THE KEYHOLE. Warner Brothers, 1933. Kay Francis, George Brent, Glenda Farrell, Allen Jenkins, Henry Kolker, Monroe Owsley, Helen Ware. Screenplay by Robert Presnell Sr., based on the story “Adventuress” by Alice D. G. Miller. Director: Michael Curtiz.

   Even though George Brent plays at being a private detective in this one, the society kind, with Allen Jenkins as his dopey partner, I’ve categorized this movie as a comedy/romance all the way. While there is a crime involved (blackmail), any detection is minimal (that is to say, none).

   It’s not even Brent’s job to nab the blackmailer, though in the end he does, in a way. He’s hired instead to keep an eye on the blackmailee (Kay Francis) on behalf of her husband (Henry Kolker), who does not know about the blackmail but thinks funny business is going on when Kay Francis (a) begins to act strangely, and (b) heads for Cuba alone, and under her maiden name.

   It’s all part of a plot on her part to rid herself of the blackmailer (Monroe Owsley) to whom she was once married and who has since reneged on following through with a divorce.

   Brent’s usual game is getting the goods on married women who want to stray (I did mention he was the society kind of PI), so he’s a little confused, but naturally, as the cruise goes on, he begins to, well, you know, fall in love with her?

   Unfortunately, as an actor, George Brent has always seemed too bland for me, so it was up to Kay Francis to make this picture work for me, and she was never lovelier.

   She has a huge wardrobe along with her aboard ship, and each is what you might call spectacular, with many of them backless (this was a pre-Code movie) and cut low in front as well, but not nearly as far as in the back.

   She makes the romance between George Brent and herself believable, and even sizzle here and there, in totally entertaining fashion.

   But Allen Jenkins I could easily have done without altogether. He plays dopey to the hilt in this movie, and does a bang up job of it. A subplot involving him in a romance with con woman Glenda Farrell doesn’t go very far (both of them believe the other to be rich), but at least Glenda Farrell is easy on the eyes. She always was.

MAD ABOUT MEN. General Films, 1954. Glynnis Johns, Donald Sinden, Anne Crawford, Margaret Rutherford, Dora Bryan, Noah Purcell. Director: Ralph Thomas.

   That’s Miranda for you, all over. Miranda is Glynnis Johns, and just happens to be a mermaid, and the title of the film is a perfect description of her attitude in this fish-out-of-water comedic fantasy sequel to her debut as the mermaid in Miranda (1948).

   In this one Johns has a dual role as Miranda and Caroline her land-bound cousin (seems grandfather had a way with the ladies and the mermaids) who inherits a house in Cornwall and discovers Miranda.

   Miranda would rather like a holiday on solid land, and since Caroline is off for a two week holiday hiking tour, she arranges for Miranda to take her place pretending to have had a bad fall on the parallel bars (“I was going between two bars and took a fall.”) so she can explain the wheelchair with nurse Margaret Rutherford (who cared for her in the first film) helping.

   Miranda meanwhile doesn’t much care for the look of Caroline’s fiance, and she sets out to woo and win her another — no real effort for Miranda who finds men just lovely.

   Of course this is all pure froth, but done in lovely color and with a sprightly sense of humor and double — even triple — entendre. One of her beaus is a retired soldier Berkley and the other a handsome and rich fisherman Jeff (Sinden), and Miranda’s less than innocent ways soon have both men in over their heads.

   Complicating things for Miranda is her life long companion, Berengaria (Dora Bryan) whose mother was “frightened by an octopus,” and has a penchant for kleptomania and off-key singing.

   Rutherford is delightful as the nurse (watch for the scene where she sings “Maria the Matador’s Mother”) who takes great pride in her sexy patient, and Johns is a revelation: long platinum hair, Khirghiz eyes, and that breathless voice, perfect for this sexy romp.

   Those who only know her as Mother in Mary Poppins may be in for something of a shock.

   When Berkley’s fiance Barbara finds out Miranda’s secret, she sets a trap to reveal her before the world.

   The only depths to this one are in the ocean, but that hardly matters. This is a visual delight and a showcase for Johns who gets to perform not only a sexy song but a pretty hot rumba, and do much of the film dressed in little more than her long hair and pasties. If you can, catch it with the first film, Miranda, which is even more of a delight, and teams Johns with David Tomlinson, who would play her husband in Mary Poppins.

