All About Eve (1950)

My dad tells me that my grandmother really liked Bette Davis. But despite being able to sing along with parts of "Bette Davis Eyes," I realized I had never seen one of her movies. It was time to fix that!

Bette Davis plays Margo Channing, a well-known and respected actress who is starting to wonder if she still feels comfortable playing twenty-somethings as a forty year old.  When her friend Karen (Celeste Holm) brings Eve (Anne Baxter), a young fan with an amazingly sad story,  into her dressing room to meet her after a performance, Margo decides to take Eve on as a new friend.  (Margo, Karen, Karen's playwright husband, and Margo's director boyfriend apparently did not find it creepy that Eve had followed them across the country and had seen every single performance of the play, standing in an alley between performances.)  As Eve inserts herself into more and more of Margo's life, meddling with her relationships and using her theater connections, Margo begins to be suspicious of her motives.  Margo's friends, however, continue to adore Eve, and Margo becomes more and more isolated from everyone she trusts, as Eve becomes more and more creepy.



(If you look closely, there's a very young and very minor character Marilyn Monroe in the background of this photo.)

I guess I'm giving this movie four stars.  Bette Davis is amazing.  Many good lines, and a lot of drama.  I worried about her character a lot during the movie, because I kept waiting for disturbing and upsetting things to happen to her... I loved how Margo ended up back with and finally engaged to her director boyfriend after all the craziness she put him through. She finally let him love her, and I'm so glad he was still there. I don't think I could have taken the movie if it had been all downhill! Good things for Eve as well...

                                                             Bette Davis and my lovely grandmother

The song:

I Married a Witch (1942)

"Thou has denounced me as a witch, and for that thou will be accursed. Thou, and thy children, and thy children’s children." How could you not watch a movie that has this dialogue near the beginning? Apparently Thorne Smith, the creator of the great Cary Grant ghost movie Topper, had an unfinished novel that some lovely people turned into this movie...

I am giving this four stars, and I would definitely watch it again. It was hilarious.

Basically Veronica Lake's character Jennifer is a bad witch (because witches are bad) who gets burned at the stake in "Puritan times." Before she is burned, she curses the man who deounced her so that he and all his male descendents will marry the wrong woman and be miserable in love. Did I mention that in Puritan times we get to see people wearing pilgrim hats? While they say "thou?" Jennifer's soul, along with her crafty and somewhat drunken warlock father's, is trapped in a tree planted over the burning spot. When the tree is struck by lightning in the present day, she and her father are released. Here begins the similarities with Topper... Jennifer and her father appear as witch smoke until they are able to find new bodies for themselves. It is pretty entertaining to watch the little puffs of smoke float around talking to each other, especially when they keep using words like "thou" and "thy." One of the best moments is when the smoke puffs ride a broomstick together. The special effects continue throughout the movie. As soon as Jennifer has a body, she immediately sets out to torture the soon-to-be-married and soon-to-be-elected-governor Wallace Wooley, male descendent of her denouncer. She decides that of course the best way to torture him is to get him to fall in love with her. "True suffereing cometh."



Jennifer gets Wally Wooley to rescue her naked from the depths of the burning "Pilgrim Hotel," and the plot begins to twist and turn. There are so many fun moments. I won't ruin them. Watch this movie!!!

Another Thin Man (1939)

Asta does tricks! I had to rewind a few times to watch. He gets so excited that he does a full backflip. The backflip alone earns this movie at least four stars. Plus, one of my little first graders had just written a story about her dog Canada who she claims can do a flip, so I got to tell my student I watched a movie that made me think of her story. So Asta's backflip made a first grader very happy, too. And now, as the owner of a Thin Man box set, I can watch this movie as many times as I want. Will I ever review a movie I don't like?



Anyways, this Thin Man movie finds Nick and Nora with a baby, Nick Jr. So of course baby humor becomes an important part of the plot, mixed in with the new murders. Imagine all the cute and zany things one can do with a movie baby, especially when the baby's father knows a lot of crooks. Some of Nick's crook friends even throw a baby party for the Charles family...hilarity ensues (am I allowed to use that phrase, too?)

Mostly, ignoring the plots of the different movies, I just continue to love Nick and Nora and their witty dialogue.

I'm left wondering a few things, though, after this movie: As the series goes on, will the movies really remain good? (Although, Amy, you seem to have seen the later ones and liked them...so maybe I shouldn't be worried.) Will Nick Jr. help solve any crimes? Will Nick Jr. and Asta have to take up drinking? And, do all the Thin Man movies need a scene in which all of the characters are forced to get together so that Nick can work his brilliance in front of them all? I need to keep watching and find out.

After The Thin Man (1936)

Many many stars...will watch it many more times along with the first movie...am buying the Thin Man box set!

Ever since rewatching the first Thin Man movie this summer, I have been so excited to see more of the series. I was not disappointed. After the Thin Man picks up right where the first movie left off with Nick and Nora on a train to San Francisco. As they prepare to pull into the station Nora asks, "Are you packing?" to which Nick responds, "Yes, dear, I'm putting away this liquor."

They arrive home ready to sleep for a week and recover from their detective work in New York, only to be dropped right into the middle of a new mystery. Nora's cousin's husband has been missing for three days... Is he dead? Is he with another woman? What does young Jimmy Stewart have to do with all of this? Does Nora ever get her middle-of-the-night scrambled eggs? Asta even gets his own storyline in this movie involving Mrs. Asta and a lot of puppies.



I laughed through the whole movie. Now I just have to wait for Another Thin Man to arrive from the library...