Gambling Lady (1934)

You've just gotta love Barbara Stanwyck!

So she's supposed to be a tough girl, but honest. Her father is a gambler who always plays it straight, even when his luck fails him.

Working for a gambling ring called "The Syndicate", he falls on hard times, and a bookie friend named Charlie looks out for them. (SIDE NOTE: The Syndicate is somewhat sinister and in an early seen is shown to be multi-racial. I think this was meant to be ominous at the time, but to a modern audience it looks like a meeting of the UN).

Later, she goes into business for herself as a gambler and does pretty well - but always honestly. When a nice young man from a rich family falls for her at first she thinks it will never work, but she won't take a bribe to jilt him.
Her sense of honesty, loyalty and honor ends up serving her well when someone close to her is framed for a crime and only her reputation can save her from ruin.

She's kind of like a Golden Age version of Goody Proctor, if you really think about it, only with a happy ending. Stanwyck is excellent.

Three stars, would definitely watch again (Margo wasn't as much of a fan).

Robin and the Seven Hoods (1964)

Frank Sinatra, singing mobsters, Robin hood references... a perfect movie for me, or so I thought. I just can't give this movie more than one star, and I'm not sure I could ever sit through it again. I could definitely sit down with David and make him watch the silliest songs with me:

*The boardroom "one for all" song about how great it is to be a mobster, in which we realize that Guy Gisborne is played by Peter Falk, and that Peter Falk can't sing

*The song about playing pool: when Little John (Dean Martin) runs the table and joins Robbo's (Frank Sinatra's) gang
*Will Scarlet's (Sammy Davis, Jr.'s) song about how much he loves the sound of gun shuts... sung as he and Robbo's gang shoot up Guy Gisborne's gambling den (Barbara: "Tap dancing combined with shooting is just really weird.")

*The song about how bad a dresser Allen A. Dale (Bing Crosby) is, sung by Sinatra, Martin, and Crosby, as Crosby keeps jumping in the walk-in closet to put on funny clothes

*The song about how wonderful Robbo is for giving money to the home for orphaned boys... sung by... Bing Crosby and a troupe of orphans wearing hats like these ladies:

*The song about the evils of "Mr. Booze," sung in order to throw the police off the trail of the hidden gambling/drinking den

*And last but not least, the song sung by Sinatra, Sammy Davis, Jr., and Dean Martin dressed in Santa costumes when they have to go into hiding for their connections to a money laundering operation

There was one redeeming feature that made me laugh with and not at the movie: Occasionally the mobsters disappeared someone by putting their dead body in a cornerstone of a new building. This led to funny scenes at building dedications. But, why was this movie made? Has anyone else seen it?

His Girl Friday (1940)

This movie has a scene I have to replay over and over again - Cary Grant chases Rosalind Russel around a desk and she transforms into his lover and partner again. I love this moment. I pretty much love the same moment in all my favorite romantic comedies - call it the "melt moment" it's the moment when one character melts the other's heart, melts through his or her resistance, and...amor vincit omnia, of course!


The Melt Moment - recreated for a still, of course...

It's the moment in Jerry Maguire when she says "you had me at hello" and it's the moment in Pride and Prejudice when they come upon each other unexpectedly - he's disheveled and wet, she's checking out his - holdings. The melt moment is the orgasm of the movie, and a good one can be enjoyed again and again. It's a good thing that DVDs don't wear out like VHS tapes, that's all I have to say.

The brilliant thing about this particular melt moment, though, is that Rosalind Russell's character doesn't even realize that she's melted. She thinks she's just giving in to one more little story...but in reality she's leaving her staid fiance and the life of a housewife in Albany to go back to her ex-husband and the newspaper business she loves.

What makes it great is not that you don't see it coming, it's that you do, and she doesn't, but it's still perfectly obvious that Cary Grant's character knows that he's won her back, and he is happy as only a man who has made his the love of his life return to him can be.

There are many other reasons to love this movie, let's count them!
1. Costumes, hers
2. Newspaper lingo and newspaper lifestyle - journalists were the TMZ of the 1920s so this is a bit like watching "The Springer Hustle" or "TMZ on TV" - except the newspapermen have a tiny tiny bit of integrity and a political angle (they want to get rid of the corrupt mayor).
3. Fiesty lady reporter who doesn't get tame at the end.
4. great character actors in all the little bit parts doing great bits
5. screwball plot twists on the level of A Fish Called Wanda

Five Stars, will watch again and again and again. And so should you.

Big Brown Eyes (1936)

My *current favorite* - four stars!
Will definitely watch again!

This may be the only romantic comedy I've ever seen in which a baby is shot. Yes, the baby is shot by the villain's henchman, and yes, the happy couple spends the rest of the movie tracking him down and bringing him to justice. But still, you have to imagine how today's studio executive would have treated this script. I imagine the meeting in his office the day after he reads the script.
"In act two, a baby is shot?"
"It drives the plot!"
"A baby! Gets shot!"
"But it gives the story a moral depth..."
"Moral Schmoral, why can't we kill a bum - or a really fat guy? Nobody minds seeing an ugly person get shot!"
"But you see then it wouldn't be something the reporter could sensationalize!"
"You can sensationalize a bum!"
"How do you sensationalize a bum? A bum's not sentimental!"
"You're the writer, that's your job! You can make a bum sentimental if I tell you to!"

But I digress. This is my new favorite movie so I must tell you why! Cary Grant impersonates a woman flirting with himself (he's an amateur ventriloquist). Manicurists wear uniforms with little bows on them. The dialogue is faster than a machine gun. The women are smart and sassy and the men are big lugs who do their bidding without being aware of how easily they are played.

Can you see how all this adds up to a movie in which a baby being shot seems kind of irrelevant?

Benny: And me as honest as the day is long.
Eve: Yeah, but how 'bout the nights?
Benny: The nights too! I'm the soul of honesty.
Eve: You sure you don't mean 'the heel?'