The Band Wagon (1953)

I’ve learnt to appreciate the Hollywood musicals of the 1930s but so far I’ve resisted the lure of 1950s musicals. I have childhood memories of seeing all the film versions of the Rogers and Hammerstein musicals, and absolutely hating them. Now I’m thinking I should give the Technicolor musicals of the 50s another chance, and Vincente Minnelli’s The Band Wagon seemed like a reasonable place to start.

Made at MGM in 1953, The Band Wagon was a major box-office hit.

It’s a classic backstage musical. Tony Hunter (Fred Astaire) is a fading movie star. Everybody says he’s washed up. Everybody except his two greatest fans Lily and Lester Marton (Nanette Fabray and Oscar Levant). They’re a composing/songwriting team and they’ve just written a new Broadway musical for Tony. For reasons best known to themselves they have decided that Jeffrey Cordova (Jack Buchanan) should be the director. Cordova is talented but takes himself very seriously indeed, and has never directed a musical. He is a classical actor and he’s just a little bit pompous. In fact he’s very pompous.



Tony realises immediately that Cordova’s style is all wrong for him. Tony is just an old-fashioned song-and-dance man. Cordova wants to create art. Tony has nothing against art, but it’s not him. He’s a hoofer. But he desperately wants to get back on the Broadway stage and against his better judgment he agrees to the deal.

Cordova sees the show as a modern dance version of Faust, whereas Lily and Lester had written it as a light-hearted musical romp. Not surprisingly, when they take the show on the road prior to its New York opening it’s a disaster. The financial backers can’t back out quickly enough.



The opening night party turns into a wake, until Lester suggests that with this all this talent gathered together there’s no reason why they shouldn’t be able to put on a great show. That gets Tony Hunter all fired up and he decides they should abandon all the boring arty stuff and go back to doing Lily and Lester’s original idea of a light-hearted musical romp. Surprisingly, Jeffrey Cordova agrees. He admits he was wrong and now he wants Tony to take over the running of the show, but he still wants to be part of it.

Part of Jeffrey Cordova’s plan for an arty musical was to get prima ballerina Gabrielle Gerard (Cyd Charisse) as the female lead. Gabrielle, under the influence of her agent-manager Paul Byrd (James Mitchell), had always refused to lower herself to doing Broadway shows. But once she’s had a taste of good old-fashioned show business she’s hooked. She wants to do the show. And, in a typical Astaire touch, a dance routine between Tony and Gabrielle lets the audience in on the secret - they’re falling in love.



Ironically, for a movie that promotes the idea of lightweight entertainment over art, the movie has some very arty touches. The famous Girl Hunt ballet sequence is visually dazzling, but it’s very arty as well. It’s almost the sort of thing Jeffrey Cordova would have come up with.

Vincente Minnelli was renowned as one of the greatest exponents of the Hollywood musical and this movie is technically awe-inspiring. It’s filled with the sorts of visual tour-de-forces that can easily become sterile, just technique for technique’s sake (as in Gene Kelly’s musicals). But The Band Wagon has enough warmth and enthusiasm to avoid this pitfall. Minnelli reveals himself as both artist and showman.



And Fred Astaire effortlessly achieves the same combination of seemingly incompatible elements. This movie has a decidedly modern feel for 1953 and Astaire shows that he had no difficulty keeping up with the times. He and Cyd Charisse don’t have quite the chemistry that he had with Ginger Rogers but Charisse is likeable enough and she can certainly dance.

Jack Buchanan is perfect as Cordova. For all his pompousness he has a genuine enthusiasm for what he’s doing and he’s a big enough man to admit he was wrong. And he reveals himself as no mean song-and-dance man. The supporting cast is strong with Oscar Levant and Nanette Fabray contributing to the fun.



Warner Home Video’s Region 4 release comes packed with extras, with Liza Minnelli’s commentary track (with Michael Feinstein) being a highlight. Liza clearly admires her father’s work enormously and her enthusiasm is infectious.

So has The Band Wagon converted me to the case of 1950s Hollywood musicals? Not entirely perhaps, but I’m certainly willing to explore this area in greater depth. The Band Wagon is certainly a thoroughly enjoyable concoction. Highly recommended.

The Long Haul (1957)

The Long Haul is an excellent and unjustly neglected British film noir from 1957. It’s a gritty and very dark movie concerning corruption and crime in the trucking industry. Victor Mature and Diana Dors are the stars. It was made by a small independent producing company and distributed by Columbia Pictures.

