Director: H.C. Potter
The genre-hopping Maisie Revere (Ann Sothern) gets transported to her most improbable circumstances in the second entry of the popular Maisie series. Congo Maisie becomes slightly more understandable when you consider that the Maisie property was originally intended for Jean Harlow, who rocketed to stardom with Red Dust. But Sothern’s brassy screen persona is a far cry away from Harlow–she’s sexy, but not sexual in the predatory way that Harlow excelled at. A terrible performance by John Carroll as a rubber plantation farmer doesn’t do much to help the supposed steaminess of their inevitable jungle affair. He’s going for Clark Gable, but only shows an understanding of Gable’s brashness in the way that he shouts every line. Sothern has an enjoyable scene near the end in which she uses her old showgirl tricks to fend off a ravaging tribe of natives, but ultimately Congo Maisie ranks as one of the lesser entries in the series.
Director: H.C. Potter
Early in the 1940s, Cary Grant began a shift in his screen persona from a rather straightforward wisecracker to something with more of an edge. His charming, agreeable personality was especially challenged in Hitchcock’s Suspicion in 1941, in which Grant was cast as the husband of a woman who believes him to be a murderer. Mr. Lucky is not nearly as dark in that respect, although it does cast Grant as an opportunistic gambler who tries to swindle a charity while dodging the draft. The difference between his performance here and in his darker roles is that the audience actively roots for his change of heart–he may be slimy, but he’s never threatening. He’s cynical, but he laughs about it. Perhaps Mr. Lucky would have been more memorable had it pushed the darker aspects of the character more completely, but as it is it serves as a fairly agreeable comedy. Grant gets plenty of opportunities to be silly (the faces he makes while learning to knit are hysterical) and his talented co-star Laraine Day is given a role with a fair bit of authority–it’s not simply that she’s sweet that Grant is inspired to turn the corner, but that she’s empowered enough to kick him into shape.
Director: H.C. Potter
The second of four films that paired Margaret Sullavan with James Stewart, The Shopworn Angel is an unusual, enormously touching tearjerker that defies one’s expectations of the romantic comedy genre. Dana Burnet’s short story “Private Pettigrew’s Girl” was first published in 1918 and Hollywood would directly adapt the material three times between 1918 and 1938. The central role of a chorus girl has been upgraded to a musical star and her gangster lover to a producer in this version, but otherwise the picture follows the story of a woman conceding to marry the man who loves her shortly before he goes to war. Sullavan and Stewart have such a tangible chemistry on screen that it feels radical when the romance doesn’t develop in quite the same way that was expected of the period. It’s a nice role for the terrific Sullavan, who is never vilified for being with two men for very different reasons. She’s a complex heroine, pulled in multiple directions without her sense of morality ever being called into question. Stewart’s country-bumpkin is irresistibly charming while also possessing a certain melancholy that comes through with his aside remarks about his potential death on the battlefield. As the producer, Walter Pidgeon doesn’t fare quite as well as his co-stars–although he has a couple of fine moments near the end of the film, he is largely a blank canvas for too long. In addition to being a highly-affecting melodrama, there’s an elegiac quality given to subject matter, as if it serves as a sort of ideological rehearsal for a country on the brink of another war.
Director: H.C. Potter
In a 1968 interview, Fred Astaire called Second Chorus the worst film that he’d ever made. While the formula seems familiar of a lot of Astaire’s musicals – romantic sparring, deceptions, and misunderstandings aplenty – what makes the picture so startlingly unlikable is how mean-spirited it is. This is a film that somehow manages to present Astaire himself, among the most affable leading men in the history of Hollywood, as an insufferable jerk. Much of the humor involves Astaire and Burgess Meredith quarreling tirelessly over Paulette Goddard, who deserves better than either of them. Though some have criticized Charles Butterworth in the film, I found that he was only character written with any sense of humanity. A lame duck, sure, but Astaire and Meredith are so grating that his comparative calm is a welcome change of pace. The script is the problem – not the performers, who all have proven to excel in this kind of role elsewhere. Director H.C. Potter seems deadset to argue that it does take more than a few dance numbers to make an Astaire picture watchable.
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