Herbert Deans Movies
- 1956
Ginger Rogers ended her 23-year association with RKO Radio with the indifferent musical comedy western The First Travelling Saleslady. Ginger and Broadway favorite Carol Channing (whose only starring film this was) play a pair of corset salespersons who head westward in 1897 to hawk their wares. Finding a limited market for corsets, the ladies switch to selling barbed wire, which rests not at all well with cattle baron James Arness. Rescuing Ginger and Carol from Arness' hired guns are horseless-carriage inventor Barry Nelson and callow young cowpoke Clint Eastwood. Whenever asked about First Travelling Saleslady in later years, Carol Channing would blithely refer to it as "the picture that killed RKO"; she wasn't too far wrong in this assessment. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Ginger Rogers, Barry Nelson, (more)
- 1953
This was the last in a string of spoofs that found the comedy duo tangling with various classic Universal Studios monsters. In this case, Slim (Bud Abbott) and Tubby (Lou Costello) play American detectives who cross wits with Dr. Henry Jekyll (Boris Karloff) in Edwardian-era London when they visit to compare techniques with their British counterparts. Meanwhile, Dr. Jekyll is conducting the usual lab experiments on animals before injecting himself with serum, transforming into the vicious Mr. Hyde and launching a killing spree against fellow doctors who scoffed at him. Slim and Tubby participate in the ensuing investigation, and havoc breaks out when Tubby himself is injected, with predictable results. Karloff lends gravity to the film, but by the time this one followed up earlier efforts like Abbott And Costello Meet Frankenstein and Abbott And Costello Meet The Mummy, the team had mostly exhausted the series' comic possibilities. ~ Don Kaye, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Bud Abbott, Lou Costello, (more)
A remake of 1933's The Greeks Had a Word for Them, as well as a retread of 20th Century-Fox's favorite plotline, How to Marry a Millionaire was the first Hollywood comedy to be lensed in Cinemascope. Lauren Bacall, Betty Grable and Marilyn Monroe play three models of modest means who rent an expensive Manhattan penthouse apartment and pose as women of wealth. It's all part of a scheme hatched by Bacall to snare rich husbands for herself and her roommates. The near-sighted Monroe is wooed by an international playboy, but ends up settling for the tax-dodging fugitive (David Wayne) who owns the girls' apartment. The knuckle-headed Grable goes off on an illicit weekend in the mountains with a grouchy married executive (Fred Clark), but falls instead for a comparatively poor--but very handsome--forest ranger (Rory Calhoun). And Bacall very nearly lands an aging millionaire (William Powell), but has a sudden attack of conscience and opts instead for the supposedly poverty-stricken chap (Cameron Mitchell) who has been pursuing her since reel one. It turns out that she has actually landed one of the richest men in New York--and upon learning this, our three luscious heroines faint dead away. Before the opening credits roll in How to Marry a Millionaire, we are treated to a "live" orchestral rendition of Alfred Newman's "Street Scene" overture, conducted by Newman himself. In addition to its being the first wide-screen comedy, Millionaire was also the first-ever presentation of the weekly NBC series Saturday Night at the Movies, premiering on the small screen on September 23, 1961. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Betty Grable, Marilyn Monroe, (more)
- 1952
Man Behind the Gun is a standard-issue Randolph Scott western elevated by good performances and exciting action sequences. Scott plays Callicut, newly arrived in the bustling mid-19th century metropolis of Los Angeles. Outwardly just another soldier of fortune, Callicut is actually an undercover agent for the government, sent to LA to investigate a covert organization that hopes to make Southern California a separate state. When he finds the time, he romances schoolteacher Lora Roberts (Patrice Wymore), whose life he'd previously saved during a stagecoach holdup. Callicut's rival for Lora's attentions is Roy Giles (Philip Carey), a hotheaded Army captain who may be in on the secessionist movement. Once Callicut finds out who's behind the movement, all hell breaks loose. Robert Cabal makes a brief appearance in Man Behind the Gun as a supposedly harmless Latino who turns out to be firebrand desperado Joaquin Murietta. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Randolph Scott, Patrice Wymore, (more)
- 1952
Rogue's March was described by one observer as an eastern western. A mustachioed Peter Lawford stars as Capt. Dion Lenbridge of His Majesty's Service. Branded a traitor, Lenbridge is cashiered from the regiment. In fact, Lenbridge isn't a traitor, but he spends the next 84 minutes proving it. He makes it his mission in life to rid India of the insidious influence of Russia, whose leaders intend to establish a stronghold in the Jewel of the British crown. Though the Russians depicted herein are of the Czarist variety, they spout curiously communistic dialogue, a reflection of the Red paranoia then prevalent in Hollywood. With the grudging assistance of Captain Thomas Garron (Richard Greene), Lenbridge valiantly thwarts the rascally Russians' schemes during a climactic desert battle. Janice Rule is on hand as the nominal love interest, while Leo G. Carroll does a C. Aubrey Smith routine as Lenbridge's stiff-upper-lip father. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Peter Lawford, Richard Greene, (more)
- 1952
The famed Bal Tabarin cabaret in Paris is the gathering spot for this swiftly paced crime melodrama. It all begins when singer Judy Allen (Muriel Lawrence) scampers away to the City of Light to escape the clutches of the villains who murdered her boss. The bad guys not only want to silence Judy, but also want to retrieve the cache of jewels that she has hidden somewhere. She takes a singing job at the Bal Tabarin, where head crook Joe Goheen (Steve Brodie) inevitably comes calling one evening. Three new songs are performed in the course of events, as are several terpsichorean routines by the fetchingly underdressed "French Can Can Girls" (that's how they're billed). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Muriel Lawrence, William Ching, (more)