Harry Miller (Victor Mature) drives trucks for the US Army in Germany. When he is discharged he plans to return to the States but his English wife Connie persuades him that they should spend a few months in England first. Her family lives in Liverpool and her uncle can get him a job in his long distance trucking business.

Harry soon discovers that this industry is rife with crooked practices and gangsterism. Harry is an honest man and wants nothing to do with it but when his truck is hijacked he finds that no insurance company will touch him and that as a result he cannot get work. Then his friend Casey offers him a job. He tells Harry it’s slightly illegal. In fact it’s highly illegal and it all goes horribly wrong.

The prime mover behind most of the crime in the industry is trucking boss Joe Easy (Patrick Allen). Harry has already had a run-in with Easy and he is about to become involved with Easy in an unexpected and potentially very messy way. Harry has already encountered Joe’s beautiful young girlfriend Lynn (Diana Dors). When Lynn and Joe have a major fight Lynn takes flight in Harry’s truck. Harry has no intention of doing anything other than drive Lynn somewhere where she will be safe but one thing leads to another and they spend the night together.

Apart from causing Harry a lot of grief with both Connie and Joe Easy this also makes things difficult for Lynn’s brother Frank (Peter Reynolds) who works for Joe.

Harry is now sliding into the noir nightmare world. His one night stand with Lynn was bad enough but now she’s fallen in love with him. And he is being drawn deeper into crime. He simply cannot get honest work and then he discovers something that shakes him so much that he longer cares what happens to him. Harry is however basically a nice guy and he has a kid about whom he cares deeply. He also has to admit that he’s in love with Lynn. He thinks he’s given up but he’s not the kind of guy who really gives up.

This is classic film noir with a decent guy who becomes entangled in dirty dealings against his will, and his downfall is brought about by a femme fatale in the person of Lynn. Lynn is not an evil spider woman, in fact she’s basically decent as well, but fate has cast her in the role of the femme fatale.

Victor Mature gave his best performances in film noir and he’s superb here. He is tough but sensitive, he doesn’t go over-the-top but his anguish is obvious as his life slips out of control. Diana Dors gives yet another fine performance confirming her position as the queen of British noir. Lynn has had a tough life and she is both hardboiled and vulnerable. She doesn’t want to wreck Harry’s life but she can’t give him up - he’s the first decent man she’s met. Mature and Dors generate convincing chemistry. Patrick Allen makes a very nasty villain. The supporting cast is very solid.

Writer-director Ken Hughes displays an instinctive feel for the world of film noir. The plot is nothing startlingly original but that could be said of most film noir. It’s the way the material is handled that makes for great film noir and Hughes handles the material with considerable skill. Basil Emmott’s black-and-white cinematography is another major asset.

Columbia’s region-free DVD presents this movie in an excellent anamorphic widescreen transfer.

This would make a great double feature with Hell Drivers, another fine British trucking noir made in the same year.

The Long Haul is highly recommended as a fine example of British film noir. The superb performances by Mature and Dors make it a must-see movie.

The Naughty Flirt (1931)

The Naughty Flirt is a pre-code romantic comedy with very little of the content we expect from pre-code movies. It also contains very little in the way of actual comedy. Regarded as a breezy lightweight romance it’s innocuous enough but not terribly interesting.

It’s a movie that rather nicely sums up one of the great differences between pre-code comedies and the screwball comedies of the early Code era. After 1934 comedies had to be funny. They couldn’t rely on sex, suggestiveness and general outrageousness. If the laughs weren’t there the picture was destined for quick oblivion.

Sadly, The Naughty Flirt is not only short on laughs, it’s also short on sex, suggestiveness and general outrageousness.

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It also pinpoints a major problem with failed comedies. It’s not enough to set up potentially funny situations. The script has to have actual gags, and the performers have to be looking for laughs all the time. This one certainly has the potentially funny situations, but there’s no pay-off.

Kay Elliott (Alice White) is a young heiress, and she’s a bit of a wild thing. At least we’re supposed to regard her as a wild thing. Her friends are a group of Bright Young Things who paint the town red. Well, sort of. The don’t hang out at speakeasies or do anything really wild. They just flirt with each other, and with anyone else who comes along.



Jack Gregory is trying his hardest to persuade Kay to marry him. We will soon discover that he is only after her money, that his wooing of Kay is just a scheme cooked up by Jack and his sister Linda (Myrna Loy) to get their hands on the Elliott money. Jack goes very close to success. As the picture opens these would-be hellraisers are on their way to Night Court to face such drastic charges as squirting ginger ale at passers-by. Jack decides they should take advantage of being in court in order to get married and he just happens to have the marriage licence all ready.

