Sidney Skolsky Movies

Film star Lylah Clare is dead, but her legend lives on. Movie-producer Barney Sheean (Ernest Borgnine) hires Elsa Brinkmann (Kim Novak), the living image of the late Lylah, to star in a film based on Ms. Clare's life. Barney hires director Lewis Zarkan (Peter Finch), Lylah's former husband, to transform the talentless Elsa into a facsimile of the deceased screen queen. Elsa not only learns to imitate Lylah but, at crucial junctures, becomes the dead woman. While restaging the accident that killed Lylah, the obsessed Zarkan deliberately drives Elsa to her doom -- and in so doing reveals his complicity in the death of his wife. The film ends with Lylah's onetime housekeeper (Rosella Falk), gun in hand, lying in wait for Zarkan to return home while her TV blasts forth a grotesque (and possibly symbolic) dog-food commercial. A trash masterpiece, Legend of Lylah Claire works so hard at vilifying the Old Hollywood (there's even a vicious Hedda Hopper caricature) that it's a wonder the actors could keep a straight face. The film was based on a 1962 Dupont Show of the Week TV drama co-written by Wild in the Streets creator Robert Thom. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Eddie Cantor, beloved "banjo eyed" entertainer who conquered stage, films, radio and television, is given the Hollywood biopic treatment in this largely uninvolving film. Cantor is portrayed by Keefe Brasselle, a minor nightclub performer of the 1950s who couldn't hope to come within shouting distance of Cantor's appeal. The storyline charts Cantor's professional progress, from the lower East Side boyhood to his ascendancy as star of The Ziegfeld Follies. It also chronicles his enduring marriage to wife Ida (Marilyn Erskine). Surprisingly shortchanged in the film was Cantor's humanitarian work (primarily on behalf of the March of Dimes and various Jewish causes); instead, screen time is wasted on Aline MacMahon, as lachrymose as possible in the role of Eddie's grandmother, and Jackie Barnett, giving a gosh-awful performance as Jimmy Durante. At the beginning and end of the film, the real Eddie and Ida Cantor appear, ostensibly to watch the unspooling of The Eddie Cantor Story in a Warner Bros. screening room. At the fade-out, Eddie turns to Ida and says "I've never been so happy in my life." Now that was great acting! ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Though legendary entertainer Al Jolson was a highly visible presence on the U.S.O. circuit during World War II, he was generally regarded as a relic of an earlier time until his movie comeback in 1945's Rhapsody in Blue. Showing up 30 minutes into this biopic of George Gershwin, Jolson literally stopped the show with his robust rendition of "Swanee." Suddenly, every Hollywood studio was negotiating with Jolson to film his life story. Warner Bros., the studio that skyrocketed to the top ranks via the 1927 part-talkie Jolson vehicle The Jazz Singer, seemed to have the inside track, but it was Columbia's Harry Cohn who made the deal that Jolson couldn't refuse. An attractively appointed fabrication, the Technicolor The Jolson Story distorts and glosses over the particulars of Jolson's life, but the results are so darned entertaining that nobody really paid attention to its inaccuracies. The story begins in turn-of-the-century Washington, D.C., where young Asa Yoelson (Scotty Beckett), son of an immigrant cantor (Ludwig Donath), ignores his religious studies in favor of popular music. Asa is hired as an "extra added attraction" boy tenor by a vaudevillian; when his voice breaks, the boy wins over the audience with his whistling ability. Growing into manhood, Asa Yoelson -- now "Al Jolson," and now played by Larry Parks -- becomes fascinated with African-American jazz music. He breaks away from his initial vaudeville assignment by joining Lew Dockstader's (John Alexander) blackface minstrel troupe, then goes on to success as a "single." Ascending to Broadway, Jolson establishes a reputation as an inveterate ad-libber, as well as an indefatigable singing performer, frequently holding an audience in thrall until the wee hours of the morning. Along the way, he falls in love with singer Julie Benson (Evelyn Keyes), a character based on Jolson's third wife Ruby Keeler, who refused permission to have her name used on screen. As Jolson attains superstardom, his ego assumes gargantuan proportions, alienating many of those around him, including his wife Julie. Anxious not to lose Julie, Jolson promises to change his ways. He even goes into retirement so as to spend more time with his wife. But when coerced into performing before a nightclub audience, Jolson is "hooked"once more -- whereupon the understanding Julie walks out of his life, realizing that she can never compete with Jolson's love for his audience. Like its subject, The Jolson Story delivered exactly what the audience wanted to hear. Faithful Columbia contractee Larry Parks was catapulted to stardom as Jolson, though in retrospect he seems a curious casting choice: his miming of Jolson's style is painstakingly accurate, but he seems too boyish and unwordly for the role. Jolson, then well into his sixties, had wanted to play himself on screen, but was talked out of it after a rather embarrassing screen test. He consoled himself by personally coaching Parks in the role (his attitude toward the young performer alternated between avuncular and adversarial through the shooting), and by providing his own voice in the musical sequences. Jolson also appears in long-shot during the "Swanee" number, which like all the film's musical highlights was directed by cult favorite Joseph H. Lewis (whose "dry run" for this assignment was the 1945 PRC production Minstrel Man). A wealth of Jolson standards are heard in The Jolson Story, including "You Made Me Love You," "I'm Sitting on Top of the World," "My Mammy," "There's a Rainbow Round My Shoulder," "Toot Toot Tootsie," "The Anniversary Waltz," "Rock-a-bye Your Baby," and "Let Me Sing and I'm Happy." The film was nominated for several Oscars, winning in the "best sound" and "best score" categories. A fantastic box-office success, The Jolson Story spawned a 1949 sequel, Jolson Sings Again. Ironically, despite Larry Parks' contributions to the film, it did little for that actor and instead reignited Jolson's celebrity during the last several years of his life. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The Daring Young Man is hotshot-reporter Don McLane, played by James Dunn. Always on the prowl for a good story, McLane is persistently outscooped by his rival, sob sister Martha Allen (Mae Clarke). After several reels of double-crossing one another, hero and heroine give in to the inevitable and fall in love. But as Martha waits at the altar in her wedding gown, McLane is off on another crusade, this time getting himself arrested to expose corruption within the prison system. This last assignment provides the films biggest laughs, as well-connected prison inmates live the Life of Riley while waited upon hand-and-foot by supplicative guards. The Daring Young Man was co-written by real-life newspaper columnist Sidney Skolsky, later one of the most vocal of the "Red-baiters" of the 1940s and 1950s. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Nathaniel West's novel Miss Lonelyhearts inspired two films of the early 1930s: Advice to the Lovelorn (33) and Hi, Nellie! Paul Muni stars in the latter film as a big-city newspaper editor who gets in trouble for printing unsubstantiated information about a murder case. Muni is demoted and forced to write the paper's advice column, signing himself "Nellie." As he recklessly dispenses frivolous advice, Muni keeps tabs on the person he'd accused of murder. Using his "Nellie" connections, Muni gets the goods on the killer--and nearly gets rubbed out by a gangster mob. Warner Bros. must have been crazy about Hi, Nellie!, since the studio remade the film three times: Love is on the Air (37), You Can't Escape Forever (42), and House Across the Street (49). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide