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Archive for the ‘John Payne’ Category

Footlight Serenade

03 Jun

Footlight Serenade – directed by Gregory Ratoff. Backstage musical. 80 minutes Black And White 1942.

★★★★★

The Story: A chorus girl is wooed by an egomaniacal prize fighter who won’t take “Not tonight, Joe,” for an answer.

~

Victor Mature is a gas as the prize fighter who is so full of himself, he can’t see that Betty Grable does not have eyes for him at all. It’s a wonderful piece of comic acting by an actor who at other times performed excellently with Grable, and certainly with Rita Hayworth, but here he takes the cake. The screen comes alive when he jolts into view.

And he is extremely funny.

Unlike Phil Silvers, who is a cactus desperately trying to flower. And he is also playing a cactus who is desperately trying to flower – but he does not have the chops to distance himself from the role sufficiently to see that it is exactly like himself. It doesn’t work.

But never mind that. He races around promoting the fighter for all he isn’t worth. And the fighter is opposed by the droolingly handsome John Payne, whom Grable really loves. Payne is always so at ease as this sort of curl-on-the-forehead hunk that you can’t take exception to him. His masculinity is a treat, and he strips down real good for fights with Mature and a jolly song with Grable on a parapet of an apartment roof.

James Gleason, Prime Minister Of The Slow Burn, is the producer hooked into the caprice of a prize fighter starring in a dance musical when the fighter can neither sing nor dance. And a blond Jane Wyman plays Grable’s sidekick. She supposed to be sardonic, but you feel she just wants to sing and dance, at both of which she was superb and alive! A missed chance.

But with Grable in the piece, we have no need for another female talent at all. Grable is a master of comic song and dance. People raved about her perfect legs and cute figure and she sure had ‘em, but Grable’s open face and delight in playing the fool, moment by moment, is one of her most endearing gifts. It’s an early musical for her, and her strokes are a little broad, but she lands her lines perfectly, and carries herself through the masher maneuvers of Mature with skill and smarts.

Grable was one of the great screen entertainers of all time, and I still find her so. She was unusual in that she had the strength of the chorine with the vulnerability of a custard. On screen, stage, or nightclub, she was dear to her audiences as long as she lived – because she was hard-working and you could see into her. The dances are by Hermes Pan, Astaire’s co-choreographer, and Pan dances with her here. He had great respect for her talent, and it is justified by what she does for us still.

She, like the others, were masters of that most essential of all dramatic modes – Frivolous Entertainment. They had the talent for it with every move they made, and the cast of this piece is crammed with them. Open The Fox Talent box and this is what you got!

 
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Posted in ACTING STYLE: MUSICAL COMEDY MANNERED, Betty Grable: screen goddess, HIGHLY RECOMMENDED, HOLLYWOOD HEYDAY 1930 - 1950, James Gleason, Jane Wyman, John Payne, Phil Silvers, Singing & Dancng Musical, Victor Mature

 

Weekend In Havanna

23 Dec

Weekend In Havana – Directed by Walter Lang. Musical. A cruise ship to Cuba crashes and the lawyer assigned to prevent a suit comes up against a determined lady. 81 minutes Color 1941.

* * * *

Brilliant! Partly because of the Technicolor process that made color something it never was in real life. And, of course, one didn’t go to the Fox musicals for real life any more than one went to a box of Toffinetti chocolates for a hearty meal. One went for wit, ebullience, and a blond with the common touch. Alice Faye was an Irish lass from Hell’s Kitchen, good hearted, easy, accessible. She had an allure she seemed almost unaware of, but the camera was not unaware of it. Her big, subtle, sleepy, China-blue eyes and her sensual and volatile mouth drew one in, as did her sultry alto when singing, at which point the camera drew close to catch it all. Gosh, what a lady! And she’s a darn good screen actor, too, as is the lushly handsome John Payne opposite her. The amazing costumes of the Fox musicals are in full array on her, as they also are on that island of tropical repose, Carmen Miranda. This movie is not like one of the deep naturalistic musicals of Gene Kelly at MGM, which moved musicals forward. It was rather the confection of a brilliant production crew and a formula for entertainment that was crisp, exotic, and fantastical in its detail and array. I have a high opinion of Fox musicals. I think of Fox musicals as piñatas. They don’t change much from one to the other. They always have the same predictable function and form, but they bring delight and they are full of astonishing gifts! Also with Billy Gilbert, Leonard Kinsky, Sheldon Leonid, Cesar Romero.

 

 
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Posted in ACTING STYLE: HOLLYWOOD CRISP, Alice Faye: SCREEN GODDESS, Billy Gilbert, Carmen Miranda, Cesar Romero, FOX MUSICAL, HOLLYWOOD HEYDAY 1930 - 1950, John Payne, Leonid Kinsky

 

Tin Pan Alley

04 Jul

Tin Pan Alley – Directed by Walter Lang. Musical. An inconsiderate song plugger looses his mate who runs off to become a stage star with her sister. 94 minutes Black and White 1940.

* * * * *

Alice Faye has the most seductive upper eyelids God ever thought of. She is sultry, easy, withdrawn, and has a magnificent bust. It is interesting to see her paired with Betty Grable who is the opposite. Grable is outgoing, open, eager, and everything is in perfect physical proportion. Actually, neither of these fine ladies is the focal character of this picture. That falls to John Payne, who it is difficult not to look at with wonder and amazement. For he is the most beautiful male imaginable. He first appears in the boxing ring dressed in so little that one can see what a strapping physique he had, broad shouldered, slim, and muscular. In this picture he remains clothed for most of it, and looks good in his suits, which work better than the Edwardian rigs worn by the ladies. (His face resembles that of Lee Pace.) Payne is about 27 years old here and at the peak of his masculinity. He has the perfect patined hair of the era. He has a sensual and flexible mouth, with dimples when he smiles. A wonderful nose. A beautifully shaped head. And so forth and so on, but the reason one cannot take one’s eyes off him is that all of this is backed up by a technique that is fluid, full of fun, and highly responsive. Watch him and Faye and Oakie sing a trio, to see what I mean. The show looks really well rehearsed, and that counts for a lot with this sort of backstage musical. Billy Gilbert sings the Sheik of Araby while the Nicholas Brothers do another of their stupendous dance routines. Jack Oakie in his pie-in-the-face style of acting brings the elan of the died-in-the-wool vaudevillian to the scene, and it’s most welcome in all its silliness. Boy, can he put over a bad song well! I have a strong fondness for Fox musicals. I like their color, and their emotional values, and I rejoice in Betty Grable, who was shortly to replace Alice Faye, to become the top box office movie star for 10 consecutive years. Gosh, was she engaging! There is a certain energetic vulgarity to Fox musicals that I appreciate, so different from RKO’s white telephone musicals and the family-value musicals at MGM. Anyhow this is a good example of the Fox genre. A good film to watch with the whole family.

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Posted in ACTING STYLE: HOLLYWOOD CRISP, Alice Faye: SCREEN GODDESS, Backstage Musical, Betty Grable: screen goddess, FAMILY FILM, HOLLYWOOD HEYDAY 1930 - 1950, Jack Oakie, John Payne, MATING, Period: 1910-1914, Singing & Dancng Musical

 

Tennessee’s Partner

05 May

Tennessee’s Partner. Directed by Allan Dwan. Gold-rush Western. Two men remain loyal to one another despite it all. 87 minutes Color 1955.

* * * *

None of the four leads, John Payne, Rhonda Fleming, Ronald Reagan, Coleen Gray, was a movie star in the sense that they alone could carry a picture, nor can they do so collectively. In his later career Disney carried Reagan, who was really a personable actor, with a particular rolling vocal twang, and a bright eye, and an easy-to-look-at face. What carries the picture is our interest in its writing and in its particular eccentricities of casting, for Coleen Gray, always the nice, loyal girl, plays a gold-digging tart, and plays it well. And Rhonda Fleming, that Queen Of The Foundation Garment, a title which ordinarily extended to her face, plays a wised-up madam, and gloms onto the freedom she finds in the writing of the part to make her unusually flexible and easy to take; good for her. The louche John Payne is perfectly cast as the gambler. The film is over-costumed with a vulgarity that only 50s could achieve, but the great John Alton films it all greedily, so why not? The film resembles an earlier better film about homo-loyalty, Canyon Passage, with Brian Donlevy and Dana Andrews as the males. Here, as there, the film is carried by the eccentricities of the writing of a story which is itself conventional, and which therefore lends itself to unorthodoxy in the execution. Unlike Dana Andrews and Susan Hayward, here it is clear that Payne and Fleming are screwing, but Payne remains chastely averse to marriage or even romance. Payne, as always, exudes sexuality, and, as always, Reagan exudes nothing of the kind, so that alone presents an interesting tension between them. There’s nothing much here, but a certain humor, a certain cynicism, and the garishness of all one beholds.

