The Silver Screen Oasis

Yay! I'll have to add that bad guy to the list of others with my last name. It's always someone not nice. I don't know why.

I really need to start diving into these Carole comedies. They are always my cup of tea and I forget to look for them when I'm searching for movies to watch. I love thirties comedies.

Here is another Carole Lombard comedy for you to dive in. "True Confession" is everything a screwball comedy ought to be except well known. It stars Carole and Fred MacMurray, again, and John Barrymore. It's silly, convoluted and fun. It is awash in a sea of wonderful performances. Fred is mostly the only normal one here as he must survive married life with a frustrated author and chronic liar.

The plot, such as it is, involves Carole being charged with the murder of a family friend who has hired her and is convinced that the evidence against her is so overwhelming that the only thing she can do is claim self defense to be acquitted. (Yes, it is a comedy.) Fred is an attorney who has to defend her. See, I said it was convoluted but, it sure is fun.

John Barrymore, in yet another crazed performance, lives in a most ill fitting suit all the while trying to find his way into a drink and enjoying a rather odd obsession with balloons. Only later do we find out what he is up to and it is no good.

This whole thing seems to be an idea of taking a melodrama and turning it inside out. Good idea.

A wonderful and manic cast includes Porter Hall, Una Merkel and Lynne Overman and Edgar Kennedy. I don't know if it will have you laughing out loud but you have to admire it for the audacity of being so crazy. This may be the daffiest of Carole's films after "Godfrey." You won't find any social commentary here but you won't feel the loss.

Courtesy of Netflix and the Carole Lombard Glamour Collection.

This sounds perfectly adorable! I don't think I've ever even heard of it. What a supporting cast. Porter Hall? Sign me up!

There is kind of a dark side to it. As they are going through the trial everyone is hung up on the idea that she might "fry." Going to the electric chair is kind of a weird thing for a comedy but they don't let it stop them.

Oh man, Chris, I don't know how I have let this one slip by. It's going on my immediate watch list. Everything about it sounds good. And you would have had me at the mention of Una Merkel and Porter Hall, two of my very favorite supporting actors.

"I'm a Medford man. Medford, Oregon!"

Never get enough of that Medford man! I just recently watched the movie Intruder in the Dust for the first time. I actually had to look up the actor who played the dad, he was so good. It was Porter Hall!

It's a bird. It's a plane. It's...MEDFORD MAN!

I compared a couple of those movie review paperbacks on 'True Confession." Leonard Maltin, 2004, hated it (1 1/2 stars.) Steven Scheuer (1988) like it at 3 stars.

I had a feeling it would be the kind that people would love or hate. Even your mood may decide for you.

I am game for it. I really have neglected Lombard in my viewing, missing out on this one, Swing High Swing Low (which I have seen when I was young, but have no memory of), Love Before Breakfast and The Princess Comes Across. I think sometimes I don't want to run out of a certain person's movies, which makes me reluctant to seek out some of them.

I think I have "Swing Low, Swing High" on a VHS recording from several years ago that I need to get out. I like Fred and Carole together.

One of these days I'll remember to watch all the movies I have bookmarked in my head.

JackFavell wrote:One of these days I'll remember to watch all the movies I have bookmarked in my head.

I have a Movie Log Binder that serves me one purpose to watch movies that I have not seen yet - from any source - friend, family, Silver Screen Oasis, and others sources of information that helps me guide my way to cinematic pleasure. Works for me the past 30 years and I've not stopped using it.

I've over 150 movies that I want to watch and every time I see a movie on that list - I cross it off and the list gets shorter by the minute.

I just can't do that, Erik, because once I make a list, it makes me immediately never want to watch anything on it.

I don't deal with regimentation very well.