   Both films are funny, sexy, and fine examples of the kind of thing Thorne Smith used to do it print in a more (and less) innocent age. Both films compare well with the William Powell comedy Mr. Peabody and the Mermaid, where he catches mermaid Ann Blyth on a fishing trip in Florida, much to the bemusement of wife Irene Hervey.

THANKS FOR EVERYTHING. 20th Century Fox, 1938. Jack Haley, Jack Oakie, Adolphe Menjou, Arleen Whelan, Binnie Barnes, Tony Martin, George Barbier, Warren Hymer, Renie Riano. Songs: Mack Gordon and Harry Revel; photography: Lucien Andriot. Director: William A. Seiter. Shown at Cinecon 45, Hollywood CA, September 2009.

   In this engaging satire of American mores, Jack Haley is a small-town nobody who wins first prize in a national radio contest in which his answers to 100 questions on his preferences for a variety of products establish him as “Mr. Average American.”

   However, Menjou, head of the company that promoted the contest, in collaboration with his flunky (played by jack Oakie), concocts a scheme to disqualify Haley and then hire him at a small salary to test products for their appeal to the average man, a ploy that’s an over-the-top success for Menjou and his newly-formed company, Guidance Inc.

   As you might suspect, the plan begins to unravel, with Menjou and Oakie forced to increasingly desperate measures to keep Haley in the dark, leading to an attempt to make Haley declare himself for or against going to war that culminates in the simulation of an enemy attack on New York City.

   This pushes Haley into the war camp but also precipitates a series of escalating farcical scenes that lead to a triumph for Haley that is an uncanny foreshadowing of Preston Sturges’ Hail the Conquering Hero.

   The film has real comic bite, and the cast is uniformly superb, with a stand-out performance by Renie Riano as Haley’s stand-in telephone girl friend.

GIVE OUT, SISTERS. Universal, 1942. Patty, Maxine & Laverne Andrews, Grace McDonald, Dan Dailey, Charles Butterworth, Walter Catlett, William Frawley, Edith Barrett, Marie Blake, Fay Helm, Donald O’Connor, Peggy Ryan, The Jivin’ Jacks and Jills. Director: Edward F. Cline. Shown at Cinecon 45, Hollywood CA, September 2009.

   If a stiff drink at dinner didn’t help you recover from the dark byways of Hatter’s Castle (reviewed here ), this sunny musical would certainly have done the job.

   The Andrews sisters are the titular stars, but the storyline is fleshed out by an accomplished team of supporting actors, both well known (Butterworth, Catlett, and Frawley) and soon to be known (O’Connor and Ryan, as well as Tommy Rail, a member of the Jivin’ Jacks and Jills).

   Butterworth is the owner of a studio where a group of talented young performers is hoping for their big break, which will shortly come at a local nightclub run by William Frawley. The flaw in the plan is that their leader (Grace McDonald) is the ward of three stern aunts (Barrett, Blake and Helm), civic leaders who have no interest in Gracie’s theatrical aspirations.

   The brisk pacing with frequent breaks for musical “interludes” keeps things humming until the whole cast (including the three aunts) burns up the screen with a sensational finale, the “Pennsylvania Polka.”

   Another of the entertaining, little remembered Universal musicals of the 1940s. If only Turner would program these instead of the MGM classics that we all love but from which we would welcome a break.

NINE GIRLS. Columbia, 1944. Ann Harding, Evelyn Keyes, Jinx Falkenburg, Anita Louise, Leslie Brooks, Lynn Merrick, Jeff Donnell, Nina Foch, Shirley Mills, Marcia Mae Jones, Willard Robertson, William Demarest. Based on the play by Wilfred H. Pettitt. Director: Leigh Jason.

   Supposing that you knew that tomboyish Jeff Donnell was sometimes billed as “Miss Jeff Donnell,” or that she played George Gobel’s wife ‘spooky old’ Alice on The George Gobel Show in the mid-1950s, I wouldn’t blame you if you counted up the number of female stars in this movie and found that there were ten. (Alice, by the way, was neither spooky nor old.)

   There is an easy explanation, of course. The nine girls of the title are sorority sisters (including two soon to be pledged), while Ann Harding plays Miss Thornton, their favorite teacher and sorority mother. Anita Louise (playing Paula) has the shortest role in the movie. She’s one of those ultra-cultured creatures who manages to make herself intensely disliked if not hated by each of the other eight girls, and hardly above a little non-sisterly blackmail to get her way.