His scheme is wrecked when a rather straitlaced clerk in Kay’s father’s law firm, Alan Ward (Paul Page), rings her father at home to let him know what is transpiring, and is instructed to bring the errant daughter straight home. Being wild and reckless, Kay meekly obeys.



Kay immediately decides to pass the time on the trip home by flirting with Alan. He is unmoved by her performance, which only encourages her. Over the next few weeks she pursues him with an almost frantic energy. Of  course they eventually fall in love, but can their love survive the plotting of the conniving Gregory siblings?

Paul Page is a dull leading man. It comes as no surprise that his Hollywood career was a brief one. Alice White has plenty of enthusiasm although her accent is ludicrously unconvincing. No girl who had attended such good schools (from all of which she’s been expelled) would speak with such a nasal twang. Her career had fizzled out by the late 30s as well. She’s passable and with a better script she might have been OK. Myrna Loy does nothing to indicate that she was already on the road to stardom. The remainder of the cast members are uniformly forgettable.



Neither scriptwriters Richard Weil and Earl Baldwin nor director Edward F. Cline are able to give this story any zest and the one thing for which we can be grateful is that this lifeless movie only runs for 56 minutes.

The Warner Archive made-on-demand DVD pairs this one with Loose Ankles, which is an infinitely better Loretta Young pre-code picture. Buy the disc for Loose Ankles and think of The Naughty Flirt as one of those extras you don’t really need to bother watching.

Dangerous Crossing (1953)

Dangerous Crossing was based on a radio play by John Dickson Carr, a writer of detective fiction who was regarded as the master of the “locked-room” mystery. Dangerous Crossing isn’t quite a locked-room mystery but it does have many similarities to this sub-genre in the sense that it deals with an apparently inexplicable occurrence.

It was made at 20th Century-Fox in 1953 and directed by Joseph M. Newman. It was a low-budget movie that looked very expensive because it used lavish shipboard sets built for two other big-budget Fox movies that were made at about the same time - Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and Titanic. So it’s effectively a B-picture with A-picture production values.

The inexplicable event in Dangerous Crossing is the disappearance from a cruise ship of John Bowman, the husband of Ruth Bowman (Jeanne Crain). They had been married for just four days. He boarded the ship with her, carried her over the threshold of their cabin, Cabin B16, and then said he had to make a quick trip to the Purser’s Office. And that was the last Ruth saw of her husband.



Even stranger, when she tries to return to their cabin she is informed that it is empty. And there is no record of any cabin being booked for either a John Bowman or a Ruth Bowman. But there is a cabin booked for a Ruth Stanton, which is her maiden name. It’s Cabin B18.

Not surprisingly Ruth has a bit of a crack-up at this point. She cannot persuade anybody to believe her story (up to this point the plot is almost identical to an excellent British movie So Long at the Fair made three years earlier). She is placed under the care of the Ship’s Doctor, Dr Paul Manning (Michael Rennie).



Dr Manning is very sceptical of her story as well but he is at least prepared to listen to her, and even sends off a wire to the Bureau of Missing Persons. And he’s sympathetic. Then things get stranger. Ruth’s missing husband phones her, tells her they’re both in great danger, that it would be too risky for them to be seen together, and that he’ll phone her again tomorrow.

Of course she has no evidence that this phone call was ever made and it has the effect of confirming the suspicions that she is crazy. Even Dr Manning starts to come around to this way of thinking.



The solution to the mystery is ingenious and the plot is well-constructed. The tension is maintained throughout the short 75-minute running time. Director Newman does a very competent job and makes the most of the shipboard setting. There’s some very effective and moody film noir-style black-and-white cinematography (thanks to the very talented director of photography Joseph LaShelle who always did this kind of thing very well).

This movie in some ways marks the end of an era. It’s a classic film noir-styled B-movie mystery of a kind that the major studios, sadly, had pretty much stopped making by the mid-50s. It’s a product of the studio system - a cheap movie that is expertly made because the studios had such a wealth of talent under contract.



Jeanne Crain does well in the leading role. She doesn’t overdo the hysteria but she very effectively conveys the mental anguish of Ruth. Michael Rennie makes a satisfactory leading man in a role where the biggest danger is the character would come across as being too bland. Rennie mostly succeeds in avoiding this danger. Being a major studio picture it benefits from a very competent supporting cast.

The Fox DVD is up to the very high standards of their other Film Noir releases, with an excellent transfer, a brief documentary on the movie and a commentary track.

Its claim to being a film noir is slightly dubious, although it does have the visual style. Overall this is an assuming but thoroughly enjoyable mystery.

