A very good movie series that has been unjustly overlooked since the cultural cataclysm that began after World War II is MGM’s late-1930s/early ’40s series of films starring Lew Ayres as Dr. Kildare. It’s a pity, as the series has much to offer even today. Ayres, then a very young contract player at what was the top Hollywood studio at the time, portrays the title character with the right blend of earnestness and humor, and Lionel Barrymore is excellent as his crusty but ultimately sympathetic mentor, Dr. Gillespie. Laraine Day is likewise solid as hardworking Nurse Mary Lamont, who becomes Kildare’s love interest. Nearly all the entries in the series were helmed by the undistinguished MGM contract director Harold S. Bucquet, but they are quite competently produced, written, and directed.
Television
An Essential Mystery Film
There’s an excellent mystery film on Turner Classsic Movies tonight at 7:00 EST: Green for Danger, directed by ace British filmmaker Sidney Gilliat from a novel by Christianna Brand, one of the great Golden Age mystery writers. Set in an English hospital during World War II, the film features Brand’s great detective, Inspector Cockrill, and is an excellent adaptation to celluloid. Cockrill is an interesting, eccentric detective, and Alistair Sim brings his great humor and class to the role. This is an essential detective film.
The Andy Hardy Films
Critics of the past half-century have never had much use for MGM’s Andy Hardy movie series of the late 1930s and ’40s, but the films really do merit watching. The series of theatrical films starred Mickey Rooney as the title character, a teenaged boy who wants to get things the easy way and always finds out that doing the right thing always works out the best . Guided by his wise and strong father, Judge Hardy, and his affectionate and hardworking mother, Andy manages to muddle his way through girl trouble, money problems, car repairs, and the like, and learns something in each film. Yes, the characters are solidly middle class—upper middle class, really—and the films don’t wallow in an effort to plumb the depths of human evil, which make them entirely uninteresting to most critics.
The Falcon
One of my favorite movie detectives is Gay Lawrence, aka the Falcon, a gentleman-sleuth and adventurer who was featured in a series of RKO films during the 1940s. The character was first played by George Sanders, who brought his usual urbanity to the role. The Falcon typically intervened on behalf of some attractive young damsel in distress, and an amusing aspect of the series is that at the end of each episode, just after the Falcon solves the crime, the female lead of the next installment of the series comes on the scene and asks him for his help. The films have that fizzy, cheerful attitude we often find in classical Hollywood mystery films, but they range widely in locations and story elements, with the high-society sleuth traveling around the country to help attractive females get out of trouble, usually with the police providing much more of a hindrance than a help
Two Entertaining Detective Film Series
Two very entertaining detective-film series are on display tomorrow on Turner Classic Movies. The day starts with the best Sherlock Holmes of the cinema (in my view), Basil Rathbone, starring in four Universal Sherlock Holmes films broadcast on TCM tomorrow morning from 6:00 EST until 11:00. Co-starring Nigel Bruce as Dr. Watson, most of the Universal Sherlock Holmes films were set during then-contemporary times—during and just after World War II—and often included aspects of the war in their plots, as in Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon,which TCM will show at 6 a.m. tomorrow. The films also had about the same amount of melodramatic action as the original Conan Doyle stories typically provided. The puzzles aren’t exactly scintillating and perfectly fair-play, but the movies go along at a nice, snappy pace, and the actors give the central characters and their adversaries strong and even charismatic performances.
The Saint on Film on TV
The trend of films to have multiple sequels and become theatrical series is nothing new, as Turner Classic Movies makes clear this month. The cable network is showing entire film series every day this month, ranging from the "Thin Man" detective movies to Andy Hardy films and the "Mexican Spitfire" series that starred Lupe Velez. Today brings an enjoyable slate of films featuring the gentleman-sleuth the Saint, created by Leslie Charteris and brought to film in several appealing movies during the late 1930s and early ’40s. (You may also be familiar with the diverting British ITV series The Saint, which starred Roger Moore in 1962-1969, and probably won’t want to remember The Saint film starring Val Kilmer that was released a few years ago.)
DeGeneres Breaks Writers’ Strike
Daytime syndicated talk show hostess Ellen DeGeneres has decide to return to work, defying the Writers Guild in its strike against TV and movie producers, studios, and networks. She decided to break the strike after only one day. DeGeneres said she "loves and supports her writers,’ according to a statement by the Writers Guild of America-East, which vowed to picket her show and urged her to stop appearing for work. Representatives for the show said DeGeneres’ program is not like the late-night network talk shows that have decided to close down production during the strike, such as The Tonight Show and Late Night with David Letterman. Instead, DeGeneres’ representatives said, her program is more like unscripted daytime talk programs such as The Oprah Winfrey Show and Live with Regis and Kelly.
New TV Series Continue Precipitous Decline
As the movie studios and TV channels and production companies contemplate the writers union’s demands, they might want to take a serious look at the lackluster performance of this year’s film releases and the horrible ratings for the current season’s new TV shows. The latter are simply disastrous and aptly reflect the lackluster quality of most of the new series. Although the new season has brought a continuation of the gradual increase in moral seriousness of new shows evident during the past few years, the tone of the new programs has been exceptionally downbeat, and viewerships have dropped rapidly after the first couple of weeks when viewers sampled the new shows.
NBC Goes Green
Everything’s Gone Green, as the New Order song has it. As you may know, NBC TV has gone green this week, stacking its lineup with allegedly eco-friendly messages, plotlines, and other empty gestures. This is just part of a general cultural trend toward accepting the premise of the global warming alarmists and their preferred policy of vastly increasing government control over our lives and forcibly returning wealthy modern societies to the supposedly ideal conditions of the 1830s—a society on which they poured undisguised contempt untiil the eco-bug hit.
Legalize Dope, “Price Is Right” Host Says
Following in the grand tradition of animal-rights activist Bob Barker, comedian and The Price Is Right game-show host Drew Carey has joined the public policy fray. Carey, however, has taken up the libertarian banner, producing and hosting a series of videos for the Reason Foundation. Carey’s first video for The Drew Carey Project—Gridlock, about traffic problems—didn’t get much attention. But his second, Drew Carey Defends Medical Marijuana, is making up for it Carey is quoted on the teaser page for the video as saying, I think it’s clear by now that the federal government needs to reclassify marijuana. People who need it should be able to get it – safely and easily,” says The Price Is Right and Power of 10 host Drew Carey in a new Reason.tv video examining medical marijuana and the war on drugs.
Advertisers Moving to Internet—and Fast
Big-name and -money advertisers have hitherto been reluctant to put much money into web advertising, but that trend is reversing fast, according to eMarketer, a leading advertisement tracker. In 2006 the top 100 advertisers cut their spending on TV, radio, and print by $230 million and raised their online ad spending by $558 million—an increase of approximately 17 percent.
Hollywood Writers Strike Begins
The Hollywood writers went on strike as planned at 12:01 a.m. EST today. Writers Guild of America union leaders have told members that picketing is compulsory and that the writers must turn over all unfinished manuscripts to the union so that they will not work on them in secret. Evidently the union has yet to hear of computer files, xerox machines, or carbon paper. The first programs to halt production will be the late-night talk shows, which will go into reruns tonight, because writers will be unavailable to write the fabulous topical jokes that are so important to these programs’ appeal. Sitcoms will be the next to fall, as writers will not be available on set to punch up the scripts with additional sex humor.
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