Brenda Forbes Movies
Actress Brenda Forbes had two film careers; the first as young leading and supporting lady during the '30s and '40s, and the second as an elderly character actress of the '80s and '90s. The London-born Forbes was the daughter of actress Mary Forbes. Her brother, Ralph Forbes, acted too. Forbes launched her own acting career shortly after she moved to Hollywood with her mother. The pretty teen made her debut on the Southern California stage. Forbes' early film credits include The Perfect Gentleman (1935) and The White Cliffs of Dover (1944). When film offers slowed, Forbes turned to the stage. She returned to sporadically appear in films in the mid-'80s. Credits from that period include a trio of television films in which she starred opposite Katharine Hepburn. Laura Lansing Slept Here (1988) is among that trilogy. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide- 1995
- R
Two guys from Queens wind up in trouble with the mob because of their fondness for prank phone calls in this quickie comedy. Stars Johnny Brennan and Kamal Ahmed first found fame as "The Jerky Boys" thanks to a series of comedy albums featuring real prank calls in which the duo assumed a variety of abrasive and often extremely foul-mouthed characters. Playing characters based on themselves, they reprise many of these same routines in this debut film, linking the comic bits together through a loose plot concerning local organized crime. It seems the boys have used their phone skills to trick a local mobster (Alan Arkin) into thinking that they are notorious Chicago hoods, only to have to go on the run when their scheme is discovered. Made to capitalize on a Jerky Boys fad, the film failed to attract much of an audience beyond their existing fans. ~ Judd Blaise, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Johnny Brennan, Kamal Ahmed, (more)
- 1993
Produced for television, George Schaefer's comedy-drama casts Katharine Hepburn as Victoria Brown, a sharp-tongued spinster who discovers petty thief Moony Polaski (Ryan O'Neal) hiding out in her attic. Instead of calling the police, Victoria befriends her guest, even as the manhunt for him gathers steam. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Movie Guide
Each of Katharine Hepburn's 1980s TV movies was heralded as the lady's last-ever appearance. We are fortunate indeed that she didn't choose the minor-league Laura Lansing Slept Here as her valedictory film. Ms. Hepburn more or less plays herself as a celebrated, pampered novelist who accepts the wager that she can't survive a week living with "just folks." She moves bag and baggage into a middle-class home, where she does her best to stage-manage the family members' private lives. Laura Lansing Slept Here could just as easily have been titled The Woman Who Came to Dinner; it's to Katharine Hepburn's credit that she was able to make so much out of so little. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Mrs. Delafield Wants to Marry was especially written by playwright James Prideaux for Katharine Hepburn. It would have been impractical to attempt a live staging, so the script was committed to a TV movie, under the direction of Hallmark Hall of Fame veteran George Schafer. Hepburn plays another variation on the indomitable elderly lady that has become her forte in the past decade. Here she is Margaret Delafield, a wealthy WASP widow who falls in love with the divorced Jewish doctor (Harold J. Stone) who has saved her life. The clucking tongues of both her family and the doctor's will not dissuade her: Mrs. Delafield stands her ground in a climactic scene reminiscent of the actress' earlier Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (67). Mrs. Delafield Wants to Marry is formula all down the line, but every latter-day Katharine Hepburn performance deserves to be treasured (though the film itself hardly warranted the three-page TV Guide article written by Ms. Hepburn herself). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1964
Helen Clarvoe (Joan Hackett) informs her lawyer, Paul Blackshear (Kevin McCarthy), that she has been the victim of threatening phone calls. Helen insists that her tormentor is Dorothy Johnson (Kathy Nolan), the embittered former fiancée of Helen's brother. Using evidence provided by Helen, Paul concludes that Dorothy is indeed dangerous -- in fact, she might even be a murderer. Then comes another phone call: it's Helen again, this time informing Paul that Dorothy is holding her captive in her own home. Based on a novel by Margaret Millar, this episode is capped by a marvelous twist ending that might have worked even better had The Alfred Hitchcock Hour been a radio show. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Joan Hackett, Kathleen Nolan, (more)
- 1956
Irregularly scheduled on NBC from 1954 through 1957, Producers' Showcase was a series of lavish, full-color 90 minute specials, bringing the best of Broadway to the 21 inch screen. The series' April 2, 1956 presentation was Guthrie McClintic's adaptation of Rudolf Besier's 1931 Broadway hit The Barretts of Wimpole Street. Repeating her celebrated stage role as the fragile, invalided poetess Elizabeth Barrett was McClintic's wife, Katherine Cornell, in her first television appearance. Set in London in 1845, the play recounts the familiar story of the romance between Elizabeth and the dashing, much-younger poet Robert Browning (Anthony Quayle), who is determined to rescue Elizabeth from the autocratic grip of her domineering father, Edward Moulton-Barrett (Henry Daniell), who holds the rest of the grown Barrett children in tyrannical thrall in their home at 50 Wimpole Street. Previously filmed by Hollywood in 1934 with Norma Shearer, Fredric March and Charles Laughton, The Barretts of Wimpole Street would again go before the cameras one year after this well-mounted Producers' Showcase production, this time with Jennifer Jones, Bill Travers and John Gielgud. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Katharine Cornell, Margalo Gillmore, (more)
- 1944
The White Cliffs of Dover is one of those overlong MGM wartime films that everyone seems to have seen a part of, but no one can remember the film as a sum total. Based on a poem by Alice Duer Miller, the story chronicles the trials and tribulations of one courageous woman through two world wars. Irene Dunne plays an American girl who, in 1914, falls in love with titled Englishman Alan Marshal. At the end of World War 1 in 1918, it is painfully clear that Marshal will not be returning from the battlefields. Remaining loyal to her husband, Irene vows to raise their child in England. Played by Roddy McDowell in his early scenes, Irene's son grows up to be Peter Lawford. At the outbreak of World War 2, Irene despairs at the thought of losing another loved one, but Lawford convinces her that his dad would have wanted him to answer his country's call to the colors. While working as a Red Cross volunteer, Irene finds that she must tend her own mortally wounded son. Unable to save his life, she is grief-stricken, but is gratified with the notion that neither her husband nor her boy have died in vain. Like many films of its ilk and era, White Cliffs of Dover struck a responsive chord with filmgoers, to the tune of a $4 million profit. Watch for a touching scene between Roddy McDowell and 12-year-old Elizabeth Taylor; 19 years later, lifelong friends Roddy and Liz would be playing mortal enemies in Cleopatra (1963). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Irene Dunne, Alan Marshal, (more)
As Academy Award-winning films go, Mrs. Miniver has not weathered the years all that well. This prettified, idealized view of the upper-class British home front during World War II sometimes seems over-calculated and contrived when seen today. In particular, Greer Garson's Oscar-winning performance in the title role often comes off as artificial, especially when she nobly tends her rose garden while her stalwart husband (Walter Pidgeon) participates in the evacuation at Dunkirk. However, even if the film has lost a good portion of its ability to move and inspire audiences, it is easy to see why it was so popular in 1942-and why Winston Churchill was moved to comment that its propaganda value was worth a dozen battleships. Everyone in the audience-even English audiences, closer to the events depicted in the film than American filmgoers-liked to believe that he or she was capable of behaving with as much grace under pressure as the Miniver family. The film's setpieces-the Minivers huddling in their bomb shelter during a Luftwaffe attack, Mrs. Miniver confronting a downed Nazi paratrooper in her kitchen, an annual flower show being staged despite the exigencies of bombing raids, cleric Henry Wilcoxon's climactic call to arms from the pulpit of his ruined church-are masterfully staged and acted, allowing one to ever so briefly forget that this is, after all, slick propagandizing. In addition to Best Picture and Best Actress, Mrs. Miniver garnered Oscars for best supporting actress (Teresa Wright), best director (William Wyler), best script (Arthur Wimperis, George Froschel, James Hilton, Claudine West), best cinematography (Joseph Ruttenberg) and best producer (Sidney Franklin). Sidebar: Richard Ney, who plays Greer Garson's son, later married the actress-and still later became a successful Wall Street financier. Mrs. Miniver was followed by a 1951 sequel, The Miniver Story, but without the wartime setting the bloom was off the rose. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Greer Garson, Walter Pidgeon, (more)
- 1942
Eric Knight's wartime novel This Above All was given the Tiffany treatment in the this 20th Century Fox big-budgeter. Tyrone Power plays Clive Briggs, a conscientious objector from humble origins, who deserts the British Army because he doesn't believe in fighting to preserve his country's oppressive class structure. But Briggs is no coward, and he performs admirably in rescuing air-raid victims. Through the love of Prudence Cathaway (Joan Fontaine), a doctor's daughter and member of the women's air corps, Briggs realizes that love of country supersedes all social outrage. This Above All ends with Briggs seriously wounded, though given a good chance to survive. In the original novel, the hero not only dies, but also has a censor-baiting love affair with the Prudence character (who, of course, is as pure as the driven snow in the film). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Tyrone Power, Joan Fontaine, (more)
- 1941
Welcome to Midville, an appropriately named small town that has carried moderation to extremes. Run for over a generation by a bluenose civic league, the town doesn't allow driving faster than 12 mph -- and drivers can get a summons for not having a running-board, a part of a car that went out of style after the 1920s; no movies start after dark, and there are no late nights allowed at the soda shop or in the park. It's so bad that the soldiers from the nearby army base shoot right through the town for parts far away when they go on leave, and there hasn't been a wedding in the town in two years, because it's impossible for anyone under the age of 60 to start a romance, much less consummate one. One young couple (Richard Clayton, Elyse Knox) who would like to marry are thinking of leaving town, and that's the last straw from Miss Pandora Polly (ZaSu Pitts), who likes both of them -- she's as prim and proper a small-town spinster as you'll ever see, but that doesn't mean she wants everyone to be that way. And with unintended help from an intoxicating beverage brewed up by her comically inept gardener (Slim Summerville), she loses enough of her inhibitions to finally take a stand. At the next meeting of the civic league, she shows up ready to throw a few stones back at the bluenoses sitting in judgment of the town, and turn over a few rocks littering their pasts. Pitts and Summerville, who'd previously worked together in the Hal Roach-produced comedy Niagara Falls, prove just as effective here as a comedic elderly couple, and Pitts is at her most charming and beguiling in this gentle satire of small-town living, made on the eve of America's entry into World War II and all the more nostalgia-laden because of it. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- ZaSu Pitts, Kathleen Howard, (more)
- 1940
A dedicated nurse in a British hospital takes a nervous rookie under her wing. When the new nurse messes up and causes a patient's death, she protects her and loses her job. She eventually finds work at another bigger and more rundown hospital and there falls in love with a handsome young doctor. Trouble comes in the form of a lustful chief of staff who makes a play for the nurse. When she spurns him, he arranges to have her fired. Still determined to practice her profession the nurse and her fledgling assistant start their own service. Later a terrible epidemic strikes and she and her helper suddenly find themselves in demand at the hospital. There, the younger nurse redeems herself by making a great sacrifice and her mentor's own selfless devotion is finally recognized. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Carole Lombard, Brian Aherne, (more)
- 1935
Celebrated British musical comedy star Cicely Courtneige was given a chance at American movie stardom in Perfect Gentleman. Courtneige plays an actress whose career has faltered. Frank Morgan portrays a retired military officer and longtime fan of Courtneige, who engineers her comeback. Despite being given the red carpet treatment by MGM, Cicely Courtneige was unhappy with her film, as indicated by the numerous script changes and haphazard shooting schedule. While Perfect Gentleman did small business in the US, it was popular in Great Britain, where in deference to Ms. Courtneige the film was retitled The Imperfect Lady. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Frank Morgan, Dame Cicely Courtneidge, (more)
