Frances Goodrich Movies

Steve Martin stars in this remake of the 1950 Vincente Minnelli classic as shoe executive George Banks, whose happily married existence hits a bump when he greets his daughter Annie (Kimberly Williams), home from a semester studying in Europe. She tells her father that she is engaged to be married. When the shocked George asks to whom, she says his name is Bryan (George Newbern) and that he is an "independent communications consultant." George is even more shocked when he finds out what the wedding will cost (when George goes through the card file for invited wedding guests and is told someone is deceased, George chirps, "He died? That's great!"). As George is ignored during the mad preparations for the wedding, he wistfully looks back to all the good times he has had with Annie and sadly looks forward to the time when he loses his little girl. ~ Paul Brenner, Rovi

A distinguished cast highlights this film adaptation of a stage drama by Peter Shaffer. Stanley Harrington (Jack Hawkins) is a self-made businessman incapable of expressing his emotions or compromising with others; his wife Louise (Rosalind Russell) imagines herself an intellectual, though her intelligence is more of an affectation than a reality. Stanley and Louise hire Walter (Maximilian Schell), a teacher from Germany, as a tutor for their two teenage children, effeminate Philip (Richard Beymer) and high-strung Pamela (Annette Gorman). Walter tries to ingratiate himself with the family, with little success; when he tries to get to know Louise better, she imagines that he's fallen in love with her, and she's deeply hurt when he confesses that he instead sees her as a motherly figure. Walter is eventually driven to the brink of suicide, which forces the family to reconsider their attitudes toward Walter and each other. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

Based on a novel by Francoise Sagan, A Certain Smile was a vehicle for Darryl F. Zanuck's latest protegee, Christine Carere. Parisian student Carere spats with her boyfriend Bradford Dillman, then impulsively agrees to accompany Dillman's worldly uncle Rossano Brazzi to the Riviera. At first thrilled at the prospect of an affair with the dashing Brazzi, Carere is disillusioned to discover that she is the latest in a long line of "diversions" for the old charmer. After a heart-to-heart with Brazzi's patient wife (Joan Fontaine), Christine returns to her boyfriend. The title song for A Certain Smile became a hit for Johnny Mathis, who sings the tune over the film's opening credits. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

At the height of their TV fame, Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz were contracted by MGM to make two theatrical films. The first of these, The Long, Long Trailer, stars Lucy and Desi as an upwardly mobile couple who decide to buy a trailer so they can live together while his job takes him around the country. Thanks to their naivete in such matters, they end up with a huge, bulky RV that costs five times what they planned. Their "seeing America" trip turns out to be a slapstick disaster, topped by Lucy's foolish decision to hide a heavy rock collection in the trailer; as Desi tries to maneuver a treacherous mountain road, the weighted-down home-on-wheels nearly loses its balance and almost tumbles off a cliff. The story is told in flashback, as Desi 'splains the breakup of his marriage to a motel court manager. Happily, Lucy shows up, goes "Waaaaah" a little, and all is forgiven. Despite the fact that audiences were getting Ball and Arnaz for free each week on television, The Long, Long Trailer was a big hit at the box-office. The film was adapted by Albert Hackett and Frances Goodrich from a novel by Clinton Twiss, with uncredited assistance from the I Love Lucy writing staff. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

After providing excellent support in previous MGM musicals, the singing-dancing team of Marge and Gower Champion were rewarded with their own starring vehicle, Give a Girl a Break. Marge plays one of three actresses competing for the leading role in a Broadway show directed by Gower. The other two girls are Debbie Reynolds and Helen Wood, so Marge is hardly a shoe-in. Another topnotch dancer/choreographer, Bob Fosse, co-stars as the show's leading man. Highlights include the aptly named "Challenge Dance" and the grand finale "Applause, Applause." Kurt Kasner provides a few chuckles as the show's neurotic composer. Several real composers collaborated on the score of Give a Girl a Break, among them Burton Lane, Ira Gershwin, Andre Previn and Saul Chaplin. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

This sequel to the 1950 comedy hit Father of the Bride finds Spencer Tracy and Joan Bennett returning as Stanley and Ellie Banks, the parents of newlywed Kay Dunstan (Elizabeth Taylor). In the first film, Stanley Banks was forced to endure the chaotic events leading up to the wedding. This time, he must comes to grips with the prospect of becoming a grandfather. Once he's reconciled himself to this jolt of mortality, Stanley must contend with the little bundle of joy, who screams his head off every time Grandpa comes near him. Father's Little Dividend was remade in 1994 as Father of the Bride II, with Steve Martin assuming the Spencer Tracy role, and with the added complication of discovering that his own wife (Diane Keaton) is also pregnant. The copyright for Father's Little Dividend was not renewed in 1978; thus the film has lapsed into public domain. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

In the Good Old Summertime is a musical remake of the 1940 Ernst Lubitsch comedy The Shop Around the Corner, which in turn was based on a play by Miklos Laszlo. The locale has been changed from Hungary to Chicago, but the turn-of-century time frame and the plot remain the same. Van Johnson and Judy Garland play a couple of clerks in a sheet-music store who detest each other on sight. Both reserve their words of affection for their respective pen pals, whom they've never met. The audience, of course, is aware that Johnson is Garland's pen pal, and she his, but it's fun to anticipate the fireworks when the characters on screen make this discovery. Buster Keaton, then employed by MGM as a "comedy consultant," is provided with one of his best parts in years as the bumbling nephew of shop owner S.Z. Sakall. The songs sung in Summertime consist of period numbers like "I Don't Care", "Wait Till the Sun Shines, Nellie", and the title tune. This is the film in which 18-month-old Liza Minnelli (Garland's daughter) toddles into the closing number, though it is not her film debut, as has often been claimed: an even younger Minnelli popped up briefly in Garland's previous MGM musical Easter Parade. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

When Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne appeared in S. N. Behrmann's The Pirate on Broadway, there were no musical numbers whatsoever. But with Gene Kelly and Judy Garland in the leading roles of the 1948 filmization of The Pirate, the MGM production staff would have been drawn and quartered had there not been song after song. The story is merely serviceable: on a Caribbean isle in the early 19th century, sheltered young Garland comes to believe that travelling troubadour Kelly is in reality "Mack the Black," a notorious pirate. Kelly realizes that the surest way to win Garland's heart is to impersonate the romantic buccaneer, and this is what he does--nearly getting himself hanged in the process. Cole Porter's marvelous score yielded only one bona-fide hit: "Be a Clown", which has practically nothing to do with the storyline, but do you care? Highlights include the magnificently staged "Mack the Black," a heady combination of Broadway glitz and Caligariesque nightmare. Seven MGM screenwriters toiled away on The Pirate, though only the team of Albert Hackett and Frances Goodrich were credited. While The Pirate was not a huge moneymaker on its first release, it has since been embraced by the cultists, who apparently can never get enough of Judy Garland. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

This is director Frank Capra's classic bittersweet comedy/drama about George Bailey (James Stewart), the eternally-in-debt guiding force of a bank in the typical American small town of Bedford Falls. As the film opens, it's Christmas Eve, 1946, and George, who has long considered himself a failure, faces financial ruin and arrest and is seriously contemplating suicide. High above Bedford Falls, two celestial voices discuss Bailey's dilemma and decide to send down eternally bumbling angel Clarence Oddbody (Henry Travers), who after 200 years has yet to earn his wings, to help George out. But first, Clarence is given a crash course on George's life, and the multitude of selfless acts he has performed: rescuing his younger brother from drowning, losing the hearing in his left ear in the process; enduring a beating rather than allow a grieving druggist (H.B. Warner) to deliver poison by mistake to an ailing child; foregoing college and a long-planned trip to Europe to keep the Bailey Building and Loan from letting its Depression-era customers down; and, most important, preventing town despot Potter (Lionel Barrymore) from taking over Bedford Mills and reducing its inhabitants to penury. Along the way, George has married his childhood sweetheart Mary (Donna Reed), who has stuck by him through thick and thin. But even the love of Mary and his children are insufficient when George, faced with an $8000 shortage in his books, becomes a likely candidate for prison thanks to the vengeful Potter. Bitterly, George declares that he wishes that he had never been born, and Clarence, hoping to teach George a lesson, shows him how different life would have been had he in fact never been born. After a nightmarish odyssey through a George Bailey-less Bedford Falls (now a glorified slum called Potterville), wherein none of his friends or family recognize him, George is made to realize how many lives he has touched, and helped, through his existence; and, just as Clarence had planned, George awakens to the fact that, despite all its deprivations, he has truly had a wonderful life. Capra's first production through his newly-formed Liberty Films, It's a Wonderful Life lost money in its original run, when it was percieved as a fairly downbeat view of small-town life. Only after it lapsed into the public domain in 1973 and became a Christmastime TV perennial did it don the mantle of a holiday classic. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Freely adapted from a successful Broadway musical by Moss Hart, this story stars Ginger Rogers as Liza Elliott, the editor of a popular fashion magazine. Despite her beauty, wealth, and success in business, Liza is unhappy and out of sorts. And while three men are vying for her affections -- advertising director Charley Johnson (Ray Milland), newly single Kendall Nesbitt (Warner Baxter), and youthful and handsome Randy Curtis (Jon Hall) -- Liza has been unlucky in love, and she feels that she's come to the end of her emotional rope. She begins seeing Dr. Brooks (Barry Sullivan) in hopes of resolving her emotional crises and finding happiness, and her self-searching explorations of her past take the form of a handful of musical numbers. While the stage version of Lady in the Dark featured songs written by the estimable team of Kurt Weill and Ira Gershwin, several of them were replaced for this screen adaptation; "The Saga of Jenny", "One Life to Love", and "Girl of the Moment" were the most notable among the Weill/Gershwin tunes that survived the editing process. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

This remake of Penthouse (33) stars Walter Pidgeon as a smooth attorney with a few embarrassing friends. One of these is a gangster (Leo Carrillo) whom Pidgeon has successfully defended. When Pidgeon must go after his "pal" for murder, he is forced to go into hiding. He is also compelled to set up house with a sexy nightclub entertainer (Virginia Bruce), whose encyclopedic knowledge of the gangster's illicit activities will come in handy in court. It doesn't have quite the same bite as Penthouse, thanks mainly to tighter censorial restrictions; the nightclub singer, for example, was a hooker in the original. Both films were based on the same story by Arthur Somers Roche. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

The popularity of both Bob Hope and the sentimental tune "Thanks for the Memory" by Ralph Rainger and Leo Robin in The Big Broadcast of 1938 led to this plodding little domestic comedy-drama in which Hope plays a stay-at-home author and Shirley Ross his working wife. The situation is, of course, ripe for misunderstandings, and soon each spouse accuses the other of infidelity, with everything neatly solved in the final reel. In addition to the title tune, Hope and Ross also perform Hoagy Carmichael and Frank Loesser's "Two Sleepy People." The film was an unofficial remake of the 1931 production Up Pops the Devil. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, Rovi