BEFORE: It's the final day of the Howard Keel chain, and I'll explain tomorrow why I put this one last. Really, it's the end of the chain I began on January 1, and it feels like old home week where the cast is concerned. I'm tying up a lot of loose ends tonight, with the lead actress from "Royal Wedding" returning, and the 2nd male lead from "Kiss Me Kate" also playing one of the 7 brothers. There's even a guy in here somewhere who played in "Daddy Long Legs", so everything sort of connects to everything else, even if there's no actor from tonight's film carrying over to the next film.
But we're back out on the frontier in the 1800's, just like in "Annie Get Your Gun" and "Show Boat", for whatever reason the people who made musicals in the 1950's were obsessed with this time period, it seems.
Here's the schedule for tomorrow, February 22, on TCM's "31 Days of Oscar", and they're back on Best Actor nominees and winners:
6:00 am "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" (1932) - Fredric March, winner
8:00 am "Bright Victory" (1951) - Arthur Kennedy
9:45 am "Fanny" (1961) - Charles Boyer
12:00 pm "Watch on the Rhine" (1943) - Paul Lukas, winner
2:00 pm "Life With Father" (1947) - William Powell
4:00 pm "Love Me or Leave Me" (1955) - James Cagney
6:15 pm "Babes in Arms" (1939) - Mickey Rooney
8:00 pm "Goodbye, Mr. Chips" (1939) - Robert Donat, winner
10:15 pm "Marty" (1955) - Ernest Borgnine, winner
12:00 am "Sergeant York" (1941) - Gary Cooper, winner
2:30 am "Cyrano de Bergerac" (1950) - José Ferrer, winner
4:45 am "The Goodbye Girl" (1977) - Richard Dreyfuss, winner
I can only claim three tonight, "Marty", "Sergeant York" and "The Goodbye Girl". I've seen the OTHER version of "Goodbye, Mr. Chips" (the one with Peter O'Toole) and I've got the OTHER version of "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" (the one with Spencer Tracy) on my list, so those don't count. Another 3 out of 12 brings my total up to 84 seen out of 246. Down to 34.1%
THE PLOT: In 1850's Oregon, when a backwoodsman brings a wife home to his farm, his six brothers decide that they want to get married, too.
AFTER: Going in I knew very little about this musical, other than the fact that there would be seven brothers at some point, and it seemed like they'd all be getting married. Yep, there are those crack movie instincts kicking in, all right. But since this is set in the 1850's in addition to that plot we get a whole lot of outdated attitudes about men and women's roles out on the frontier. Seems like the wimmenfolk are only good for cooking and laundry and keeping a fella warm on a cold winter night (and wouldn't you know, winter's about 8 months long up in this part of Oregon...)
It starts when the oldest brother, Adam, comes into town to do a little trading, and decides to find himself a wife there. But since he knows very little about romance, having been raised in the back woods, it's more of a business deal to him - so naturally he chooses the woman who cooks and serves at the local eatery, because he needs someone who can cook for all of his brothers. Umm, and he sort of forgets to mention his 6 brothers when he sweeps poor Milly off her feet - instead she falls for the promise of co-owning a piece of land and running a farm, which she's kind of always wanted to do. (This is how the Portland area works, one day you're working at a diner, the next you're starting your own farm to raise artisanal eggs and locally-sourced grass-fed beef...)
Milly not only serves food, but gets the brothers to shave and clean themselves up and learn some manners, she even teaches them how to dance and how to court women, lessons that she probably wished her own husband had learned. When the brothers finally come to town for a social event, they accidentally end up inventing the dance-off - who knew? It seems there are only so many women to go around in this part of Oregon, so if the brothers want to get brides, they kind of have to take ones that are already promised to other men. Hey, that's just manifest destiny, how our country grew - if you see something you like, feel free to take it from whoever's already got it.
And this becomes quite literal after the brothers are pining over the women they met - Milly suggests they "go out and get 'em", but Adam takes this the wrong way, using the Roman story about the Sabine Women as a guide. Ha, ha, the kidnapping of teenage girls is just rife with comedy, isn't it? What could be funnier than throwing a blanket over a woman's head, dragging her back to your wagon and bringing her to your isolated cabin in the woods? (Do they want to marry them, or eat them?).
A convenient avalanche means that no one from the town can pursue the kidnapped women until the snow melts, and even though Milly makes the brothers sleep in the barn, and Adam heads up to his trapping cabin on the mountain, a form of Stockholm syndrome kicks in, and the women end up falling for the brothers in the end, anyway. Well, they did take them away from their parents, and they did at least bring some excitement into their otherwise drab lives. Sure, why not start six relationships with a mass kidnapping? (Really?)
NITPICK POINT: If there's a barn raising event, is it really smart to have four teams compete to see who can raise their wall the fastest? I mean, it's played for comedy here because it turns into a brawl (after the brothers promised Milly that they wouldn't fight) but what if there wasn't a fight? Do you really want a barn to be constructed by people trying to do it as quickly, and therefore as shoddily, as possible? I bet nobody ever built a barn this way more than once.
This was a really great film to watch on a day when the weather really started to feel like spring - which happens at a key moment near the end of the film. I also just realized that I passed the end of the show-within-a-show musicals, there were eight of them in a row, but the last one was "Kiss Me Kate". Tomorrow I'm going to watch a different kind of musical, a more modern one.
Also starring Jane Powell (last seen in "Royal Wedding"), Jeff Richards, Russ Tamblyn (last seen in "Drive"), Tommy Rall (last seen in "Kiss Me Kate"), Matt Mattox (last seen in "Easter Parade"), Marc Platt, Jacques D'Amboise, Julie Newmar (last seen in "The Band Wagon"), Ruta Lee (last seen in "Funny Face"), Virginia Gibson (ditto), Nancy Kilgas (ditto), Norma Doggett, Betty Carr, Ian Wolfe (last seen in "Reds"), Howard Petrie, Russell Simpson (last seen in "Meet John Doe"), Marjorie Wood (last seen in "Annie Get Your Gun"), Earl Barton, Dante DiPaolo, Kelly Brown (last seen in "Daddy Long Legs"), Matt Moore, Dick Rich.
RATING: 6 out of 10 snowballs
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