BEFORE: Howard Keel carries over again in my tour of movie musicals, and I've got two more films with him before I can get back to contemporary cinema. I'm so eager to start the new chain, because it's going to lead me to "Black Panther" and "Avengers: Infinity War" eventually, and I'm very excited about that. I saw the preview for "Infinity War" again yesterday when I saw "Star Wars: The Last Jedi" for the second time (with my wife, who was seeing it for the first time) and it really looks fantastic - though I worry about a film with that many characters. (However, fitting it into my schedule was a breeze...)
Here's the schedule for tomorrow, February 20, on TCM's "31 Days of Oscar", and they're back to more nominees and winners for Best Supporting Actor:
6:30 am "Come and Get it" (1936) - Walter Brennan, winner
8:15 am "Tortilla Flat" (1942) - Frank Morgan
10;15 am "The Story of G.I. Joe" (1945) - Robert Mitchum
12:15 pm "The Best Man" (1964) - Lee Tracy
2:00 pm "Broken Arrow" (1950) - Jeff Chandler
3:45 pm "Sweet Bird of Youth" (1962) - Ed Begley, winner
6:00 pm "The Subject Was Roses" (1968) - Jack Albertson, winner
8:00 pm "Viva Zapata!" (1952) - Anthony Quinn, winner
10:00 pm "A Thousand Clowns" (1965) - Martin Balsam, winner
12:15 am "All the President's Men" (1976) - Jason Robards, winner
2:45 am "Ryan's Daughter" (1970) - John Mills, winner
I'm striking out today, I've only see ONE of these, "All the President's Men". (Hey, TCM, why not flip the Monday and Tuesday schedule, so that this film could air on President's Day?) But in my defense, some of these films feel really obscure - I haven't even HEARD of some of them before. This brings my total up to 80 seen out of 221. Down to 36.2%, I've got to finish strong in the remaining categories.
THE PLOT: An ex-husband and wife team star in a musical version of "The Taming of the Shrew"; off-stage the production is troublesome with ex-lovers' quarrels and a gangster looking for some money owed to them.
AFTER: I'll admit that everything I know about Shakespeare's "The Taming of the Shrew", I learned from watching the Richard Burton/Liz Taylor movie last year. Which is fine, because before that all I knew about it came from that spoof they did on "Moonlighting" in the late 80's... But here it serves as the show-within-a-show (and that makes EIGHT films in a row using the show-within-a-show framework...) and the means by which two exes work together again, and we all know what working together in close quarters can do, behind the scenes.
It's essentially your basic love quadrangle here, each of the ex-partners has a new life partner, leading to awkward moments when Lilli comes over to the apartment she used to share with Fred as they start to rehearse for the new show. Soon the younger new dancer shows up (her name is Lois Lane, but it's just a coincidence, no connection to Superman or the Daily Planet...) and she's very affectionate toward Fred. Lilli then reveals that she's engaged to her new man, who's a Texas cattle baron. Sure, all this won't make each other jealous at all...
Comedy (even more than the bard intended) ensues when Lois Lane's other boyfriend (again, not Superman or even Clark Kent) has a gambling debt, and signs Fred's name to the IOU. Two junior mobsters show up on behalf of the big gangster and try to get the money from Fred (they weren't present when the IOU was signed). Fred convinces them he can only pay them if the show runs for a week, so the gangsters have to convince the leading lady not to quit, and this leads to them donning period costumes and appearing in the show, almost like an additional Rosencrantz and Guildenstern who are in the wrong show.
But it feels like more than half of Billy Shakes' original play gets jettisonned here, and I was thinking maybe we'd get to see more of "The Taming of the Shrew" here, while also getting a peek behind the curtain - more of a "Noises Off" type of production, but that's not the way they went with it here. Where's all the discussion about Katharina's dowry? That was another important motivation for Petruchio to marry her, after all. He didn't just do it to win a bet, or to "take one for the team" so that the other suitors could marry Bianca. And what about Lucentio and Hortensio disguising themselves as tutors so they could get closer to Bianca, then Lucentio's father appearing in Padua at precisely the wrong time? All that gets cut out of this production? I'd seriously ask for my money back, the play's the thing, and now the play is only about 10 minutes long.
It's more Cole Porter songs tonight, and I didn't really care for most of them, except maybe there were some clever rhymes in "Where Is the Life That Late I Led?" Of course, I was already familiar with "Too Darn Hot", which was apparently so darn hot that it got cut from the show-within-the-show, only nobody told Lois, so we see her do the dance number in the spacious apartment before the rehearsals begin. Sneaky, I see what you did there. But also late in the film comes the song "Brush Up Your Shakespeare", how did I not know that this song comes from this musical? This song I know, with its rhymes that are alternately clever and cringeworthy.
Clever: "With the wife of the British Ambassida, Try a crack out of "Troilus and Cressida"
Cringeworthy: "If your girl is a Washington Heights dream, Treat the kid to "A Midsummer Night's Dream"
Clever: "If she says your behavior is heinous, Kick her right in the Coriolanus."
Cringeworthy: "Better mention "The Merchant of Venice" When her sweet pound o'flesh you would menace."
And since it's Cole Porter, some of the lines are a bit racy. (I think they cut that last verse from the film, it was also "Too Darn Hot" for a Hollywood movie.) But this was filmed back when you COULD kick a woman right in the "Coriolanus" and not get into trouble for it. Or you could spank a woman right on stage if she started to have her own opinion about things, or if she threatened to walk out of the show. (And you could put that spanking image right on the movie poster, and nobody would find that either strange, or oddly tantalizing...) Again, this was a different time. The poster just ends up giving off a real Russ Meyer or John Waters vibe to me. ("Faster, PussyKate! Kiss! Kiss!")
Also starring Kathryn Grayson (also carrying over from "Show Boat"), Ann Miller (last seen in "Easter Parade"), Keenan Wynn (last seen in "Annie Get Your Gun"), James Whitmore (last seen in "Them!"), Bobby Van, Tommy Rall (last seen in "Pennies From Heaven"), Kurt Kasznar (last seen in "A Farewell to Arms"), Bob Fosse, Ron Randell, Willard Parker, Ann Codee (last seen in "Daddy Long Legs")
RATING: 4 out of 10 broken pitchers
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