[*A to Z of Movies*]

DINNER AT EIGHT (1933)

[Actor/Movie Association Game]

THEY DRIVE BY NIGHT (1940)

[*A to Z of Movies*]

X THE UNKNOWN (1958)

[A to Z of Characters]

Isaac the bartender -- played by Ted Lange on TV's The Love Boat

[*A to Z of actresses and actors*:)]

Underdown, Edward

[What title has this word in it?]

WOMAN OF THE YEAR (1942)

Next: Sky

[Actor/Movie Association Game]

GALLANT BESS (1946)

[*A to Z of Movies*]

UP THE DOWN STAIRCASE (1967)

[*A to Z of actresses and actors*:)]

Rogers, Kenny

[Actor/Movie Association Game]

TWICE BLESSED (1945)

[*A to Z of Movies*]

SUEZ (1938)

[Actor/Movie Association Game]

ANNIE OAKLEY (1935)

[*A to Z of actresses and actors*:)]

Powell, William

[*A to Z of Movies*]

THE QUIET MAN (1952)

[Actor/Movie Association Game]

NOTORIOUS (1946)

[TCM and Other Sources for Classic Film]

Wednesday September 28, 2022

Premiere on TCM

beverly of graustark

[TCM schedules]

Wednesday September 28, 2022

[*A to Z of actresses and actors*:)]

North, Sheree

[*A to Z of Movies*]

OCTOPUSSY (1983)

[What year...which film?]

1960: MIDNIGHT LACE

Next: Joan Crawford ordered something else.

[Actor/Movie Association Game]

Jane Powell

[*A to Z of actresses and actors*:)]

Louise, Tina

[*A to Z of Movies*]

THE MATING OF MILLIE (1948)

[Neglected films...how would you define a film that's neglected?]

While we are on the subject of Irene Dunne today, I want to share something I read about her. After NEVER A DULL MOMENT, she made IT GROWS ON TREES, a comedy for Universal in 1952. Her career as a movie star suddenly ended, and I often wondered why. She did a few special guest appearances on television but mostly she just disappeared from the screen.

I read an interview she did years later, when she was asked why her film career ended so abruptly. She said that she was offered some very good parts in the mid-1950s. One of them was an offer to play Grace Kelly's mother in THE SWAN, a role she wanted to do. But while MGM was eager to have her appear in the picture, they would only agree to fourth billing for her, after Grace Kelly, Alec Guinness and Louis Jourdan. 

Irene Dunne's husband was a doctor who was very protective of his wife, and he considered her a star not a supporting actress. So he told his wife to turn down the role in THE SWAN, because fourth-billing was not acceptable. He said that she needed to be someone whose movie career ended on top, as a star. So that's what happened. 

I think that if she had been willing to transition into a supporting actress, with her husband's blessing, she would have made many additional classic films. She could have retained star billing if she had attempted to do a weekly television series, the way so many her generation did. But she left it all behind and focused on her life as a mother, grandmother and doctor's wife. Our loss.

[Neglected films...how would you define a film that's neglected?]

Today's neglected film is from 1950. It has aired 23 times on TCM.

Though Irene Dunne and Fred MacMurray had only appeared together in one previous picture, Paramount’s INVITATION TO HAPPINESS (1939), they were good friends and eager to reunite on screen. Miss Dunne was coming off an Oscar-nominated turn for I REMEMBER MAMA, and she would only make one more film after this. After her last picture, she teamed up with MacMurray for a third costarring venture, a radio program called Bright Star which aired during the 1952-53 season and ran for 52 episodes.

In NEVER A DULL MOMENT (no relation to Disney’s 1968 offering with the same title), Miss Dunne is cast as a singer-songwriter that falls for Mr. MacMurray, who plays a Wyoming cowboy. The script for this romantic comedy-drama is based on a bestselling autobiographical novel by Kay Swift, an east coast composer who was hired to direct light music at the 1939 World’s Fair. During the World Fair rodeo, Miss Swift met and fell in love with a cowboy from Oregon not Wyoming.

Their whirlwind courtship led to marriage. She moved out west and adjusted to life on her new husband’s ranch. In a way it’s a version of THE EGG AND I, which previously featured MacMurray…and the gist of the story concerns itself with the misadventures Dunne has in a rustic environment as a proverbial fish out of water. She expends a lot of energy winning over the locals.

While some of the incidents depicted on screen may come across naive to a modern audience, the scenario probably seemed fresh and innovative in 1950. The lines spoken by the two leads convey sharp comedic timing and wit. To say that Dunne and MacMurray are well–matched is an understatement, and the pairing reminds me of MacMurray’s earlier work with Carole Lombard. Miss Dunne was a skilled singer who excelled at dramatic stories, but she also had a natural flair for comedy, going back to her first comedic vehicle THEODORA GOES WILD.

The wild and woolly antics that occur during the movie are put over with help from an excellent supporting cast. Natalie Wood and Gigi Perreau are on hand as MacMurray’s daughters from a previous marriage.

Meanwhile, a rival rancher provides conflict in a subplot about a battle for water rights. He’s played by William Demarest, who later teamed up with MacMurray on the long-running TV sitcom My Three Sons.

If there’s a bit of familiarity to the proceedings, that is not exactly a drawback. Sometimes we like to be able to predict the outcome. This is a good old-fashioned story about two people from different worlds coming together to build a new life. Though the marriage of Miss Swift and her cowboy rancher husband didn’t last, the fictional version played by Dunne and MacMurray will…because they make a perfect couple who can go the distance.