Kitty Hollywood - Sun Valley Serenade & Orchestra Wives - 1941 & 1942

Let's get one thing straight. Sonja Henie is a terrible actress. I'm not going to be spruiking this film under false pretences. I often spend quite a bit of time watching Sun Valley Serenade itching to get some real emotion out of her, but that's not going to happen, no matter how many times I watch it.

Look, she's annoying, the ice-skating is kinda weird looking, the plot doesn't make any sense at all (Milton Berle and Sonja Henie somehow get engaged without stopping for breath or without her agreeing to it) but it doesn't matter. You look at the beautiful resort of Sun Valley and somehow you are transported there. You watch the dynamic footage of the Glenn Miller band and your foot is tapping and nothing else matters.

There is one bit of Sun Valley Serenade that actually sends me (one bit that isn't Band-related). John Payne and Sonja Henie are stranded in an alpine hut with a record player (as one is) and Henie puts on an instrumental track of 'I Know Why'. She starts humming along to it poorly, and he informs her that she has the tune wrong. He then starts humming himself, and it's beautiful. It's like champagne after passion pop. It's like a cup of  loose leaf tea in a bone china cup after polystyrene and teabags. I encourage you to mock Sun Valley Serenade as roundly as you desire, and to question Lynn Bari's courting methods (waaaaaaay overconfident), but when it gets to the Band, or to that moment in an alpine hut - just give in to it. You'll thank me in the end.

Orchestra Wives is a different beast altogether. It's harder to tear down, because right from the beginning the story is stronger. The world in which it is set is a much more real world (even if some of the outfits are In Your Face).

Hats - oh the hats....

 

It's got an aspirational quality to it - who wouldn't want to be the girl picked out of the crowd to be loved? The dialogue is delightful snappy:


Jackie Gleason: Why don't you guys settle down and get married? What are you going to do when you're middle aged?
Cesar Romero: How can I say now? Maybe by that time they'll discover something new.

You get the feeling that you are being let into this previously hidden world (not matter how ridiculous it might be) and that has an element of glamour to it. Like when you accidentally become friends with someone who is famous and they start telling about all their other famous friends (this has not happened to me. I am just guessing).

The interaction between the women in Orchestra Wives is fascinatingly dreadful - they all (bar one) delight in each other's misfortunes - the scene where Connie comes back to her home town after the wheels have fallen off her marriage and all her friends sit there in the soda shop delighting in her misery - well, it makes you want to have a stern chat with them about how to be good friends. And the notion that you couldn't get into a dance unless you were escorted by a man is just utterly ludicrous. What on earth did they think was going to happen?

 

Carole Landis, one of the wives, was actually a bit of a tortured individual in real life. By the time she was 26 she had been married 5 times (the first was at 15). She entered in a relationship with Rex Harrison, who was married at the time, and when he would not divorce his wife for her, she committed suicide. What a poor thing.

 And finally - the two Nicholas Brothers scenes in each of the films - absolute knockouts both of them. They're also oddly separate to the film. I've read in a few places that this was so that those sequences could be removed when the film was shown in the Southern states of the U.S., which just makes my blood run cold. 

I came across the most amazingly indepth article about these two movies as I was doing my research, and felt positively humbled by it. If you want to know more about these two films - I heartily recommend it. 

The Most In Depth Article You Could Read...

At that is it from me. Bless you, Glenn Miller.

Kitty Hollywood - Pillow Talk - 1959

When I was putting together the review of this film, I was having a bit of a Steam Out Of The Ears experience. I could only type so fast, and there was only so much I could say in the limited amount of time I had and I wanted to say so much more. Like this.

1. You can happily watch Doris Day's outfits and work out which one you would pick if you got the choice. The cream evening wiggle. No, the blue suit. No, the cream wear on a dirty weekend away knit dress...

2. Tony Randall. "She was an exotic dancer. With trained doves....".

 
3. Thelma Ritter. "I'm one of your biggest fans...."

4. Somewhere, sometime, there was a club where the cool thing to do was sit around a piano, eat dip and sing 'Yaya Roly, Poly'. I want a club like that NOW. Hipsters, take note.

5. Because even though Rock Hudson was gay and so by Kitty Hollywood Rules is off limits (I never thought there was much point in having a crush on someone with whom you had no chance in real life) he is just so delightful to watch. What a man....

6. Doris Day can eye-roll like nobody's business.

7. You can see Doris Day and Rock Hudson actually cracking each other up in a number of scenes

8. Doris and Rock's scene by the fire is SEXY.

9. Jan Morrow has a monogrammed shower curtain and bath towels.

10. Jan Morrow seems to keep her bread in the second drawer down in the kitchen - usually the drawer filled with all the slightly less important utensils. It has always fascinated me.

I love that Ross Hunter took two actors and convinced them to transform themselves. That he convinced Doris Day he was going to turn her into a sex symbol and she jumped on board. There's an interesting book 'I'll Have What She's Having:Behind the Scenes of the Great Romantic Comedies" by Daniel Kimmel, which talks at length about Pillow Talk. Basically, it says that Doris Day was seen as an achieveable sex goddess. Marilyn was out of reach and Sophia Loren even more unthinkable to most suburban American Women - but Doris Day - if she could be sexy, anyone could.

Rock Hudson had not made a comedy before this, and he was a bit terrified. He has credited Doris Day many times with giving him the confidence to turn in such a fantastic performance. Director Michael Gordon also advised him never to play it for laughs - something that would have stood Neil Patrick Harris in good stead at this year's Oscars. In any event, both Rock and Doris do the most marvellous job of transforming themselves. Doris Day was nominated for a Best Actress Oscar that year - pretty remarkable really, given the light-heartedness of this comedy. She didn't win, of course, I couldn't really imagine her winning an Oscar for this (it was Simone Signoret for Room at the Top) but Points to her anyhow.

There was talk of a sequel in the 80's starring Kirsty McNichol and Gregory Harrison as well as Day, Hudson and Randall. It never happened. Some things should never be messed with (take that, Down With Love) and this is one of those Things.

One more thing - Michael Gordon, the director, is Joseph Gordon-Hewitt's grandfather. Cop that.

And now for that nightclub. The Hidden Door. That was it.