrey calmly goes with the flow, intervening only when Irene is a little too amorous:

G: "Hasn't anyone every told you about certain proprieties?"

I: "Oh you use such lovely big words. I like big words. What does it mean?"

G: "Well, I'll try to simplify it. Hasn't your mother ever explained to you that some things are proper and some things are not?"

I: "No she hasn't. She rambles on quite a bit, but then she never says anything.

I would watch this again. Three stars. One for Carole Lombard, who is always entertaining, one for making me laugh even when there were holes in the plot, and one for William Powell's Godfrey, who is keeping an eccentric secret of his own.

Rebecca (1940)

I love this movie. Joan Fontaine plays the second Mrs. de Winter, never given a first name in either the book by Daphne Du Maurier or the movie. While working as a companion to an elderly rich woman, the second Mrs. de Winter meets Mr. de Winter at a resort in Monte Carlo. He is moody and mysterious from the moment she meets him, an encounter during which he appears to be about to jump off of a cliff. She is completely unsure of what to make of him or if he even likes her. She is taken by surprise when he proposes marriage to her rather than lose her, when her companion packs up to sail off to New York.

When the second Mrs. de Winter arrives at the luxurious Manderley with her new husband, we find out why it is that she has no name of her own. She is living in the shadow of the first Mrs. de Winter... Rebecca. She is also at the whim of the creepy Mrs. Danvers, who came to Manderley with Rebecca and has remained devoted to her even after her assumed death in a boating accident. Mrs. Danvers is not so happy to see a new Mrs. de Winter taking Rebecca's place. And Mr. de Winter is too moody and busy to notice what is happening to his new wife. Or does he regret having married her at all?

Really the only thing that annoys me in Rebecca is the way Mr. de Winter treats his new wife from the moment he meets her. I know he is supposed to be a damaged, grief-stricken man, but being damaged and grief-stricken are more handy for explaining away intense moodiness than for explaining away why he thinks his new bride is a little child.

(1)"I'm not hungry."

"Eat up like a good little girl."

(2)He hides her tennis racket behind a plant after declaring they should go for a drive.

(3)"Stop biting your nails."

(4)"I'm asking you to marry me you little fool!"

But the future Mrs. deWinter does not seem to mind any of this. It seems to be what she expects. It is only the intense moodiness that seems to get her down. I suppose I should just be happy to be a young woman in the 21st century. Three stars, and I want Joan Fontaine's wardrobe from the movie. I would definitely see this again someday. It also makes me want to reread the book.

Topper (1937)

My Tivo's Cary Grant wish list picked this up. I sat right down to watch because it's a comedy and involves ghosts and Cary Grant - a really young CG.



First off CG looks great in this movie and it features special effects that I really have no idea how they achieved in that era. I really would like to know. They also had a really interesting rectangular-shape wipe transition early on in the film that must have been quite a feat at the time. Mainly, the ghosts disappear and reappear right on camera about four or five times which probably was a really big deal at the time. The equivalent of Transformers, probably.

CG and Constance Bennet play a dashing young couple - kind of an F. Scott Fitzgerald and Zelda at the height of their partying. They die in a fantasitc car wreck - you spend the first thirty minutes waiting for them to die in a car wreck cause you know that they will die and cause they drive everywhere like maniacs in this crazy cool car with a really weird fin on the back that I imagine was the 1930s equivalent of a DeLorean.

Anyway, after death they try to do a good deed by loosening up their stiff banker friend - Topper - who seems like he's not having any fun with his life and antics ensue.

The antics are alternately funny and not - hard to tell which gags might have been fresh at the time but are really old hat now. Like the invisible ghosts moving things causes all kinds of people to make surprised faces and rub their eyes - but in the days before Bewitched and I Dream of Jeannie that might have been a laugh riot - who knows?

I like/hate the character played by Billie Burke - the prim proper and puritan patrician wife of the banker who just wants to be invited to a party by the Stuyvesants. But my FAVORITE character is the irritated butler who gets in the middle of the feuding husband and wife.

Cary Grant is really handsome and Constance Bennet is awesome as the playful, flirtatious, sexy but still totally good-hearted and somewhat innocent girl - the epitomy of who we all think we would have liked to have been in the 30s. She also has great hair and great outfits and gets to appear suddenly atop a ledge in a new outfit holding a bottle of champagne and get the better of a rude bellboy all in the same act and don't we all want to do that someday?

Three Stars. Would watch again.