Sol C. Siegel Movies

Cary Grant made his last film appearance before retiring from the screen in this agreeable piece of fluff based on the 1943 comedy The More the Merrier, which dealt with the romantic complications inherent in the housing shortage in Washington D.C. during World War II. In Walk, Don't Run, the story is updated to a housing shortage in Tokyo during the Olympic Games of 1964. British industrialist Sir William Rutland (Cary Grant) arrives in Tokyo two days before the start of the games and cannot find any suitable accommodations. As a result, he answers an ad for an "apartment to share" and convinces the occupant, Christine Easton (Samantha Eggar), to rent a room to him. The next day he meets the handsome Steve Davis (Jim Hutton), a member of the United States Olympic walking team. Steve also needs a room and convinces Christine to take him on as a second tenant. After meeting Christine's pompous fiancé, Julius D. Haversack (John Standing), Rutland begins to ply his matchmaking skills in an effort to get Christine and Steve to fall in love with each other. ~ Paul Brenner, Rovi

William Humphrey's novel Home From the Hill is compressed into 150 minutes for this MGM all-starrer. Robert Mitchum plays Capt. Wade Hunnicutt, a Texas millionaire, married to Hannah (Eleanor Parker). The Hunnicutts have two children of approximately the same age: Wade's biological son, Theron (George Hamilton in one of his earliest film roles), and his illegitimate son, Rafe (George Peppard). As the story opens, Wade conducts an extramarital affair; meanwhile, Theron (George Hamilton), disturbed by his parents' dysfunctional relationship, is not anxious to marry his true love, Libby Halstead (Luana Patten). The vicious cycle threatens to continue when Libby gives birth to Theron's out-of-wedlock son, but it is Rafe who turns Libby into an "honest woman" by acting as father to the child. Vincente Minnelli directs his material operatically, which is as it should be given the larger-than-life character and emotional entanglements he has to deal with. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

After the success of From Here to Eternity, pairing Frank Sinatra with another James Jones novel made perfect sense. Set in the aftermath of World War II, the film stars Sinatra as a recently discharged soldier whose promising writing career has derailed. After a drunken card game, Sinatra finds himself aboard a bus for his Indiana hometown of Parktown, with recent acquaintance Shirley MacLaine in tow. An unrefined good-time girl, MacLaine allows her affections to settle on the hard-drinking Sinatra, who wants little to do with her as he reluctantly sets about re-establishing ties he thought to have abandoned over a decade before. These include a brother (Arthur Kennedy) unable to discard his salesman's persona, his disapproving wife (Leora Dana), and their teenage daughter (Betty Lei Keim). Meanwhile, Sinatra makes a variety of new acquaintances both respectable and otherwise, including a local gambler (Dean Martin) and a creative writing instructor (Martha Hyer) smitten with his writing and possibly with him. Shaking up the complacency of his small hometown more by accident than design, Sinatra forces all those around him to reevaluate their behavior. After a variety of smaller parts, this is the role that cemented MacLaine's name, earning her an Oscar nomination for Best Actress. ~ Keith Phipps, Rovi

