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Celebrate the Golden Age of the Silver Screen!
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MAY 1
PAT AND MIKE
Tracy and Hepburn's seventh movie together. Kate's a super athlete who blunders whenever her fiancé appears. As her hands-on manager, Spence figures lover-boy should get the heave-ho. "[They] play together so expertly that their previous films seem like warm-ups... It's as close to perfect as you'd want it to be."-Pauline Kael. 1952
"Not much meat on her, but what's there is cherce."--Spencer Tracy admiring Katharine Hepburn's backside
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Spencer Tracy proves to be a very hands-on manager
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FYI
Making this movie was like old home week. Tracy and Hepburn in their seventh of nine movies they made together; George Cukor, her great friend, had directed them twice before (in Keeper of the Flame and Adam's Rib) -- and it was the eighth time Cukor had directed her. Plus, all three were great buddies with screenwriters Garson Kanin and his wife Ruth Gordon.
Great sports stars of the time turn up here: Olympian Babe Didrickson Zaharias; golfers Beverly Hanson, Betty Hicks, and Helen Dettweiler; and championship tennis players Gussie Moran, Alice Marble, Don Budge, and Frank Parker.
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JUNE 5
THE CAINE MUTINY
On the minesweeper Caine, Captain Queeg wants respect. His men want competence. Everybody's disappointed. And when Humphrey Bogart's Queeg chokes in a typhoon, his first officer mutinies. Then the storm really begins. "It offers the chance to see some of the finest studio actors working at the top of their game... excellent performances."--Slant Magazine. 1954
"Ah, but the strawberries! That's where I had them. They laughed and made jokes, but I proved beyond a shadow of a doubt, and with geometric logic, that a duplicate key to the wardrobe did exist."--Bogart's Queeg slowly going nuts on the stand
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They're all looking in the wrong direction for the villain
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FYI
First came Herman Wouk's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, published in 1951. Then came Wouk's play, The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial, which ran on Broadway for 415 performances, throughout most of 1954. In the middle of its run, the movie appeared.
According to Wikipedia.com, "Some Navy personnel complained at the time that Wouk had taken every twitch of every commanding officer in the Navy and put them all into one character."
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JULY 3
THE MARK OF ZORRO
Villains control Old California! But Tyrone Power's Diego refuses to submit to tyranny, and his outlaw Zorro - the Fox! - comes to the rescue. This masked avenger battles the evildoers, led by Basil Rathbone, and romances Linda Darnell. "Power swashbuckles his way through this wonderfully acted and directed romp... Lots of swordplay."--Videohound. 1940
"They heated the water for my bath too early. It was positively tepid! By the time more was carried and properly scented... Life can be trying, don't you think?"--Tyrone Power's Diego, successfully keeping up his disguise as a fop
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Clever Zorro knows how charming he is!
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FYI
Batman, Superman, Captain Marvel... Zorro came before all of these masked, caped crusaders fighting for the underdog. A character in a pulp novel in 1919, he first appeared on the screen played by Douglas Fairbanks in 1920 -- and he pops up regularly on television and more recent movies.
In a swashbuckler, we need actors proficient at swordplay. To our delight, we have Basil Rathbone, who seemed to spend half his professional life fencing on camera. According to IMDB.com, he had high marks for Power's ability as well: "Tyrone Power could fence Errol Flynn into a box."
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AUGUST 7
TOPPER
After they die, the eternally madcap Kerbys (Cary Grant and Constance Bennett) must do one good deed. They decide to show their stuffy, conservative banker Cosmo Topper how to have a good time - Kerby style. A haunting we will go! "Bright and sophisticated... The special effects are amazing... very entertaining."--carygrant.net. 1937
"Don't teeter, Topper."--Cary Grant cautioning Roland Young
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If Topper can't beat the Kerbys, then he'll join them!
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FYI
Cary Grant's 28th movie. 1937 also treated audiences to The Awful Truth, in which he starred with Irene Dunne. He'd appeared several years before with Mae West and Katharine Hepburn, but this was the year he really attracted the right kind of attention.
"For those who don't know why Constance Bennett was a big movie star," says Pauline Kael, "her provocative, teasing Marion Kirby should provide the answer."
We're sophisticated when it comes to special effects, so we may roll our eyes when we see pens signing hotel registers and suitcases carried by invisible hands. But audiences were delighted and mystified at the time.
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