Funny Face

Year 9, Day 77 - 3/18/17 - Movie #2,571

BEFORE: I've reached the end of my Fred Astaire chain (finally...) with a little assist (OK, a big one...) from TCM.  So that's two weeks of my life that I'll never get back - it's funny how people always say things like that, because nobody ever gets any time back, so why complain about it when you don't?  Like when people say, "Well, you're not getting any younger..." as an excuse for doing something, when nobody ever gets any younger.  But I digress.

Obviously, I didn't get to every Fred Astaire film, but this was never about being a completist, it was about familiarizing myself with his genre, and the whole Rogers-Astaire partnership, and I have accomplished that.  Turns out they made 10 movies together, or viewed another way, they made the same film together, 10 times in a row.  But I also saw Fred paired up with Cyd Charisse, and Paulette Goddard, and Vera-Ellen, and now tonight it's Audrey Hepburn.  Now, since I didn't get to "Flying Down to Rio", or "Holiday Inn", or "Royal Wedding", or "Silk Stockings", or "Daddy Long Legs", or "Easter Parade", there's always the possibility of doing a follow-up chain at a later date.  After tonight I've watched every Astaire film in my collection, which is basically every Astaire film that TCM has run in the last 6 months, so by that standard, I've done very well.  Maybe TCM will run "Easter Parade" in April and I can watch that next year, because Easter this year is already spoken for.

THE PLOT: An impromptu fashion shoot at a book store brings about a new fashion model discovery in the shop clerk.

AFTER: Music tonight is (mostly) provided by George and Ira Gershwin - though George had passed  on some 20 years previous.  In addition to the title track "Funny Face", there's "Let's Kiss and Make Up", "How Long Has This Been Going On?" and "'S Wonderful", which I thought was a Cole Porter song.  I think I was confusing it with "De-Lovely".

"Funny" here is meant to mean "different" or "unusual", not "hilarious" - Hepburn plays a young woman with a "funny" face, meaning that it's not the type that's usually seen in fashion magazines.  But yet, Astaire's fashion photographer Dick Avery (loosely based on Richard Avedon, supposedly) sees potential in this bookstore clerk, who's more interested in studying philosophy than being a model.

NITPICK POINT: The way that the magazine crew took over the bookstore - who does that?  It's fairly standard that any magazine shoot would ASK for permission to shoot at a location, probably have a contract for using the space, or at least a standard release form, and money would probably have changed hands, so there would be no lawsuit later.  Certainly some kind of permission from the owner of the bookstore would be needed, on the advice of the magazine's lawyers.

But this happens because Kay Thompson plays this pushy, demanding magazine editor (loosely based on Diana Vreeland of "Harper's Bazaar" and "Vogue" fame) who at first comes off much like Meryl Streep's character from "The Devil Wears Prada".  In real life she wrote the children's book "Eloise", and if that documentary I watched about the book's illustrator was accurate, she was a real Queen "B" in person, too.  But at least her character here eventually becomes more personable and helpful during the trip to Paris.

In the opening number, Thompson, as magazine diva Maggie Prescott, realizes the latest issue is quite drab, and suddenly hits on pink as the new fashion trend.  Almost immediately, everything must be pink, as decreed in the musical number, "Think Pink" - and that sound you hear is the feminist movement being set back 20 years.  And once she's made to see the potential of Audrey's bookstore clerk as the new face of her magazine, the girl is practically kidnapped and forced into slavery as a model.  Cut her hair, change her outfit, get some make-up on her.  It's not like she's got a choice in the matter, right?  After all, she can't possibly know what's best for herself.

Our heroine agrees to become a model only because that will get her to Paris, and give her a chance to meet her idols of philosophy - also, to sing a song where "Jean-Paul Sartre" is rhymed with "Montmartre" (nice!).  But after a few days as a model, she not only knows what to do, she's practically giving instructions to the photographer, instead of the other way around.  In that way, they sort of created a monster, albeit a very attractive, well-dressed one.  Although it was initially a means to and end for her, it turned out that the modeling lifestyle was perfect for her, and her philosophy idols were stone giants with feet of clay.  I'm not sure that sends out the right message to the young girls.

There was a 30-year age difference between Astaire and Hepburn, he was 58 when this film was released, while she was 28.  While a relationship like that may not have been common at the time, it certainly wasn't impossible.  I'm not generally one to judge, how you feel about two characters of those ages getting together is certainly up to you.  But it was 1957 - so if HE wanted to kiss her, well, then she was going to be kissed.  Note that whether she wanted to be kissed or not was largely irrelevant at this point in time.

There was a stage musical in 1927 called "Funny Face", which also starred Fred Astaire - but that show's plot was quite different, and only four of its Gershwin songs were preserved here.  This film's plot was instead adapted from another stage musical, "Wedding Bells", and no doubt updated to make references to late-50's things like beat poetry and Bohemian café culture.  Astaire did one dance number with Kay Thompson and two with Audrey Hepburn, one of which was set in a photo darkroom, with predominantly red light.  I imagine that anyone who tunes in to this film during that number would think that something's gone wrong with their TV set.

Also starring Audrey Hepburn (last seen in "Charade"), Kay Thompson (last seen in "It's Me, Hilary: The Man Who Drew Eloise"), Michel Auclair, Robert Flemyng (last seen in "Shadowlands"), Alex Gerry (last seen in "Three Little Words"), Dovima, Jean Del Val, Virginia Gibson, Sue England, Ruta Lee.

RATING: 6 out of 10 colorful balloons

Finian's Rainbow

Year 9, Day 76 - 3/17/17 - Movie #2,570

BEFORE: I'm in my ninth year of trying to watch the most appropriate film every night, and I don't think I've ever paid proper tribute to St. Patrick's Day - but in real life, since I'm about 1/4 Irish, I made sure to wear green today, eat some corned beef (it was hash, but it still counts) and drink a bottle of stout (it wasn't Guinness, but it still counts).

But then, it's easy to find a Christmas movie, much harder to find one for March 17, unless you resort to those horrible "Leprechaun" horror films, or watch "Darby O'Gill and the Little People".  So when I saw that TCM was running this one, and if I just delayed the end of the Fred Astaire film by a few days to link to it, I had to take that opportunity.  I'll wrap up things with Fred tomorrow.

As I feared, my watchlist did increase while I was on break - of course, TCM is to blame for running so many Richard Burton films, I think I recorded 7 or 8 of them.  I started early, while I was still taking films off the list, in order to minimize the damage, but the list still grew from 133 to 137.  I'll have to curtail my additions at least until I get it back down to where it was last week.

THE PLOT: An Irish immigrant and his daughter move into a town in the American South with a magical piece of gold that changes people's lives, including a struggling farmer and African-American citizens threatened by a bigoted politician.

AFTER: Full disclosure - my Mom made me watch at least part of this when I was a kid (same goes for "The Unsinkable Molly Brown", and dozens of others - Mom was really into movie musicals) but I doubt I ever watched this all the way through, and I certainly have never watched it with the understanding of an adult.  All I really remember is the wishful-thinking revenge that happens to the racist senator, but as a kid, I didn't fully understand the implications of a white man suddenly turning a darker color.

This is perhaps the rare case where "blackface" make-up is allowable, it represents a magical change in ethnicity (as if that's somehow possible) but occurs to make a larger point about race relations, in how that man is now perceived, and how he perceives himself, in order to foster a greater understanding about the division in our country.  Unlike, say, how Fred Astaire used blackface make-up to pay tribute to "Bojangles" Robinson in "Swing Time" - however well-intentioned that was, still not cool.

But let me back up a little bit, because when you take a look at the plot here, it really starts to make no sense - and that's even if you assume that leprechauns are real.  Like most magical beings in folklore, leprechauns have to live by a set of rules.  There's a pot of gold, which they have to protect, and it's kept at the end of the rainbow (which is a crock, because you can never find the end of one...) and then somehow if you catch a leprechaun, he HAS to give you his gold.  Then you're all set, right?

Not so fast, because here Finian McLonergan gets the gold from the leprechaun before the story even starts, and he brings it to America, which then means that the leprechauns of Ireland start losing their magical powers, and turning human.  So that means even if you GET the gold, you have to spend it within the confines of the Emerald Isle - see, there are more rules even after you win.  McLonergan comes all the way to Kentucky, but he's trailed by a very tall leprechaun (apparently no LP actors were available) who's conveniently growing to human size, and trying to get the gold back.

And what does McLonergan want to do with the gold in America?  Start his own business, purchase his own restaurant, invest it in the stock market?  Nope, he wants to bury it on an acre of land, because America is a magical place, and that will make the land "rich".  Umm, that's not how gold works - apparently Finian took the term "seed money" too literally.  Later in the film, when gold is discovered on the property, it's unclear whether the pot of gold somehow made more gold appear in the earth, or if someone's just referring to finding the pot that was buried there.  You know that it doesn't count if you put the gold there yourself, right?

Besides, NITPICK POINT, someone just doesn't come to you and say, "Hey, there's gold somewhere on your property..."  It's not like uranium, you can't detect it from a great distance, or use other geological factors to narrow down an area where gold probably might be.  The only way to say where gold definitely is is to go out there and dig it up, so this whole plot line was very confusing.   How come when someone tells them there's gold on the property, people don't immediately go and grab picks and shovels, and start looking for places to dig.  "Hey, there's gold somewhere on my property, that's great news - wait, you mean I have to start working to get it?  No thanks!"  Unless they figured out that the "found" gold was probably the buried pot, in which case there would not be any reason to celebrate the news.

But somehow this racist senator believes that there is gold in Rainbow Valley (maybe because of the word "Rainbow" in the name, this also is very unclear...) so he tries to buy up all the land - wouldn't you know it, he can't get the very piece of land he needs, which is collectively owned by a bunch of sharecroppers who are trying to cross-breed tobacco plants with mint plants, in order to make pre-mentholated cigarettes.  (I swear, I'm not making that up...)  This is a horrible idea, not only for the reason presented in the film, but also because we HAVE mentholated cigarettes already, so there's little need to make tobacco grow this way.  Geez, on "The Simpsons" someone combined tobacco with tomatoes to make tomacco plants, and somehow even that made more sense.

Maybe I shouldn't be so harsh, because there are ways in which this film sort of predicted the world we live in today, with its anti-immigrant sensibilities and a racist Southern senator who wants to take the country "Forward...into yesterday!"  And the botanist creating artisanal tobacco would have been spot on, if only it had featured marijuana instead.  But in many ways, a miss is as good as a mile.  There's also a particularly relevant explanation of the American financial system, when the residents of Rainbow Valley collectively get a huge line of credit extended to them from the "Shears" catalog, and they can suddenly have whatever they want - but do they know how credit works, do they realize that they have to pay for those items eventually?

But overall, this is a very silly film, and there are plot threads that just seem to go nowhere, or get abandoned outright.  The character of Susan the Silent is particularly useless, there's no reason for her to be mute (until this serves a purpose near the end of the story) so her "talking" through interpretive dance for most of the film just ended up being annoying.

Maybe whoever put Francis Ford Coppola in charge of directing a musical was to blame...

Also starring Petula Clark (last seen in "Goodbye, Mr. Chips"), Tommy Steele, Don Francks (last seen in "I'm Not There"), Keenan Wynn (last seen in "Three Little Words"), Barbara Hancock, Al Freeman Jr. (last seen in "Ensign Pulver"), Dolph Sweet (last seen in "Reds"), Ronald Colby.

RATING: 5 out of 10 mint juleps

The Barkleys of Broadway

Year 9, Day 75 - 3/16/17 - Movie #2,569

BEFORE: I'm back from a 6-day self-imposed exile of not watching movies - OK, that's not really true.  But I've been relatively inactive while waiting for TCM to catch up with me (for once...) and run this Fred Astaire film from 1949 that reunited him with Ginger Rogers after ten years apart.  They ran a whole vaudeville-themed "Let's put on a SHOW!" marathon today, but this was the only film that interested me - thankfully one of my DVRs allows me to search films by actor, so I was alerted that more Fred Astaire was headed my way, if I could just wait a few days.  Because why watch 12 Astaire films when I can watch 14?

I tried to make good use of my downtime - I gave the house a good spring cleaning, and really focused on filling my brackets properly for the "March Madness" tournament.  Just kidding, I read several weeks worth of comic books, bought a picture frame for a poster I've been trying (for YEARS) to hang in the living room, and I went out to see "Logan" on the big screen - my review will be posted in a few weeks, between two other Hugh Jackman films.  Speaking of linking, I went on a real tear over the course of a few nights last week, and I've not only got a plan to get me to Easter, I've gone WAY past that, almost to Mother's Day.  My linking may run out around May 10, unless something changes, at which point I can re-assess the plan, or program some documentaries, or stream something, I hear the kids are all doing that these days.