   Willard Robertson is the State Police officer who investigates Paula’s murder (if you ever see the movie, you will know how infinitely inevitable that event is), while William Demarest plays his dim-witted (and leering) assistant. There is quite a bit to leer at in the movie, too, as all of the girls have quite a variety of clothes to wear, including swim suits. I can’t tell you that this movie, made on a small B-movie budget, was a smash hit at the box office, but with nine girls in it, if it was, I can tell you who the attractions were.

   What I can’t tell you is which girl played what part. Some, those who had larger roles, I can, if you’re interested, but Evelyn Keyes (of Johnny O’Clock fame, among others) had a large portion of the dialogue, and so did tall statuesque Jinx Falkenburg, who probably had the shortest movie career of any of them.

   Lynn Merrick, whom I didn’t know before now, does a smash-up imitation of Katharine Hepburn, but only when there’s a man in the vicinity.

   Nina Foch (also later in Johnny O’Clock) did not have a high billing this early in her career, but she was perhaps the most noticeable of the eight girls, all suspects, cooped up together in a vacation lodge while the police do their thing. (She’s the mousy girl with glasses who was forced by the dead girl to write papers for her.)

   Personally, from the mystery end of things, I think the killer’s identity was revealed 10 or 15 minutes too early, but on the other hand, detection in an isolated manor house is or was not the primary reason this movie was made. View it as a light-hearted high spirited comedy instead, with lots of spooky moments during the night and silly antics and corny jokes all of the rest of time.

   If you enjoy silly antics and corny jokes, you’ll like this movie as much as I did.

EASY LIVING. Paramount, 1937. Jean Arthur, Ray Milland, Edward Arnold, Mary Nash, Luis Alberni, Franklin Pangborn, William Demarest. Screenplay by Preston Sturges, from a story by Vera Caspary. Director: Mitchell Leisen. Shown at Cinecon 45, Hollywood CA, September 2009.

    Although this was described as a well known classic (at least to Cinephile attendees), I don’t recall seeing it in the 19 years I’ve been attending the convention, and after one viewing, I can tell you that it’s not a film I would easily forget.

    With a sizzling script by Preston Sturges and direction by Mitchell Leisen that never misses a comic beat, this is, in my opinion, a lost screwball masterpiece.

    When Wall Street tycoon Edward Arnold tosses the expensive sable coat his wife has bought off the balcony of their apartment, it lands on Jean Arthur, ruining her hat, and setting off a chain of improbable but hilarious events that will hit the headlines of every newspaper in the country, turn the stock market upside down, and, in the funniest set piece in the movie, turn an automat into a riotous madhouse.

    Arthur is a delightful madcap, Ray Milland an adroit comic and romantic foil, and every other actor in the film, from co-star Arnold down to the most insignificant walk-on player, performs flawlessly, like the mechanism in a classy Swiss watch.

HE FELL IN LOVE WITH HIS WIFE. Pallas Pictures/Paramount, 1916. Forrest Stanley, Florence Rockwell, Page Peters, Lydia Yeamans Titus, Howard Davis. Director: William Desmond Taylor. Shown at Cinecon 45, Hollywood CA, September 2009.

    A charming film that, as the program notes pointed out, is one of the few surviving films of director Taylor, victim of a sensational ’20s murder that destroyed more than one career.

    A rustic comedy in which a widowed farmer (Stanley), after a disastrous series of attempts to hire a responsible housekeeper, in desperation enters into a marriage of convenience with Rockwell, fleeing a loveless and abusive marriage after she discovers that her husband is a bigamist.

    True love eventually develops, but only after some dramatic events, the most crucial of which is the arrival of Rockwell’s duplicitous husband to reclaim his wife.

    A superb print of a film that neatly balances comedy and drama, this has elements of Victorian melodrama that, under Taylor’s astute direction, take on a distinctly more modern look. One of the highlights of the weekend’s program.

LOVE DETECTIVES. Columbia, 1934. Frank Albertson, Armand Kaliz, Betty Grable, Gloria Warner, Tom Dugan, Heinie Conklin and Blanche Payson. A “Musical Novelty” directed by Archie Gottler. Shown at Cinecon 45, Hollywood CA, September 2009.

    Lest you think I’ve returned to my Southern Baptist roots in my enthusiasm for the spiritual virtues of The Miracle Man [reviewed here not so very long ago], I recommend to you (on the happy chance that it turns up on a cable channel in your vicinity), a sprightly musical short with no redeeming quality other than its obvious attempt to please.