Loose Ankles (1930)

Loose Ankles is a silly lightweight pre-code fun movie that is impossible to dislike.

Made by First National Pictures in 1930, it stars Loretta Young and Douglas Fairbanks Jr. This was back in the days when Loretta Young still played bad girl roles, and played them delightfully.

Young plays Ann Harper Berry, an heiress with a problem. Under the terms of her grandfather’s rather curious will she inherits a great deal of money. But she only gets the money if she gets married. And all the other beneficiaries under the will only get their share of the loot if she gets married. To add to her annoyance, she has to marry someone who meets with the approval of her straitlaced uncle and her two even more straitlaced aunts.

Ann doesn’t particularly want to get married to anyone and she certainly doesn’t intend to marry under those circumstances. She already has plenty of money so she doesn’t really need the inheritance, and she’s something of a rebel anyway so she determines to scupper any plans to marry her off.

There’s another odd provision in the will. If any member of the family is involved in a scandal that gets into the newspapers then nobody inherits anything. All the money goes to a home for stray cats and dogs. This provision is like a red rag to a bull - Ann is now determined to become involved in a juicy scandal as soon as possible. But how does one create a scandal? She’s pretty sure she’s going to need a man to help her. But how to find a suitable man? That’s simple. She places an advertisement in the newspaper for a young, handsome, unscrupulous man.

The ad attracts the notice of a couple of male escorts,  Andy and Terry. They’re tempted to apply for what sounds like an interesting job but then they remember their friend Gil (Douglas Fairbanks Jr). He needs money badly but he’s always resisted the idea of becoming a gigolo. Nonetheless Andy and Terry persuade him to answer the ad.

Ann now has the man, but she’s still not sure how to go about this scandal business. She knows he has to get her into a compromising position, but she’s never been compromised before. Luckily her maid has been compromised plenty of times so she’s able to offer Ann some advice. This all leads up to some very risque and very funny dialogue, with double entendres all over the place.

The maid assures Ann that the first thing she needs to do is to get the young man’s clothes off. This she proceeds to do by means of a number of ingenious stratagems. But just as he’s about to compromise her they have a change of heart. They’ve realised that this is not a game any more. They’re in love. Unfortunately Ann has already arranged for the arrival of newspaper reporters to photograph her being compromised.  And then her uncle and her aunts turn up. Now Ann and Gil have to do some quick thinking to avoid the very scandal that Ann had been so keen on. Gil solves the problem by leaping through the window.

Ann now has a new problem. She doesn’t even know the name of the charming young man she’s just fallen in love with. Trying to locate him will lead her to the Circus Cafe, which is in reality a very swanky speakeasy. A speakeasy that her uncle, a keen prohibitionist and morals crusader, has just arranged to have raided. Her aunts’ attempt to extricate Ann from this looming new scandal will end in a drunken spree with Andy and Terry, our two good-natured gigolos.

As pre-code movies go this one is more determinedly immoral than most, and the sexual innuendos are not exactly subtle. Pretty much everything revolves around sex and booze. Even morals crusaders get into the swing of the sex and booze thing.

Loretta Young was just seventeen when she made this picture but she was already a veteran actress with nearly twenty films behind her, having made her movie debut at the age of four. She’s delightful, as she was in most of her pre-code roles. Ann isn’t really a bad girl, she just enjoy the idea of being wicked. The younger Fairbanks was always likeable and they make a great romantic couple. Inez Courtney as Ann’s friend Betty and Edward J. Nugent and Norman Selby as Andy and Terry provide good comic support, with some help from Louise Fazenda and Ethel Wales as Ann’s aunts.

The scenes in the Circus Cafe are a highlight - this is a speakeasy with a complete circus as the floorshow. The circus includes a leopard trainer but his leopard is an attractive young woman in a leopard suit, which adds a bit more pre-code outrageousness (especially when he cracks the whip to keep her in line).

The movie has a few pacing problems but generally speaking it’s a fun and frothy and rather naughty pre-code treat. This one is a must for pre-code fans.

This movie is part of a Warner Archive made-on-demand double-header. I’ve never had any problems with these discs until recently but I had major problems with this one. Luckily I have four DVD players since the first three refused to play the disc at all. I’ve had the same problems with two other recently purchased Warner Archive discs. So although I recommend the movie I can’t under any circumstances recommend the DVD. In fact I’d advise you to steer well clear of these discs.

The General (1926)

The General, released in 1926, is usually regarded as Buster Keaton’s masterpiece. Personally I’ve never been a fan of silent comedies but I do make an exception for Keaton.

