Zamah Cunningham Movies
Zamah Cunningham enjoyed a 50-year career on the stage, screen, and television, including movies directed by D.W. Griffith and such stage productions as On the Town and Watch on the Rhine -- but modern audiences will remember her almost exclusively for her occasional appearances on The Honeymooners in the role of Mrs. Manicotti, the Kramdens' corpulent neighbor. Cunningham was born in 1892 and made her professional debut in 1909 at the age of 16, when she joined a road company in a production of Hitchy Koo. She made the jump to feature films in the silent era, working in some of Griffith's productions, including America. Cunningham was an attractive actress in her teens and twenties, svelte and appealing by the standards of the day, but as she grew older and her girth increased, she gradually evolved into a character actress, similar in type to Sara Allgood or, in more recent years, Rebecca Schull, capable of comic relief or implied menace. Later, she transcended even those boundaries as her weight and size ballooned. Cunningham's Broadway work included the original production of On the Town (as Maude P. Dilly) and the Broadway production and national tour of Watch on the Rhine with Paul Lukas. She was also a regular on the television series Matinee Theatre and made appearances on Studio One, Kraft TelevisionTheatre, and other anthology series, in addition to the movies Dream Girl (1948), Key to the City (1950), Here Come the Girls (1953), and Baby the Rain Must Fall (1965). She was most familiar to audiences, however, for her years on Cavalcade of Stars and The Jackie Gleason Show, including a season of The Honeymooners (1955-1956). On the Gleason variety shows, Cunningham was seen in various roles ,while on the free-standing Honeymooners series she played Mrs. Manicotti exclusively. Her later Broadway credits included a role in the thriller Shadow of a Gunman in 1958, and she worked in television and movies into her seventies. Cunningham died in 1967 at the age of 74. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide
Adapted by Horton Foote from his own play The Travelling Lady, Baby the Rain Must Fall stars Steve McQueen as a troube-prone country singer and Lee Remick as his estranged wife. Released on parole after serving time for knifing a man, McQueen returns to Remick and their young daughter Kimberly Block. When he proves incapable of supporting his family, McQueen's violent nature erupts once more, with catastrophic results. Don Murray costars as a compassionate sheriff who tries to keep McQueen from straying off course. Though it seems to go on forever when seen today, Baby the Rain Must Fall was praised effusively by the critics in 1965 as a welcome change of pace for action star Steve McQueen; The film would make an interesting companion feature for the strikingly similar Horton Foote project Tender Mercies (1983). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Lee Remick, Steve McQueen, (more)
- 1953
Originally intended as a 3D film, this standard-issue Bob Hope musical comedy was released "flat." The 50-year-old Hope plays over-aged chorus boy Stanley Snodgrass, whose attempts to get ahead in the early 20th-century theatre world always come acropper. His luck suddenly changes when he's promoted to the leading-man role in a show headlined by Irene Bailey (Arlene Dahl). What Stanley doesn't know is that he's been set up as a decoy to bring the murderous Jack the Slasher (Robert Strauss) out in the open. It seems that Jack is obsessed with Irene, and has a nasty habit of cutting all of her male co-stars into ribbons. Meanwhile, Stanley lays waste to the show by performing all of his big numbers incorrectly, but his faithful gal Daisy Crockett (Rosemary Clooney) loves him all the same. Tony Martin also appears as Irene's boyfriend, while Millard Mitchell makes his final film appearance as Stanley's stepfather (and never mind that he and Hope were the same age!) A brief clip from Here Come the Girls showed up in, of all places, the 1953 sci-fier Conquest of Space. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Bob Hope, Tony Martin, (more)
- 1950
George Sidney directs this pleasant romantic comedy concerning mayoral love. During a convention of mayors in San Francisco, Clarissa Standish (Loretta Young), the mayor of a small town in Maine, meets Steve Fisk (Clark Gable), the down-to-earth leader of a tiny northern California community. During the rowdy proceedings of the convention, the two find themselves pushed together frequently, with the typical result -- they fall in love. After the convention, the two head back to Steve's town, where crooked local politician Les Taggart (Raymond Burr) is squaring off against Fisk in a mayoral election. With the help of Clarissa, Steve gears up for his reelection bid. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Clark Gable, Loretta Young, (more)
- 1948
Elmer Rice's clever stage comedy Dream Girl is Hollywoodized and "dumbed down" almost beyond recognition in this 1948 film version. In place of the original play's Betty Field, Betty Hutton stars Georgina Allerton, who periodically escapes her humdrum existence by retreating into elaborate daydreams. Georgina's fantasy excursions disturb her parents (Walter Abel and Peggy Wood) and her married sister (Virginia Field), who wish that she'd grow up already and stop all this nonsense. Only when she falls truly in love with Clark Redfield (Macdonald Carey) does Georgina abandon her dream world. Like the previous year's Secret Life of Walter Mitty, the film version of Dream Girl substitutes the quiet whimsy of its source with slapstick and overstatement; additionally, Elmer Rice's three-dimensional supporting characters are transformed into cardboard stereotypes. And just so the audience doesn't miss anything, the producers have added a voiceover narration to explain what has just been seen. With all this going against Dream Girl, Betty Hutton emerges unscathed, delivering a lot better performance than her material warrants. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Betty Hutton, MacDonald Carey, (more)