But first I have to wrap up this song-and-dance thing, which really began nearly a month ago with "The Unsinkable Molly Brown", and wound its way through Debbie Reynolds, Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin films, in addition to Astaire.

THE PLOT: A successful but constantly-feuding husband and wife musical comedy team threatens to break up when the wife entertains an offer to become a serious actress.

AFTER: Music for this film was written mostly by Harry Warren and Ira Gershwin (this was after George Gershwin passed away) but the screenplay came from Betty Comden and Adolph Green, who also wrote "Bells Are Ringing" and "The Band Wagon".  Once again, the best excuse to get musical numbers into a film is to make a film about people performing in a stage musical - into that framework, you can work in just about any number, even though they'd never work on a real stage, or form a coherent whole show when put together.  Ah, but if it's a "musical revue", then anything goes. (Even a number that uses optical effects, which could never have been presented this way live on stage.).

The other "play within the play" is the dramatic story of actress Sarah Bernhardt, which Dinah Barkley is convinced to take part in, even though she's not really a dramatic actress - one has to wonder how much of this was really based on Ginger Rogers trying to prove that she could do more than just sing and dance.  Umm, wait, I've heard her sing, so let's just say she could dance.   You know, people often try to make a feminist statement by saying "Ginger did everything Fred did, but she did it backwards and in heels."  But that's not entirely true, because they didn't always dance in circular ballroom style - as you can see in this film, they often danced side-by-side, yes, doing the exact same thing, but then, that's not really MORE difficult, it's just the SAME level of difficulty.  And Fred did many solo numbers in their films, like the "Shoes With Wings On" piece here, so in fact he did frequently do more than Ginger did.  It's a nice thought that maybe Ginger's job was harder, but I think it's just not very accurate - and I'm an expert on the subject now.

They still had to fall back on that tired "mistaken identity" plot, even after all this time together.  Josh Barkley phone his wife after they separate, pretending to be her new French director (and possible lover?  It's not clear...) to give her tips to improve her stage acting - and the ploy is not revealed until much later.  Then once Dinah's in on the deception, she uses that to tease her husband, and this brings them back together.  Or was it the dancing at the benefit that brought them back together?  In their previous films, it was usually the dancing that resolved things.

I still don't know much about Oscar Levant, because I didn't know he could play the piano so well - I think he played piano in "The Band Wagon", but nothing on the level of Khachaturyan's "Sabre Dance" or Tchaikovsky's "Concerto in B-Flat Minor", as seen here.  The problem is that he seemed to play very difficult piano pieces and make them look very easy, so there's a bit of a disconnect.  If a piano player isn't seen struggling, and looks like he's having too good of a time, then that now calls Chico Marx to my mind.

Also starring Ginger Rogers (last seen in "Carefree"), Oscar Levant (last seen in "The Band Wagon"), Billie Burke, Gale Robbins (also carrying over from "Three Little Words"), Jacques Francois, George Zucco (last seen in "House of Frankenstein"), Clinton Sundberg, Inez Cooper, Hans Conried.

RATING: 4 out of 10 dress rehearsals

Three Little Words

Year 9, Day 69 - 3/10/17 - Movie #2,568

BEFORE: Fred Astaire once again, carrying over from "Second Chorus".  But after tonight I'm taking 5 days off, to catch up with TCM's programming next week, when they're running two more films with Fred in them.  But honestly, I really could use the break, I'm burned out on song and dance routines.  Plus I've got a lot going on at work, one studio is moving to a new location a few blocks away, but I've got to organize everything like the phone and internet and the mail switching to the new address so we can continue on.  It's going to take some focus, so it's probably best if I'm well-rested for a little while.  Maybe I can catch up on some comic books too - not just reading but also logging them in to my collection and putting some in plastic bags for protection.  So after tonight, no movies until next Thursday, 3/16.  

THE PLOT: The story of the successful Tin Pan Alley songwriting team of Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby.

