Mary George Movies
A man makes the highly unexpected discovery that he has two wives in this romantic comedy. Widower Nick Arden (James Garner) has just set off on his honeymoon with his new wife Bianca (Polly Bergen) when his mother Grace (Thelma Ritter) receives a very unexpected guest -- Nick's late wife Ellen (Doris Day). While Ellen was proclaimed legally dead five years after her plane disappeared in a flight over the Pacific Ocean, in truth her flight crash-landed on a desert island where she was stranded with Stephen Burkett (Chuck Connors) and only now has managed to return to civilization. When Grace informs Ellen that Nick has just left town with his new wife, Ellen heads out to the resort where the newlyweds are staying, and comic confusion ensues. Move Over, Darling began life as a project called Something's Got to Give, which was the film that Marilyn Monroe was working on at the time of her death; besides Monroe, the original cast included Dean Martin, Cyd Charisse, and Phil Silvers. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Doris Day, James Garner, (more)
- 1951
Even at age 38, Loretta Young could successfully pull off her ingenue duties in the innocuous comedy Half Angel. Young plays Nora, a prim and proper nurse, engaged to the stuffy Tim (John Ridgely). Unbeknownst to both, Nora is a sleepwalker; during her nocturnal forays, the less-inhibited side of her personality takes over. While somnambulizing one evening, she heads to the home of her former boyfriend John (Joseph Cotten) and makes amorous advances towards him. Fascinated, John tries to get Nora to behave the same way while she's awake, but it takes eight reels to accomplish that formidable feat. Half Angel bears no resemblance to the 1936 Claire Trevor vehicle of the same name. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Loretta Young, Joseph Cotten, (more)
- 1949
Viewers who know Gale Storm only through her chaotic comic performances on TV's My Little Margie and Oh Susanna will be surprised by her subdued dramatic performance in Abandoned. Storm plays Paula Consodine, who comes to Los Angeles in search of her missing sister. Newspaperman Mark Sitko (Dennis O'Keefe), investigating on Paula's behalf, discovers that the sister is dead, a supposed suicide. The whole thing seems a bit fishy to Sitko, and indeed it is: the girl's death was engineered by a black-market adoption racket, headed by one DeCola (Will Kuluva). Paula bravely offers to act as bait to draw the criminals out, a formidable task given the presence of such secondary villains as Raymond Burr and Mike Mazurki. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Dennis O'Keefe, Gale Storm, (more)
- 1942
The exigencies of the first Hollywood "Red Scare", fomented by the Martin Dies committee, prompted the US Senate Civil Liberties Committee to produce Native Land, a 1942 paean to the Four Freedoms. Narrated by Paul Robeson, the film employs a cast of familiar if not stellar character actors in a story of how certain enemies within the US have done their best to suppress their fellow citizens' rights to freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of assembly and freedom from want. The villains are the usual run of fat-cat capitalists, bigoted "patriots" and strikebreakers, while the heroes and heroines are farmers, sharecroppers, union leaders, minorities and the like. The screenplay leans towards the dogmatic at times, but the actors are sincere and the rousing musical score by Marc Blitztein (and old hand at this sort of agit-prop entertainment) is first-rate. Not suprisingly, many of the contributors to Native Land--Art Smith, Howard Da Silva et. al.-ended up being blacklisted during the Communist "Witch Hunt" of the 1950s. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Fred Johnson, Mary George, (more)