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Posted in ACTING STYLE: HOLLYWOOD CRISP, Coleen Gray, John Payne, Rhonda Fleming, Ronald Reagan, WESTERN

 

Slightly Scarlet

21 Apr

Slightly Scarlet — Directed by Allan Dwan. Gangster Crime In High Places. A free lance photograqpher takes over a crime syndicate. 99 minutes Color 1956.

**

The great Robert Alton filmed this for RKO in colors that on the small screen smear. (Alton filmed the big ballet sequence of An American In Paris, so you know what he can do.) This film is sold as a noir, but it is not; it is a crime story, and, since it is not in black and white, how could it be noir? The presence of two redheads, Rhonda Fleming and Arlene Dahl, commanded color, one supposes, but the story is ridiculous in color. And to prove it, the two women never seem to get out of cocktail dresses worn as street clothes at all times of the day. The garishness is without the strength you might find in a Fox musical, say, and the three leads, John Payne, Dahl, and Fleming were never stars; they were leading man and women; they were never asked to carry a picture, but just to throw their sex appeal in the direction of the stars who did carry it. Here, even the three of them together cannot carry the picture. Fleming is of the petrified wood school of acting whose doyenne was Marlene Deitrich. Her brassiere is, like her face, a stony sierra. Never have such peaks been scaled so perilously; they span continents. Arlene Dahl throws herself about like a frisbee seeking a catcher in the part of the mad sister. John Payne is handsome, sexy, dimpled, and lends his stalwart sensuality to a role for which none of those attributes are required. I thought I would never say these words, but where is Richard Widmark when we need him? Alan Dwan, who started directing films in 1911, briskly drove this ambulance to the ER. We forgive you, Allan; nothing could be done to save it; the patient was dead on arrival.

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Posted in Arlene Dahl, CRIME, John Payne, MATING, POLITICAL DRAMA, PULP, Rhonda Fleming

 

Weekend In Havana

29 Mar

Weekend In Havana  –directed by Walter Lang – Musical Comedy. A cruise ship to Cuba crashes and the lawyer assigned to prevent a law suit comes up against a determined lady. 81 minutes Color 1941.

* * * * *

Brilliant! Partly because of the technicolor process that made color something it never was in real life. And, of course, in those days one didn’t go to the Fox musicals for real life — heaven forfend! — any more than one went to a box of Barricini chocolates for a hearty meal. One went for wit, ebullience, and a blond with the common touch. Alice Faye was an Irish lass from Hell’s Kitchen, good hearted, easy, accessible. She had an allure she seemed almost unaware of, but the camera was not unaware of it. Her big, subtle, sleepy, China-blue eyes and her sensual and volatile mouth drew one in, as did her sultry alto when singing, at which point the camera and all the crew drew close to catch it all. Gosh, what a lady! And she’s a darn good screen actor, as is the lushly handsome John Payne opposite her. The amazing costumes of the Fox musicals are in full array on Faye — as they also are on that island of tropical repose, Carmen Miranda. This movie is not like one of the deep “naturalistic” musicals of Gene Kelly at MGM, which moved musicals forward. Fox musical marked time in dazzling close order drill. They were rather the confection of a brilliant production crew and a formula for entertainment that was crisp, exotic, and fantastical in its detail and array. I have a high opinion of Fox musicals. I think of Fox musicals as piñatas. They always have the same predictable function. Their contents don’t change much from one to the other: they’re vibrantly vulgar and gaudy, but give them a good whack and they bring delight because they are full of astonishingly colored gifts!

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Posted in ACTING STYLE: HOLLYWOOD CRISP, Alice Faye: SCREEN GODDESS, Carmen Miranda, Cesar Romero, John Payne, MUSICAL

 
 
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