AFTER: I've learned a lot about music from the 1930's in the last two weeks, especially songs written by Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern, Betty Comden and Adolph Green, with a little Cole Porter thrown in for good measure.  But tonight's focus falls on Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby, and if you don't recognize their names, you may know their songs "Who's Sorry Now?", "I Wanna Be Loved By You" and the title track, "Three Little Words".  They also wrote songs that appeared in Marx Brothers films like "Animal Crackers" and "Duck Soup", like "Hooray for Captain Spaulding".

But I'm not sure that their life experiences were particularly notable, or worth making a biopic about.  The value of a songwriter would seem to be in the success of their songs, not in the story behind writing them.  I mean, like, put it on the page or on the record, there may not be a need to make a movie about writing the songs.  But in recent years this sort of vehicle has come back to the world of stage shows and movies, like "Jersey Boys" for the Four Seasons, "Beautiful" for the songs of Carole King, "Get on Up" for James Brown and "Love & Mercy" for the songs of Brian Wilson.  The behind-the-scenes stuff would seem to be the best way to cram a lot of that person's together into one film and rack up some music royalties (especially useful if that songwriter and performer is usually hesitant to allow their songs to appear in movies...)

But that's the problem, I don't know enough about Kalmar and Ruby to be able to tell if this is really the way it all went down - and I'm not sure I care enough to research it.  I think it was just a way to get Astaire dancing again (and in color, for once...) and a way to get the popular comic Red Skelton in there too.  Did Kalmar really have secret desires to be a stage magician?  Did Ruby really go and play baseball with the Senators during spring training, which mercifully got him out of destructive relationships with women?  Who knows?  (Who cares?)

But it's at least an interesting portrait of what it takes for two people to work together in a creative partnership, even if they're not the best of friends - and that makes this relevant for a lot of people, whether they work in music, film, dance or any kind of art.  No man is an island, and no writer, choreographer, musician or filmmaker is either.  Collaboration (before) is always an important part of the process, and feedback (after) is as well.  Otherwise an artist is just making art for himself, and that means he has a fool for a client.  Umm, or something.  You know what I mean.

But collaboration is always a two-way street, and sometimes the cars on those streets crash into each other.  Now, the IMDB tells me that a lot of the tension between Kalmar and Ruby was manufactured here for dramatic purposes, because the two real guys got along very well - but that hardly makes for an interesting movie, see?  But on the other hand, I kind of believe that people back then wrote very racially insensitive songs like "So Long, Oolong". 

Also starring Red Skelton (last seen in "Ocean's 11"), Vera-Ellen (last seen in "On the Town"), Arlene Dahl, Keenan Wynn (last seen in "Song of the Thin Man"), Gale Robbins, Gloria DeHaven (last seen in "The Thin Man Goes Home"), Phil Regan, Harry Shannon, Debbie Reynolds (last seen in "The Tender Trap"), Paul Harvey (last seen in "Spellbound"), Carleton Carpenter, George Metkovich.

RATING: 4 out of 10 theater marquees

Second Chorus

Year 9, Day 67 - 3/8/17 - Movie #2,567

BEFORE: Fred Astaire carries over again, this makes 10 in a row for good old Fred, with four more coming up.  He's certainly a contender, probably a shoo-in, for my most-watched performer of the year.  (Last year it was Burt Reynolds with 14 films, the year before that it was Cary Grant with 22.  In 2014 I think it was Woody Allen with 21, but that's only because I didn't count Hitchcock's cameos)

In a 1968 interview, Fred Astaire called "Second Chorus" the worst film he ever made.  That is so not a good sign - but how could it possibly be worse than "Carefree"? 

THE PLOT: When perennial college students Danny O'Neill and Hank Taylor are forced to graduate, the competitive pair seek jobs with Artie Shaw's band and reunite with ex-manager Ellen Miller.

AFTER: Well, I wouldn't say it's the worse Astaire film I've seen, but still there are things that just don't make sense, or that strain the limits of credulity.  First off, Fred Astaire as a COLLEGE student?  He was 41 years old when this film was released!  Did people back in the 1940's stay in college until they were 40 years old?  I doubt it, I thought everyone had to go to work or join the army in their twenties!  Same problem with Burgess Meredith, who was a guy that looked old even when he was young, and then kept finding ways to look older - after "Rocky" and "Grumpy Old Men" he continued to act, but I think some people weren't sure if he had already died, and nobody told him.

