Patricia Miller Movies
Love Nest is a thoroughly likeable formula comedy with a most engaging cast. William Lundigan plays Jim Scott, an aspiring writer who, together with his wife Connie (June Haver), moves into the basement of an apartment building that they've bought. Scott's hopes to keep financially solvent are thwarted by the everyday travails of maintaining the building and ministering to the needs of the tenants. The episodic plotline settles on the activities of charming con artist Charley Patterson (Frank Fay), who targets tenant Eadie Gaynor (Leatrice Joy) as his latest victim. When Patterson is finally arrested, he generously offers to tell his life story to Scott, thereby launching the latter's writing career in earnest. Love Nest was frequently revived throughout the 1950s and 1960s because of the supporting-cast presence of future sex symbol Marilyn Monroe and TV talk host Jack Paar. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
- Starring:
- June Haver, William Lundigan, (more)
The Asphalt Jungle is a brilliantly conceived and executed anatomy of a crime -- or, as director John Huston and scripter Ben Maddow put it, "a left-handed form of human endeavor." Recently paroled master criminal Erwin "Doc" Riedenschneider (Sam Jaffe), with funding from crooked attorney Emmerich (Louis Calhern), gathers several crooks together in Cincinnati for a Big Caper. Among those involved are Dix (Sterling Hayden), an impoverished hood who sees the upcoming jewel heist as a means to finance his dream of owning a horse farm. Hunch-backed cafe owner (James Whitmore) is hired on to be the driver for the heist; professional safecracker Louis Ciavelli (Anthony Caruso) assembles the tools of his trade; and a bookie (Marc Lawrence) acts as Emmerich's go-between. The robbery is pulled off successfully, but an alert night watchman shoots Ciavelli. Corrupt cop (Barry Kelley), angry that his "patsy" (Lawrence) didn't let him in on the caper, beats the bookie into confessing and fingering the other criminals involved. From this point on, the meticulously planned crime falls apart with the inevitability of a Greek tragedy. Way down on the cast list is Marilyn Monroe in her star-making bit as Emmerich's sexy "niece"; whenever The Asphalt Jungle would be reissued, Monroe would figure prominently in the print ads as one of the stars. The Asphalt Jungle was based on a novel by the prolific W.R. Burnett, who also wrote Little Caesar and Saint Johnson (the fictionalized life story of Wyatt Earp). ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
- Starring:
- Sterling Hayden, Louis Calhern, (more)
Spencer Tracy received an Oscar nomination for his performance in this classic comedy. Stanley T. Banks (Tracy) is a securely middle-class lawyer whose daughter Kay (Elizabeth Taylor) announces that she's going to marry her beau Buckley Dunstan (Don Taylor). From that point on, everything in Stanley's life is turned upside down. His wife Ellie (Joan Bennett) wants Kay to have the kind of formal wedding that she and Stanley never had, and between meeting his soon-to-be in-laws, the socially prominent Herbert and Doris Dunstan (Moroni Olsen and Billie Burke), his man-to-man talk with the groom, hosting the engagement party, financing the increasingly lavish wedding, and wondering if Kay and Buckley will resolve their differences before arriving at the altar, Stanley barely has time to deal with his own considerable anxieties about his advancing age and how his "little girl" became a grown woman. Director Vincente Minnelli reunited with the principal cast a year later for a sequel, Father's Little Dividend; and the movie was remade in 1991 with Steve Martin and Diane Keaton. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi
- Starring:
- Spencer Tracy, Elizabeth Taylor, (more)
- 1948
In this wartime drama, an American officer is accused of secretly working as an SS man. Though all evidence is against the officer, one Army prosecutor is not convinced of the man's guilt and begins working to prove his innocence. He is assisted by a beautiful woman who knows the defendant is innocent. Along the way the lawyer and the woman must endure constant assaults and accusations of treachery, but in the end they prevail. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi
- Starring:
- Ray Milland, Florence Marly, (more)