Les Girls is the Rashomon of MGM musicals. The film is told in flashback, as Mitzi Gaynor and Taina Elg, two-thirds of a popular cabaret trio, attempt to legally block the third, Kay Kendall, from writing her memoirs. Each of "Les Girls" has her own interpretation of the group's previous professional and amorous escapades. To make sense of these wildly diverse recollections, the court must rely upon a fourth party to straighten things out. Enter Gene Kelly, the dancing star who organized "Les Girls" in the first place. But can Kelly be believed? The "truth" of the many reminiscences in Les Girls is secondary to the dazzling beauty of its female stars, and to the delightful musical numbers, the best of which is an extended Marlon Brando parody titled "Why Am I So Gone About That Gal?" This was Gene Kelly's last musical effort for MGM, the studio he joined way back in 1943; the film was the inspiration for the short-lived 1963 TV series Harry's Girls, which starred Larry Blyden, Susan Silo, Dawn Nickerson and Diahn Williams. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Adapted by playwright John Patrick from a novel by famed globetrotter/filmmaker John H. Secondari, Three Coins in the Fountain offers the splendors of Rome in Technicolor, CinemaScope and Stereophonic Sounds. For all its lovely picture-postcard images, the film is at base a reworking of 20th Century-Fox' favorite plotline: three pretty girls on the prowl for husbands. The three lovelies, who toss their coins in the Trevi fountain and wish for romance, include Dorothy McGuire, Jean Peters and Maggie McNamara. Before the film is over, secretary McGuire has wooed her boss, Clifton Webb, Peters has won the heart of a co-worker Italian translator Rossano Brazzi (despite being fired, in the process, for having an office romance); and McNamara finds happiness with prince Louis Jourdan. Three Coins in the Fountain won two Academy Awards: "Best Color Cinematography" (Milton Krasner), and "Best Song" (written by Sammy Cahn and Jimmy Van Heusen, and sung in the pre-credits sequence by an uncredited Frank Sinatra). The film was remade in 1965 as The Pleasure Seekers, and also served as the basis for a never-sold TV pilot starring Yvonne Craig, Cynthia Pepper and Joanna Moore. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Like Alexander's Ragtime Band (1938), 20th Century-Fox's There's No Business Like Show Business is a "catalogue" film, its thinnish plot held together by an itinerary of Irving Berlin tunes. The story chronicles some twenty years in the lives of a showbiz family, headed by Dan Dailey and Ethel Merman. Two of the couple's three grown children -- Donald O'Connor and Mitzi Gaynor -- carry on the family tradition, while the third, Johnny Ray, decides to become a priest. There are a few tense moments when O'Connor falls in love with ambitious chorine Marilyn Monroe and loses all sense of perspective, but the family reunites during a splashy production-number finale. Highlights include Dailey and Merman's Play a Simple Melody duet, O'Connor's A Man Chases a Girl solo, and Monroe's tempestuous rendition of Heat Wave (her delivery and stage presence both compensate for her unflattering bare-midriff costume). Of historical interest, There's No Business Like Show Business was Fox's first CinemaScope musical; as such, it is best viewed on TV in "letterbox" format. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Second-billed Marilyn Monroe is the blonde in question in this second film version of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes: Miss Lorelei Lee, whose philosophy is "diamonds are a girl's best friend." Together with her best human friend Dorothy (top-billed Jane Russell), showgirl Lorelei embarks upon a boat trip to Paris, where she intends to marry millionaire Gus Esmond (Tommy Noonan). En route, the girls are bedeviled by private detective Malone (Elliot Reid), hired by Esmond's father (Taylor Holmes) to make certain that Lorelei isn't just another gold-digger. When Dorothy falls in love with the poverty-stricken Malone, Lorelei decides to find her pal a wealthier potential husband, and that's how she gets mixed up with flirtatious diamond merchant Sir Francis Beekman (Charles Coburn) and precocious youngster Henry Spofford III (George "Foghorn" Winslow). Most of the Leo Robin-Jule Styne songs from the Broadway show remain intact, including Marilyn Monroe's rendition of "Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend," a production number later imitated by pop icon Madonna. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Howard Hawks hoped to capture the screwball comic fervor of his 1938 film Bringing Up Baby with his 1952 comedy Monkey Business. As in the earlier film, Cary Grant stars as an absent-minded professor involved in a research project. This time he's a chemist seeking a "fountain of youth" formula that will revitalize middle-agers both mentally and physically. Though Grant's own laboratory experiments yield little fruit, a lab monkey, let loose from its cage, mixes a few random chemicals and comes up with just the formula Grant is looking for. This mixture is inadvertently dumped in the lab's water supply; the fun begins when staid, uptight Grant drinks some of the "bitter" water, then begins cutting up like a teenager. A harmless afternoon on the town with luscious secretary Marilyn Monroe rouses the ire of Grant's wife Ginger Rogers, but her behavior is even more infantile when she falls under the spell of the youth formula. Everyone remembers the best line in Monkey Business: foxy-grandpa research supervisor Charles Coburn hands the curvacious Monroe a letter and says "Get someone to type this". Even better is his next line: after Monroe sashays out of the room, Coburn turns to Grant and, with eyes atwinkle, murmurs "Anyone can type." Likewise amusing is Monkey Business's pre-credits gag, wherein Cary Grant opens a door and is about to step forward when director Hawks, off-camera, admonishes "Not yet, Cary." Among the co-conspirators on Monkey Business's carefree script are Ben Hecht, Charles Lederer and I.A.L. Diamond, with an original story by Harry Segall (Here Comes Mr. Jordan) as their source. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Dreamboat stars Clifton Webb as Thornton Sayre, the perfectionist professor of literature at a sedate Midwestern university. Widowed and with a pretty daughter (Anne Francis), Sayre has given no clue to his previous life before becoming a teacher. But thanks to television, everyone discovers that Sayre is actually Bruce Blair, a former silent screen star known as "America's Dreamboat." Sayre's onetime leading lady (Ginger Rogers) has made a comeback hosting screenings of her old films on TV, and the result is acute embarrassment for both the professor and his college. Sayre takes the case all the way to court, where he wangles a compromise agreement: he will permit his films to be televised as long as they're not "doctored" to accommodate commercial endorsements (this was based on a real-life lawsuit involving cowboy Gene Autry -- which Autry lost). The ensuing publicity costs Sayre his college job, but the renewal of interest in his old films results in a new movie contract. Although silent movies and singing commercials are easy satirical targets, Dreamboat still delivers the laughs, and it's fun to see Clifton Webb camping it up as a "Doug Fairbanks" type. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Money, romance, betrayal, double-dealing -- who knew making dresses could be so interesting? Harriet Boyd (Susan Hayward) is a fashion model who has landed plenty of work with a Seventh Avenue dress-making concern. However, Harriet knows that she can't be a model forever, so she is trying to turn her dreams of being a dress designer into reality. She knows that you have to be tough to succeed in the garment industry, but "tough" is practically Harriet's middle name; the ruthless would-be garment mogul lures salesman Teddy Sherman (Dan Dailey) and production whiz Mr. Cooper (Sam Jaffe) from the company and starts her own shop. Harriet has a genuine talent for designing dresses that look good on ordinary women, and the firm soon develops a solid customer base, but the more luxurious and lucrative department stores are looking for something more upscale. J.F. Noble (George Sanders), who runs one such chain, tells Harriet he'd be interested in carrying her merchandice if she was willing to create a line of designer-style gowns. Teddy is against the idea, feeling it doesn't play on their strengths and would be bad for the company in the long run. Harriet, however, is determined to make a name for herself, and when Teddy and Cooper won't allow her out of their deal, she begins making gowns for Noble on the sly. Once the deal with Noble is sealed, Harriet informs Teddy and Cooper that they have no choice but to go along with her; this does not sit well with either of them, especially Teddy, who has become romantically involved with Harriet, though she toys with Noble out of self-interest. I Can Get It for You Wholesale (also released as Only the Best) was based on a novel by Jerome Weidman; the book was later adapted into a Broadway musical, which is best remembered today for providing Barbra Streisand with her first big break in show biz. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