(EDIT: Burgess Meredith was 33 when this film came out, but I dare say he looked older than Astaire here.)

They do say they've been enrolled in college for 7 years, and because they've got such a sweet deal making money with the band there's a reason why they keep intentionally flunking, but still...  I could maybe see 17 years older than freshmen, but not 7.  There's the typical love triangle here, with both "college" men chasing after the same woman, but I think we all know who's going to wind up with her in the end, right?  

But to our lady's credit, the answer is almost "neither" - because both gentlemen act like asses in competition with each other, both for the girl and the open trumpet slot in Artie Shaw's band.  They sabotage each other's auditions, and end up fighting backstage, which results in the bandleader not hiring either one of them, and spreading the word around town that they're both impossible to work with.  One is forced to get a job playing the bugle at the local horsetrack, and the other is forced to play in a band in a Russian tea room of sorts.  To be fair, Astaire's phony Russian accent improved greatly since playing Petrov in "Shall We Dance".

The men's scheming also ruins their intended girl's job (not once, but TWICE) so it's clear to see why she wants nothing to do with them.  The second time, their monkeying around causes the backer of Artie Shaw's concert to pull his funding, so they have to find that guy and convince him to put his money back in the show.  If I didn't know better, it seems a bit like they're offering him a shot at romancing Ellen if he'll back the show - which veers a little too close to prostitution perhaps. 

I'll acknowledge that it's the worst NAMED film in the Astaire filmography - the "Second Chorus" sounds like it has something to do with singers in a musical play, and that's just not applicable when so much of the action concerns getting into and then performing with a swing band.  Maybe it could refer to the chorus of a song, like first the verse and then the chorus part, but that seems like it wouldn't apply at all to the mostly instrumental work that a swing band would play.

And NITPICK POINT: It's just not feasible to conduct a swing band and tap dance at the same time.  Astaire makes it look quite easy, but that can't be appropriate for the conducting.  Because conducting is an activity that requires complete concentration, so if he's tap dancing, then he's not conducting right, and vice versa.

Also starring Paulette Goddard (last seen in "The Great Dictator"), Burgess Meredith (last seen in "Grumpier Old Men"), Artie Shaw, Charles Butterworth, Jimmy Conlin (last seen in "Lost in a Harem"), Frank Melton.

RATING: 4 out of 10 sleeping pills

Broadway Melody of 1940

Year 9, Day 66 - 3/7/17 - Movie #2,566

BEFORE: OK, this is a little embarrassing, I thought this was another Astaire/Rogers movie, but it's not - Ginger Rogers is nowhere to be seen in this film.  The next film that Astaire and Rogers made together was "The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle", and I don't have a copy of that one.  They stopped making movies together for RKO in 1939, and the costs of making movie musicals kept going up, and then "Carefree" didn't turn a profit, so I guess the writing was on the wall.  Fred moved over to MGM and Ginger stayed at RKO, but she won a Best Actress Oscar in 1941 for "Kitty Foyle" so who's to say who made the right move?

Anyway, it's Fred without Ginger tonight, so my count was a little bit off - but after two more Astaire films I'm going to take a little 6-day break, and then when I come back next Thursday, it will be to review Fred AND Ginger again in "The Barkleys of Broadway" - they got back together in 1949 for one more movie together.

THE PLOT: Johnny Brett and King Shaw are an unsuccessful dance team in New York. A producer discovers Brett as the new partner for Clare Bennett, but Brett, who thinks he is a debt collector, gives him the name of his partner.

AFTER: Speaking of the Oscars, the original film "Broadway Melody" won Best Picture in 1929, and MGM followed that with three sequels, "Broadway Melody of 1936" and "Broadway Melody of 1938", in addition to this one.  Eleanor Powell appeared in all three sequels, but I'm going to guess that there were diminishing returns in this franchise by the time 1940 rolled around.

Well, even though there's no Ginger Rogers here, there's still a love triangle, or perhaps it's really more like a dance partner triangle, and there's a case of mistaken identity - so this is straight out of the Astaire/Rogers screwball comedy playbook.  Here Johnny mistakes a producer for someone collecting on debts that his (usually) drunk dance partner owes, so he pretends to be him, to throw the guy off the trail.  If the guy was about to serve a summons, that would mean he failed to deliver it to the right person, so it wouldn't be enforceable.  Umm, or something.

