Pagan Love Song (1950)

I am now the proud owner of TCM Spotlight: Esther Williams, Volume 2. The Box Set. Thank you Mom and Dad. Prepare for silliness.

My brother Jeremy very reluctantly sat down to drink tea and watch this movie with me when I received the box set...

Mimi (Esther Willimas) is a beautifully tanned, white resident of Tahiti. She longs to leave the island to find a higher calling than living in paradise. She already has a boat ticket away. Hazard Endicott (Howard Keel) arrives on the island of Tahiti (Hawaii) to take hold of a plantation he has inherited. When he first sees Mimi she is in a canoe with her friends. He mistakes her for a native islander and tosses coins for her to catch, while speaking to her in really painfully slow and loud English. Mimi decides to mess with him, adopting an island accent and pretending to be what he thinks she is.
***Jeremy rolls his eyes.***

Endicott hires Mimi's two friends (one of whom is a very young Rita Moreno) to be his housekeepers (although he really wanted to hire Mimi). He is surprised by how small and run down his plantation is, but his new workers tell him it will look great when it is cleaned up. Endicott sings a song about the "house of singing bamboo."
***Jeremy snorts.***

Endicott comes to love his new house and the island. He sings a song involving lines like "How-dee-doo" and "You are well I trust?"
***Jeremy laughs.***

Endicott sings a reprise of his "House of Singing Bamboo" song while holding a pig in his lap.
***Jeremy tries to leave, but is is convinced to stay at least a little longer and finish his tea.***

Endicott finally discovers that Mimi is not really a native, when she invites him to a party at her house. He shows up in island attire, only to feel out of place when he is surrounded by white people in fancy suits and dresses. Endicott and Mimi fall in love, and Mimi's family become hopeful that she will stay on the island to be with him.


Endicott ends up with three island children staying with him, and he sings with them about etiquette.
"Etiquette, etiquette, always fold your serviette..."
***Jeremy raises his eyebrows and says, "Okay Jess, enjoy." He leaves.***

And so on, with some twists and turns, one involving the native workers leaving Endicott's coconut crop outside where it can rot in the rain and him getting very very angry. It was not as much fun to watch once Jeremy left. He didn't even get to see the synchronized swimming. Not the real swimming and not the fantasy swimming.

I feel like I've been typing this a lot lately, but one star. It would be hard to have a good movie with silly, happy islanders, some of whom are probably white people with their faces painted. Oh my. I may someday watch it again, though, because as with my least favorite Cary Grant movies, I do own it.

Father Goose (1965)

I confess I could not get this movie the first time around. And I confess it's become sort of a favorite since then. It's a strange movie, probably mostly because of the weird chemistry between the very young prim French woman and the older slovenly drunk American soldier.



And yet, it's got something - I'm starting to sound like a broken record tonight so maybe this means that Cary Grant is the something. A man who can somehow leap over absurdity in a single bound and make us love the ridiculous. I wonder if Steve Martin is like the closest thing we have to a Cary Grant in our generation only - let's face it, Steve - not quite as handsome.

Yup, CG has the physical comedy down like John Cleese or Steve Martin - and yet he has more charm than George Clooney double-dating with Richard Gere. I'm telling you, he is the MAN.

Cary, you are the MAN.

Anyhow, back to the movie...CG plays a drunk and disorderly soldier left alone to watch for planes on an island in the South Pacific. He is only motivated by his desire to find liquor that his commander has hidden on the island to motivate him.

Enter a damsel in distress...Cary is sent to fetch a diplomat's grown daughter escorting a troop of other diplomats' daughters who have crashed? or been abandoned? on a desert island nearby. He rescues them to his island and they set up house, sort of.

Cary befriends the children, the prim and proper diplomat's daughter can't stay prim and proper on a desert island, and the rest is...history.

The best scene involves a snake bite and is about halfway through the movie.

For that scene if nothing else, this one is also a must-watch.

Three stars. Am watching again right now.

Operation Petticoat (1959)

Cary Grant just keeps working!



Here he is in 1959 playing the captain of a submarine in a tough spot. I'm a little hazy on the details, but somehow this luckless submarine has never seen a battle and yet has too many mechanical problems to be approved to go back into action. Nevertheless, they need to get it under way.

There is a lot of comedy at the expense of the way the Navy runs things. All about requisitioning toilet paper and the black market for parts and supplies. Tony Curtis plays the man adept at working back channels to get things.

The sub ends up taking off without it's proper top coat of paint, so it's pink. Then Tony Curtis convinces the captain to take some WAC nurses on board for the ride. And - you guessed it! - hilarity ensues.

There is a lot of entertainment in young Tony Curtis and mature Cary Grant playing off each other. There is plenty of sexism (and racism where the islanders of the South Pacific are concerned) to go around and the whole movie just gets very silly when they go into battle with the women aboard.

However, there are redeeming points including:

- A scene in which Cary Grant demands Tony Curtis give up his tight white tennis shorts for regular army gear.
- A female engineer teaching a male engineer a thing or two.
- An indescribible scene with a pig being passed off as a soldier.

Two stars - and yet it is a MUST watch.

My Favorite Wife (1940)

Four stars, will definitely watch again.

A shipwrecked woman returns to her family after seven years on a desert island and finds that she has been declared dead and her husband has just married another woman.

There is no sympathy for the other woman, she is an absolute pill but after a half hour of Cary Grant not being able to figure out how to tell his second wife that his first wife is still alive you do kind of want to just pick him up and shake him.



But he just looks so darn cute in his leopard-print bathrobe.

Anyhow, eventually Grant figures out that his wife wasn't alone on the island, he tries to figure out what happened on the island, she tries to hide it, and hilarity ensues!

It's akin to Bringing Up Baby in the combination of physical comedy and comedy of errors.