Hey, guys, I hate to interrupt your amusing reverie about Stephen Boyd, but I have a question and thought others might find a few interesting Doris items on tonight's TCM agenda.
Here's the schedule for tonight, Wed. April 4th. (All times shown are ET):
8:00 PM
Midnight Lace (1960)
A young woman can't get anyone to believe she's being stalked.
Dir: David Miller Cast: Doris Day , Rex Harrison , John Gavin .
C-108 mins, TV-PG, Letterbox Format
10:00 PM
Storm Warning (1950)
A model on vacation discovers that her sister's husband is a murderous Ku Klux Klansman.
Dir: Stuart Heisler Cast: Ginger Rogers , Ronald Reagan , Doris Day .
BW-91 mins, TV-14,
11:45 PM
The Winning Team (1952)
Baseball great Grover Cleveland Alexander fights his way back from a blinding injury.
Dir: Lewis Seiler Cast: Doris Day , Ronald Reagan , Frank Lovejoy .
BW-98 mins, TV-G, CC,
1:30 AM
Julie (1956)
A stewardess is stalked by her psychotic estranged husband.
Dir: Andrew L. Stone Cast: Doris Day , Louis Jourdan , Barry Sullivan .
BW-98 mins, TV-PG, CC, Letterbox Format
3:30 AM
The West Point Story (1950)
A Broadway producer tries to put on a show at the legendary military academy.
Dir: Roy Del Ruth Cast: James Cagney , Virginia Mayo , Doris Day .
BW-107 mins, TV-PG, CC,
Question:
Does anyone else have a hard time watching movies where
Doris Day spends most of the film crying and in hysterics? You couldn't pay me to watch
Midnight Lace or
Julie again because of the awful spectacle of the poor woman coming apart at the seams in both movies--and I like many of the other people in both movies. It just seems voyeuristic and cruel to watch an actress go through this. Either Doris had a lot more technique than I ever knew, or she really was pushed around by that hubby of hers who picked out these roles for her.
Items that interest me on Tonight's TCM Schedule:
Storm Warning is fascinating because it is about the Ku Klux Klan, but Warner Brothers--a studio that once had cujones in the '30s & '40s--was so worried about the chilly political climate of the period that they forgot to mention racism or religious prejudice as the animating forces of this organization. And of course, they wanted to show this movie in Southern theaters.
The screenwriters [one of whom, Richard Brooks, who became a noted director, rarely spoke of this film in later life, perhaps because of the script's timidity] definitely saw
A Streetcar Named Desire and thought their in-house bad boy,
Steve Cochran could be a hayseed version of Stanley Kowalski, while
Ginger Rogers got to be a very durable version of Blanche and
Doris could be an ideal thoughtless Stella! I'm amazed that Tennessee Williams didn't sue, though maybe his recent check from WB for the actual film of "Streetcar..." covered all the bases with him.
Other than the fact that the movie pussyfoots around reality, its partial view of a certain type of mentality is quite well presented, dramatizing a "working man's association" that exploited white blue collar laborers by stealing their dues and pinning the blame for trouble on "outside agitators." The film did a good job tapping into real class tensions and rural frustrations with characters searching for blame for conditions that don't have easy explanations. The mob scenes (with even a few African-American faces sprinkled among the crowd) are tense and harrowing at times, but please be warned, the film is still remarkably violent at times.
Cochran, Ginger and
Doris are all very good in the film, though
Ronald Reagan, in one of his last parts at Warner''s, seems kind of squishy as a special investigator- prosecutor. I actually like
Reagan as an actor most of the time, but he doesn't seem to be interested here. There
is a good bit by character actor
Ned Glass as the somewhat conscience-stricken owner of a bowling alley. Ned is the only person in the movie who clearly might know a thing or three about racism and prejudice first hand, (shhh, the filmmakers are too wimped out to say so out loud, but Ned, who is given the vaguely ethnic name of "George Athens," is J-e-w-i-s-h). Shortly after this movie and his funny appearance as the wardrobe man pushing the threadbare cat suits in
The Bad and the Beautiful, Ned's career took an almost decade long nose-dive thanks in part to harassment from McCarthyites. I wrote a kind of conflicted blog on this movie
here if you are interested. I would love to know others' opinions of this movie.
The Winning Team (1952):
I sort of liked this the first time I saw it, though I realize it is kind of a carbon copy of
The Stratton Story with bad luck and human frailty interfering with a golden career in baseball and threatening a happy marriage. Reagan seems to have thrived in these roles that allowed him to get sick and be vulnerable (The Gipper in
Knute Rockne All American, legless Drake in
King's Row, the epileptic scientist in
Night Unto Night and this movie). I was just wondering if others liked this movie or saw it as sort of manipulative?