But it really means that the great dancing job, being paired with Broadway star Clare Bennett, has now been offered to the wrong man.  King then takes the phone call from the show's director, telling him where to show up for rehearsal, and thinks his ship has come in.  And to keep the charade going, the producer, for some unknown reason, doesn't make much of a fuss when the man in rehearsal doesn't look like the man he hired.  That's quite a contrivance.

But Johnny keeps hanging around in the background, offering King some new choreography moves, and some new tap rhythms as well, but then one night when King is too drunk to perform (it happens to a lot of guys, so I hear...) Johnny steps in.  Fortunately it's a dance number where he's dressed like a masked harlequin, so nobody notices the replacement.  Umm, even though King's quite a bit taller...WTF?

Meanwhile, Clare has figured out that Johnny is the better dancer, and falls in love with him behind the scenes.  She reveals the truth to King, who then does the only honorable thing - namely, pretend to be drunk again, so he'll get fired and they'll be forced to hire Johnny, which they meant to do in the first place.  Seems to me there was probably an easier way to get there, but hey, what do I know?

It's music from Cole Porter tonight, but I didn't recognize any of them, except maybe "Begin the Beguine", which I never really understood.  But it turns out that the Beguine is a slow, couples dance that comes from combining French ballroom style with Latin folk dance - the dance really took off after the song became a hit, but it's a little odd that the lyrics of the song call for the dance to begin, but by that point, isn't it a bit late?

I didn't really get the gag with the fur stole - so the producer gave it to each of his young girlfriends, but then asked for it back at the end of the night?  OK, so he's a bit frugal, so what?  It's not really a joke, it just seems like a personality quirk, or am I missing something?

Also starring Eleanor Powell, George Murphy, Frank Morgan (last seen in "The Shop Around the Corner"), Ian Hunter (last seen in "Easy Virtue"), Florence Rice (last seen in "At the Circus"), Lynne Carver (last seen in "Roberta"), Ann Morriss, Trixie Firschke, with a cameo from Mel Blanc.

RATING: 4 out of 10 juggled plates

Carefree

Year 9, Day 65 - 3/6/17 - Movie #2,565

BEFORE: Film 7 with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers - now that I'm planning to add two more films to the Astaire chain next week, my total for Fred will be 14 films, and now I've got 6 more to go, but at least I'm still past the halfway point.

And I'm feeling "Carefree" myself, since I figured out a path that gets me to my Easter-themed films, in just the right number of moves, even though I'm getting ready to take 6 days off.  Plus the chain goes through some of the films on my list that I really, really want to see - like "Now You See Me 2", "Cafe Society", "Black Mass", "Doctor Strange", "Mad Max: Fury Road", and "The Revenant".  All that, plus a lot more, in between now and April 16, which will be Easter Sunday AND Film #2,900.  So it's all sort of coming together, but where I go after that is yet to be determined.

It seems like 133 is sort of the magic number for the watchlist, especially since I can't seem to get the list any smaller than that.  But when the list is (temporarily) smaller, then it becomes difficult to make connections, and when it's larger than that, it feels like there are too many choices, too many linking paths to choose from.  As soon as I added a couple of TCM's films with Richard Burton and brought the number back up to 133, BOOM, I got the connection I needed to turn a dead-end in the chain into something that would link to my Easter programming...

THE PLOT: A psychiatrist agrees to hypnotize his friend's girlfriend in order to convince her to accept his proposals of marriage, but she ends up falling for the psychiatrist instead. 

AFTER: Ugh, I don't know where to start with this one, tearing it apart.  Most everything here is just hard to handle, even when you take into account that this was released in 1938, and the dynamic between men and women was much different than it is today.  But depicting a psychiatrist getting involved with one of his patients is just plain wrong, even though that forms the standard sort of love triangle that's common in these Astaire/Rogers bedroom farces.

Now, to be fair, at first the psychiatrist takes a stab at analyzing his patient's dreams, and going from there.  But here Amanda Cooper (Ginger) is afraid to tell her doctor about her dream, because she had a dream where she was dancing and romancing HIM, instead of her boyfriend.  So she makes up a tall tale about a more complicated dream where she's being chased, and she turns into a fish, and then a tree, etc. etc. and the doctor then labels her a psychotic.  Whereas before meeting her, he'd sort of pigeonholed her as a standard, spoiled rich bratty woman who doesn't even know what she wants.  This is somewhat horrible, too - a doctor passing judgment on a patient before he even meets her.

Honestly, I don't know which is worse - the doctor mistakenly treating her as a psychotic because of her rather inventive dream, or just writing her off as a "typical" spoiled woman, who just can't make up her mind and commit to marriage.  The second theory manages to downplay ALL women by extension - as if to say, "Oh, they all want to get married, even if this ONE won't admit it."  Way to stereotype a whole gender, doctor - I just can't imagine how you're still single.  Or the other way to interpret it is to suggest that all women want the same thing, but some of them are just not in touch with their own desires enough to realize it.  Why was it so hard to imagine a woman who wanted to love her boyfriend, but still have doubts about marriage?

They had something like this in a different film, a few days ago - "Oh, she's in love, she just doesn't realize it..."  So, she's what, then - stupid?  Unaware of her own feelings?  There are just no good answers here, once you set up a situation like this.

Then, it gets worse - Doctor Flagg places her under anesthesia to "let her inhibitions run wild", to find out who she really is and what she wants, and then he LEAVES THE ROOM, allowing her to go out on the street and act in "uninhibited" ways.   Incredibly unprofessional, at best.  But there's also a distinct lack of medical knowledge exhibited here, because there doesn't seem to be a difference between "anesthesia" and "hypnosis", because both seem to allow the patient's subconscious in a similar way.  But as far as I know, anesthesia only serves to put people to sleep, not to allow them to express their deepest desires.

Then, after learning that his patient had a romantic dream about him, the "Doctor" then uses hypnosis (and the science of this may have been in its infancy back in 1938, who knows...) to suggest to the woman that she loves only her boyfriend, Stephen, and not her doctor, who is a "monster".  You can probably see the effects of this coming - it works, but a bit too well, and suddenly Amanda is keen on getting married to her boyfriend, but now we're unsure if it's what she really wanted, or if she's just acting on the hypnotic suggestion.

Plus, you guessed it, the doctor has a change of heart and realizes that he's really in love with his patient (which, if true, should really get his license revoked, if you ask me).  And in his case, he knows he's in love when he feels that he's in love, you know, because he's a guy and guys are never wrong about things like this, where women just can't be trusted to be self-aware, if their feelings are in conflict with a man's ideals.

So Dr. Flagg has to get back to Amanda and re-hypnotize her, or un-hypnotizer her, only by this point her boyfriend has gotten his skeet-shooting buddy, a judge, to file some kind of restraining order so he can't get close to her.  But that's OK, because somehow we've determined that if she gets knocked out, that will pretty much allow him to tap into her subconscious and fix things.  The solution, let me be really clear here, is for the woman who's under hypnotic suggestion to marry her boyfriend to get punched in the face.  Congratulations, it's a new low for feminism.  Admittedly, it's not the usual solution to solving things in the Astaire/Rogers franchise, because dancing's not involved, but this is hardly an improvement.

The writers never did one iota of research into the real applications of psycho-analysis, dream interpretation, hypnosis, or medical ethics, but why let any of that get in the way of a story?  It's not just junk science, it's harmful to the public.  People generally believe in things like hypnotic suggestion now, and I wonder how much of it comes from science and how much of that just comes from movies.

Oh, and except for "Change Partners", this film features some of the lesser works of Irving Berlin - the song and dance number called "The Yam" is particularly heinous.  Let's face it, the 1930's were a strange decade.  Common wisdom back then (apparently) was that if you ate a lot of weird food, you'd have more vivid dreams, which is just nonsense.

Also starring Ralph Bellamy (last seen in "The Ghost of Frankenstein"), Luella Gear, Jack Carson (last seen in "Arsenic and Old Lace"), Clarence Kolb (last seen in "After the Thin Man"), Franklin Pangborn, Walter Kingsford (last seen in "Around the World in Eighty Days"), Kay Sutton (last seen in "Follow the Fleet") with a cameo from Hattie McDaniel (last seen in "I'm No Angel").

RATING: 3 out of 10 golf balls