I still think Our Hospitality is a funnier film, but The General does have its moments.



Keaton plays Johnnie Gray, an engine driver who tries to enlist in the Confederate army in the Civil War but is turned down on the grounds that he can serve the South better as an engineer than as a soldier. That earns him the scorn of his true love, Annabelle (Marion Mack). Well actually his first love is his locomotive,The General, but Annabelle runs a close second.

A year later Johnnie gets his opportunity to play the hero. Union spies steal The General, intending to head north with while demolishing the railroad line behind the engine to cut off supplies to the Southern forces. Johnnie sets off in pursuit, alone but undaunted. Eventually he not only steals back his beloved train, he also comes into possession of secret Union war plans. He has to make his way back to the Confederate lines with a train full of Union soldiers in hot pursuit.



When The General was stolen Annabelle was taken prisoner. He rescues her and she provides him with some help, and some hindrance.

This mad chase affords Keaton plenty of opportunities to display his gifts for visual humour. The movie is funny but it’s also exciting and rather moving - you can’t help rooting for the valiant if somewhat foolhardy Johnnie.



There’s not much to be said about Keaton’s acting. His deadpan expression was part of his style and it’s a style that worked for him.

As a writer and director he was innovative and imaginative. His visual gags are often complex and must have been an enormous challenge to film.



I don’t rate this movie quite as highly as most people do but it is undeniably funny, and it avoids the emotional manipulation practised by his great rival Chaplin. That in my opinion makes Keaton’s movies much more enjoyable than Chaplin’s.

The Region 4 DVD from Force Entertainment includes a couple of Keaton’s shorts. The Balloonatic is actually funnier than the main feature. Picture quality is pretty good.

Sleepers West (1941)

Sleepers West, released in 1941, was the second of seven 20th Century-Fox B-movies featuring private detective Michael Shayne. Shayne was created by Brett Halliday and appeared in a total of 77 novels. The later Mike Shayne books were standard hardboiled detective thrillers but the early books were apparently detective stories with a fairly strong helping of comedy, and these early books were clearly the inspiration for the movie series.

Unfortunately crime B-movies with an admixture of comedy were a dime-a-dozen in the 30s and 40s so the movies come across as being rather generic examples of the Hollywood B-movie. On the plus side the 20th Century-Fox Mike Shayne movies starred Lloyd Nolan, always a delightfully entertaining actor.

In Sleepers West Mike Shayne has to escort a key witness to give evidence at a murder trial. A difficult task in itself, since there are people who intend that this witness should not reach her destination alive.

The job is made doubly difficult by the fact that the witness is Helen Carlson (Mary Beth Hughes). Helen is a bubbly blonde and she’s a very pleasant young woman, but unfortunately she’s a young woman who is very fond of a drink. Preferably quite a few drinks. She’s also rather fond of male company. Persuading her to sit quietly in her compartment in the train and not get into trouble is a task that will tax Shayne’s ingenuity to the full.

To add to Shayne’s problems, Kay Bentley is also a passenger on the train. Kay is a newspaper reporter. She’s an old pal of Shayne’s and he likes her well enough but he knows from experience that if she gets even the faintest whiff of a good story there’ll be no stopping her.

Sure enough Mike’s fears are realised when Helen not only gets access to liquor, she gets access to a man as well. He’s running away from his wife, in search of adventure. And Helen seems like the kind of gal who could provide plenty of adventure.

Of course there is a killer on board the train as well, so Mike will have his hands well and truly full. And to make his existence even more miserable, Kay gets wind of Helen’s presence on the train.

The story is played more for good-humoured amusement than real suspense. There are a few tense moments but the bad guys are mostly bumbling incompetents and the railway detective who thinks he’s stumbled onto a big case is just as bad. He is convinced that Helen’s new boyfriend is an embezzler (in fact there is no embezzler of any kind on the train) and his attempts to pull off a daring arrest go disastrously awry.

It’s all entertaining enough in a low-key way. The likeable cast is a major asset. Lloyd Nolan as Mike Shayne is good-natured although the role doesn’t exactly stretch his acting talents.

Lynn Bari is good as Kay Bentley. Mary Beth Hughes steals the picture as Helen Carlson. She’s a bit of a bad girl but not she’s not really very bad. Mostly she’s just a girl who likes a good time and has had some bad breaks. She’s bubbly and charming.

The DVD (from the Fox Mike Shayne boxed set) is exceptionally good.

Lightweight but enjoyable B-movie fun. Recommended.

I've reviewed two more of the Mike Shayne movies, Michael Shayne, Private Detective and The Man Who Wouldn't Die.