    It certainly pleased me with its dancing chorines, slightly risque situations and repartee, and a story line of little consequence. This preceded the screening of The Miracle Man and is an example of the program committee’s wacky and rather endearing habit of scheduling entertainments of vastly different natures, in this case opening Friday’s screenings with a sexy romp that left the audience completely unprepared for the spiritual drama that followed it.

THE CARDBOARD LOVER. Cosmopolitan/MGM, 1928. Marion Davies, Nils Asther, Jetta Goudal, Andres De Segurola. Screenplay: F. Hugh Herbert, based on the play Dans sa candeur naive by Jacques Deval. Director: Robert Z. Leonard. Shown at Cinecon 40, Hollywood CA, September 2004.

   A comedy to be classed with Davies’ performances in The Patsy and Show People. For much of her silent film career, Davies starred in costume dramas that her long-time lover William Randolph Hearst fancied.

   Her native gift, however, was for comedy and she established herself as a first-rate comic actress in the comedies that showcase her undeniable talent.

   In The Cardboard Lover she’s a vacationing American tourist who collects autographs and in the process of trying to snare the autograph of tennis star Asther (in photo) she becomes infatuated with him and sets out to separate him from the stylish vamp (Goudal) who’s been toying with his affections.

   Davies gets a chance to display her skill at impersonation when she does a dead-on imitation of Goudal’s slinky vamp and Asther, not noted as a comic actor, is a charming foil, caught between the two women, while Goudal, for much of the film, ably counters Davies’ moves with her not inconsiderable wiles.

   One of the delights of this year’s screenings and a major addition to Davies’ filmography, apparently copied from the sole surviving print.

TOP O’ THE MORNING. Paramount Pictures, 1949. Bing Crosby, Ann Blyth, Barry Fitzgerald, Hume Cronyn, John McIntyre. Screenplay: Edmond Beloin & Richard L. Breen; director: David Miller.

   Trivia experts likely know that William Levinson and Richard Link created the character of Lt. Columbo for Bing Crosby, but they may not realize Bing had played a detective before, and in fact a private detective in this 1949 musical comedy with a touch of noir.

   Music and murder had mixed before — Charlie Chan at the Opera, Murder at the Vanities, The Princess Comes Across, and Lady of Burlesque come to mind, but those were backstage mysteries, and the singing was confined to the stage. This may be the only full blown musical comedy murder mystery ever filmed.

   It begins with a murder and a shocking theft — the Blarney Stone — which bequeaths the gift of gab on anyone who kisses it — has been stolen. The stone is part of ancient Irish lore and it’s theft could well visit disaster on the entire nation. Finding the stolen stone and restoring it and the killer is of vital importance.

   Enter top American insurance investigator Joe Mulqueen (Bing Crosby), a laid back pipe-smoking crooning detective, sent by Inspector Fallon (John McIntyre) to Ireland find the ancient rock and save the company from having to pay off on the priceless relic.

   But that pits Joe against Sergeant Briany MacNaughton of the Irish Garda Civil, and his fiery daughter Conn (Ann Blyth), and further complications ensue because Joe’s arrival seems to fit all too well a prophecy about who the lovely Conn will marry.

   Top o’ the Morning is by its nature schizophrenic. When Bing isn’t crooning familiar tunes or those written for the film by Burke and Van Heusen, romancing the lovely Blyth, doing the usual Irish shtick with Fitzgerald and most of the cast, and exploring the legend of the Blarney Stone, he’s playing detective investigating a brutal murder.

   Toward the end of the film the mood turns dark and even noirish, and the screenplay acknowledges a nod toward G. K. Chesterton and one of Father Brown’s most famous cases, “The Invisible Man,” as Joe and Sgt. MacNaughton close in on the killer.

   Indeed these scenes almost make you wish the film had been played as a straight detective story, and they have a quiet power as well as a dark noirish look, thanks to Miller’s direction.

   Top o’ the Morning is more of a curiosity than a success. You can’t fault the cast or even the screenplay; the two forms just don’t really work that well together.

   Bing does get to show a little steel beneath the crooning in a few scenes, and he’s always worth watching playing off Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald, who played almost as many cops and professional Irishmen, gets to exercise both his specialties here, and Blyth is both lovely and convincing. A special nod to Hume Cronyn as Biddy O’Devlin, who gets to shine briefly in an offbeat film.

   Still Top o’ the Morning is well worth catching, and noir fans will recognize some excellent work toward the end of the film. It’s one of those films that you may find you like far more than it really merits.