I'll Never Forget You is an updated remake of 1933's Berkeley Square; both films used John L. Balderston's stage play as a launching pad. Tyrone Power stars as an American atomic scientist working in London. He lives in an ancestral home which dates back to the 18th century. Late one rainy evening, Power is struck down by lightning just as he enters his home. When he awakens, he finds himself transported back to the 1700s, in the person of his own ancestor. As he falls in love with his beautiful cousin Ann Blyth, Power tries to bring some 20th century technology to his "backward" forebears (this is a departure from the original Berkeley Square, in which the hero so loved the 18th century that he wanted to become part of it). Branded as a lunatic for his "hallucinations" of the future, Power is about to be carted off to Bedlam when he lapses again into unconsciousness. He awakens in his own time, to discover that his long-ago love Ann Blyth was so enamored of him that she died young, without ever marrying. At this point in the original play, the hero shuts himself off from the world, to await his ultimate reunion with his lost love in the afterlife. But I'll Never Forget You couldn't do that to virile matinee idol Tyrone Power, so the adaptors contrive to have him meet a woman who looks just like the girl he left behind 200 years ago. In the tradition of The Wizard of Oz, I'll Never Forget You opens in black and white, then switches to color when Power is sent back in time. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Filmed entirely on location in New Orleans, Panic in the Streets stars Richard Widmark as Dr. Clinton Reed, a physician from the U.S. Health Service who must race against time to stop a plague. The carrier was an illegal alien, murdered by criminals Jack Palance and Zero Mostel. When local officials note the strange condition of the corpse, they fear that the germs will spread to epidemic proportions, and thus summon Reed to wrest control of the situation. At first facing opposition from rule-bound police captain Paul Douglas, Widmark is finally able to work hand-in-glove with Douglas in tracking down Palance and Mostel, who have themselves become plague carriers. Many of the actors in Panic in the Streets are local nonprofessionals, selected by director Elia Kazan because of their "rightness" within the framework of the story; the rest of the cast is peopled by such film veterans as Barbara Bel Geddes, Tommy Cook, Emile Meyer and H.T. Tsiang. Widmark's son is played by an uncredited Tommy Rettig, four years before he starred on the Lassie TV series. Though Elia Kazan liked to claim that much of Panic in the Streets was improvised, there was a script, adapted by Richard Murphy and Daniel Fuchs from a story by Edward Anhalt and Edna Anhalt. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi