Jack Chefe Movies

In this frothy romantic comedy, a hard-working female Army shrink (Janet Leigh) devises the "perfect furlough" for battle weary men and convinces the brass to let her try it on selected men stationed at her base. According to her plan, selected men would be given three weeks, tailor made to fit their deepest desires. Her first test-case is a handsome ladies' man (Tony Curtis) who chooses to go to Paris with his favorite movie star. Naturally the psychologist chaperones. Romantic mayhem ensues and eventually the furloughed soldier and the shrink fall in love. The story is also titled Strictly for Pleasure. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

This filmed version of the 1927 George Gershwin Broadway musical Funny Face utilizes the play's original star, Fred Astaire, and several of the original tunes, then goes merrily off on its own. Astaire is cast as as fashion photographer Dick Avery (a character based on Richard Avedon, the film's "visual consultant"), who is sent out by his female boss Maggie Prescott (Kay Thompson) to find a "new face". It doesn't take Dick long to discover Jo (Audrey Hepburn, who does her own singing), an owlish Greenwich Village bookstore clerk. Acting as Pygmalion to Jo's Galatea, Dick whisks the wide-eyed girl off to Paris and transforms her into the fashion world's hottest model. Along the way, he falls in love with Jo, and works overtime to wean her away from such phony-baloney intellectuals as Professor Emile Flostre (Michel Auclair). The Gershwin tunes include the title song, "S'wonderful", "How Long Has This Been Going On" and "He Loves and She Loves"; among the newer numbers is Kay Thompson's energetic opener "Think Pink". For years available only in washed-out, flat prints, Funny Face was eventually restored to its full Technicolor and VistaVision glory. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The scene is fin-de-siècle France, where the avaricious Tallendier brothers, Paul (Hurd Hatfield) and Henri (Philip Coolidge), have learned to their chagrin that their wealthy Aunt Rosalie (Mildred Natwick) intends to leave all her money to the church. To prevent her from changing her will, the brothers cook up a scheme to murder Aunt Rosalie, using ground glass as their weapon. Ultimately, Henri discovers that Rosalie has changed her mind -- but by this time, the murder plot has been carried out, with unanticipated results. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This episode is based on a famous urban legend, previously filmed as the 1949 theatrical feature. Patricia Hitchcock (daughter of the boss) stars as Diana Winthrop, who attends the 1899 Paris World's Exposition in the company of her mother (Mary Forbes). Having left their hotel room to fetch some medicine for her ailing mother, Diana returns a few hours later, only to be told that she has not been registered. Further investigation reveals that no one can remember ever seeing Diana or her mother -- and there is serious doubt that her mother ever existed! The key to the mystery is a patch of wallpaper...and the solution involves an elaborate ruse to save the Exposition from being closed down before it has a chance to open. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Like so many other films that were once considered "lewd" and "scandalous", The French Line seems as harmless as Pollyanna when seen today. Essentially a remake of The Richest Girl in the World, the film stars Jane Russell as Mary Carson, an incredibly wealthy Texas oil heiress. Lucky in investments but unlucky in love, poor Mary can never keep a fiance: either they're fortune-hunters or they don't want to marry anyone so rich and powerful. Thus, while on an ocean voyage to France, Mary poses as the model of dress designer Annie Farrell (Mary McCarthy), hoping to attract a man who is interested in her for herself, and not her millions. That man turns out to be dashing stage star Pierre (Gilbert Roland), but there's many comic complications and misunderstandings before the happy ending. What shocked the censors in 1954 was Jane Russell's sizzling musical number "Lookin' for Trouble", in which she performed an uninhibited bump-and-grind while wearing nothing more than a seven-ounce glorified bikini. While Ms. Russell herself was offended by her skimpy costume, she saw nothing wrong with the dance itself, pointing out that she intended it as a parody of a "burleycue" number. The professional blue-noses disagreed, however: the film was condemned by the Catholic Legion of Decency and denied a Production Code Seal. Eventually, producer Howard Hughes got the Seal--along with a million dollars' worth of free publicity, which is what he intended all along. Filmed in 3D, The French Line is the film that was ballyhooed with the classically tasteless ad campaign "J.R. in 3D--It'll knock both your eyes out!" ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Clemson Reade (Cary Grant) is the kind of man who wants to marry an old-fashioned girl, one who will stay home and take care of her husband. However, he's fallen in love with Priscilla "Effie" Effington (Deborah Kerr), who has an exciting career with the State Department that she has no intention of giving up. Clemson has the poor timing of proposing marriage to Effie just as she's in the middle of trying to resolve a major political crisis with the Middle Eastern nation of Bukistan; the United States wants to stay on Bukistan's good side, thanks to their plentiful reserves of oil. Tired of waiting for Effie, Clemson decides that he needs to find a potential bride who will follow his lead instead of her own, and he soon meets Princess Tarji (Betta Saint John), daughter of the King of Bukistan, who has spent her life learning to faithfully serve her man. Clemson half-seriously sends a telegram proposing marriage to Tarji, which touches off a political tempest in a teapot when Tarji responds by visiting the United States. The State Department decides that someone should look after Tarji while she's in America, and who should be given the assignment but Effie; to Clemson's chagrin, Effie uses her time with Tarji to enlighten her about the more liberated status of women in the West. By the way, don't bother looking for Bukistan in your atlas, the country doesn't really exist. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

The popular radio detective series The Fat Man was brought to the screen in 1951, with the series' original star J. Scott Smart retained in the title role. Smart plays porcine sleuth Brad Runyon, who tackles the mystery surrounding the murder of a Los Angeles dentist. With the assistance of general factotum Bill Norton (Clinton Sundberg), Runyon follows the trail of clues all the way to a three-ring circus. Famed Barnum & Bailey clown Emmett Kelly makes his screen debut as one of the suspects; others essential to the action are such up-and-comers as Rock Hudson, Julie London and Jayne Meadows. The film's flashback-within-flashback structure helps to enliven its more verbose passages. For the most part, The Fat Man plays more like a radio show than a movie--at least until the exciting climax, inventively staged by director William Castle. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Bob Hope is up to his famous nose in danger in this espionage comedy. Second-rate burlesque comic Peanuts White (Hope) is approached by federal agents who think that he's international spy Eric Augustine, to whom Peanuts bears a striking resemblance. When they realize that Peanuts and Eric are two different people, the FBI persuades him to travel to Africa posing as Eric and fetch a batch of microfilm that could prove vital to national security. With reluctance, Peanuts flies to Tangiers and arranges a rendezvous with Lily Dalbray (Hedy Lamarr), Eric's beautiful girlfriend and an agent of shifting alliances herself. However, Lily's superior Karl Brubaker (Francis L. Sullivan) wants the microfilm, and he will stop at nothing to get it. As Peanuts tries to rescue the microfilm, make time with Lily, and avoid Karl, things become even more confused when Eric escapes from hiding and re-enters the picture. Both Bob Hope and Hedy Lamarr contribute songs to the soundtrack, though unlike Bob, Hedy's vocals were dubbed in by a studio vocalist. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

One of the most oft-revived of the pre-Technicolor Nicholas Ray efforts, Born to Be Bad offers us the spectacle of Joan Fontaine portraying a character described as "a cross between Lucrezia Borgia and Peg O' My Heart". For the benefit of her wealthy husband Zachary Scott and his family, Fontaine adopts a facade of wide-eyed sweetness. Bored with her hubby, she inaugurates a romance with novelist Robert Ryan. All her carefully crafted calculations come acropper when both men discover that she's a bitch among bitches. She might have gotten away with all her machinations, but the censors said uh-uh. Originally slated for filming in 1946, with Henry Fonda scheduled to play the Robert Ryan part, Born to Bad was cancelled, then resurfaced as Bed as Roses in 1948, this time with Barbara Bel Geddes in the Fontaine role. RKO head Howard Hughes' decision to replace Bel Geddes with the more bankable Fontaine was one of the reasons that producer Dore Schary left RKO in favor of MGM. Based on Anne Parrish's novel All Kneeling, Born to be Bad is so overheated at times that it threatens to lapse into self-parody; though this never happens, the film was the basis for one of TV star Carol Burnett's funniest and most devastating movie takeoffs, Raised to be Rotten. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

A remake of Wife, Husband and Friend (1938), Everybody Does It is a frantic satire of the opera world. Businessman Paul Douglas is forced to suffer in silence when his wife (Celeste Holm) decides to become an opera star. Compelled to bankroll a concert for his missus, Douglas meets genuine opera diva Linda Darnell at the concert. While passing the time, Darnell discovers that Douglas in fact has a magnificent singing voice. Partly because he is flattered by Darnell's attentions, and partly to show up his wife, Douglas embarks on his own operatic career. But on the night of his debut, Douglas suffers a severe attack of stage fright, gets "doped up" on medicine in order to survive the performance, and hilariously humiliates himself in front of everyone. Darnell l angrily stalks out of the scene, and the sadder-but-wiser Douglas and Celeste Holm return to each other's arms. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This Abbott & Costello vehicle was originally planned as a Bob Hope comedy titled Easy Does It. The Hope role is fairly evenly divided between Bud Abbott, as hotel house detective Casey Edwards, and Lou Costello, as bumbling bellhop Lou Costello. When a much-hated criminal attorney (Nicholas Joy) is murdered at a resort hotel, there's no shortage of suspects: in fact, practically every guest had an excellent motive for killing the victim. The suspects conspire to pin the killing on poor Freddie, but when he comes in possession of a valuable piece of evidence, he is slated for extermination himself. The more Freddie and his pal Casey try to stay out of trouble, the more trouble comes their way--especially when two more murders occur. The climax takes place in an underground cavern, where Freddie is nearly drowned by the hooded mystery killer. The film's title is one of the most misleading in movie history. Cast as a red-herring swami, Boris Karloff is not the killer (whose true identity is obvious from the outset, especially to veteran moviegoers). Though his footage is extremely limited, Karloff shares the film's funniest scene, in which he tries to hypnotize Costello into committing suicide ("You'll kill yourself if it's the last thing you do!). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

One of the great onscreen romantic pairings, Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake, ended with this romantic adventure film, their fourth cinematic collaboration. In Shanghai after WWII, veteran pilots Larry Briggs (Ladd) and Pete Rocco (Wally Cassell) are dismayed when informed that friend Mike Perry (Douglas Dick) will soon die of a terminal illness. Larry and Pete decide to keep the tragic news from Mike and spend the next weeks showing him a high time. To finance the festivities, they accept an offer of $10,000 from unscrupulous war profiteer Zlex Maris (Morris Carnovsky) in exchange for a flight to Vietnam. When departure time arrives, Maris shows up with the police in hot pursuit, so the buddies take off with his secretary, Susan Neaves (Lake), whose briefcase contains Maris' earnings -- $500,000. En route to Saigon, however, the crew crash-lands in an Asian jungle. As they make their way back to civilization with a detective (Luther Adler) tailing them, Mike develops feelings for Susan, who plays along at Larry's urging. Susan, however, is actually falling for Larry and vice versa. ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide

Just as Bob Hope's My Favorite Blonde (1942) was a takeoff on Alfred Hitchcock, Hope's My Favorite Brunette was a lampoon of the noirish "hard-boiled detective" school popularized by Raymond Chandler. Awaiting execution on death row, Hope tells the gathered reporters how he got into his present predicament. It seems that Hope was once a baby photographer, his office adjacent to the one leased by a private detective (played in an amusing unbilled cameo by Alan Ladd). While hanging around the p.i.'s office, Hope is mistaken for the detective by beautiful client Dorothy Lamour. She hires Hope to search for her missing uncle, and also entrusts him with a valuable map. Hope's diligent (if inept) sleuthing takes him to a shady rest sanitarium, where he runs afoul of lamebrained henchman Lon Chaney, Jr. and sinister, knife-throwing Peter Lorre. Both are in the employ of attorney Charles Dingle, who is responsible for the disappearance of Lamour's uncle. Escaping the sanitarium with Lamour in tow, Hope follows the trail of evidence to noted geologist Reginald Denny. The geologist is murdered, and Hope is accused of the crime. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide