The launching pad for Billy Wilder's comedy classic was a rusty old German farce, Fanfares of Love , whose two main characters were male musicians so desperate to get a job that they disguise themselves as women and play with an all-girl band in gangster-dominated 1929 Chicago. In this version, musicians Joe (Tony Curtis) and Jerry (Jack Lemmon) ...
The final film of stars Clark Gable and Marilyn Monroe is an elegy for the death of the Old West from writer Arthur Miller and director John Huston. Gable stars as Gay Langland, an aging hand traveling the byways and working at rodeos with his two comrades, Guido (Eli Wallach) and young Perce Howland (Montgomery Clift). The three men come up with ...
The opening credits appearing over a turbulent ocean serve as a foreshadowing of things to come in this standard-issue love triangle that shifts into high drama thanks to taut direction by Fritz Lang and a sizzling performance by Barbara Stanwyck. Returning to live with her brother, Joe (Keith Andes), at her family's home in a small fishing ...
Like Alexander's Ragtime Band (1938), 20th Century-Fox's There's No Business Like Show Business is a "catalogue" film, its thinnish plot held together by an itinerary of Irving Berlin tunes. The story chronicles some twenty years in the lives of a showbiz family, headed by Dan Dailey and Ethel Merman. Two of the couple's three grown children -- ...
Sex symbol Marilyn Monroe went dramatic in 1952's Don't Bother to Knock. Monroe plays Nell Forbes, a beautiful but suicidal young woman, recently released from a mental institution. She doesn't mention this on her resumé when she takes a baby-sitting job in a posh hotel. Jed Towers (Richard Widmark), a hotel guest, tries to make time with Nell ...
Director Otto Preminger's only western, River of No Return is set in Canada during the 19th century Gold Rush. Farmer Matt Calder (Robert Mitchum) is released from prison after serving a sentence for shooting a man in the back to protect a friend. He arrives in a small town to retrieve his young son, Mark (Tommy Rettig), who has befriended a ...
A remake of 1933's The Greeks Had a Word for Them, as well as a retread of 20th Century-Fox's favorite plotline, How to Marry a Millionaire was the first Hollywood comedy to be lensed in Cinemascope. Lauren Bacall, Betty Grable and Marilyn Monroe play three models of modest means who rent an expensive Manhattan penthouse apartment and pose as ...
Second-billed Marilyn Monroe is the blonde in question in this second film version of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes: Miss Lorelei Lee, whose philosophy is "diamonds are a girl's best friend." Together with her best human friend Dorothy (top-billed Jane Russell), showgirl Lorelei embarks upon a boat trip to Paris, where she intends to marry millionaire ...
First shown on American Movie Classics, Marilyn Monroe: The Final Days covers the production of "Something's Got to Give," a romantic comedy starring Monroe, Dean Martin, and Cyd Charisse. Monroe was fired during filming shortly before her death, and the movie was eventually scrapped. The centerpiece of the documentary is a restored reconstruction ...
Like thousands of other Manhattanites, Tom Ewell annually packs his wife (Evelyn Keyes) and children off to summer vacation, staying behind to work at the office. This particular summer, the lonely Ewell begins fantasizing about the many women he'd foresworn upon getting married (in one of the fantasies, Ewell and Marguerite Chapman parody the ...
The title of the Anglo-American The Prince and the Showgirl could well have alluded to the genuine stations in life of stars Sir Laurence Olivier and Marilyn Monroe. Based on the Terence Rattigan play The Sleeping Prince, the film casts Olivier as Charles, prince regent of Carpathia, who is in London to attend the 1911 coronation of King George V. ...
Home Town Story was commissioned as a pro-Big Business tract by General Motors. The story revolves around Blake Washburn, a mildly leftist newspaperman, played by Jeffrey Lynn. Returning to his home town, Washburn turns his journalistic vitriol upon the local business interests. Only after his kid sister Katie (Melinda Plowman), trapped in a cave ...
Mickey Rooney is The Fireball in this independently produced sports film. The sport in this case is roller-skating, which was enjoying a resurgence of popularity in 1950 thanks to the various "Roller Derby" telecasts. Rooney plays Johnny Cesar, an orphan kid who rises to fame and fortune on the basis of his skill on skates. As his popularity grows ...
Let's Make Love is a breezy comedy about an off Broadway musical production. Jean-Marc Clement (Yves Montand) is the richest man in the world and looking for someone who loves him instead of his money. He reads in Variety he is to be satirized in the new production and tries out for the part. The producers hire him, unaware of his real identity. ...
In this cinemadaptation of William Inge's Broadway comedy Bus Stop, Marilyn Monroe is cast as Cherie, a fifth-rate nightclub chanteuse who captures the heart of Montana rodeo champ Bo (Don Murray). He, in turn, kidnaps Cherie and bundles her off to the roadside bus stop of the title. Gradually, the headstrong Bo learns that you can't rope a gal ...
Howard Hawks hoped to capture the screwball comic fervor of his 1938 film Bringing Up Baby with his 1952 comedy Monkey Business. As in the earlier film, Cary Grant stars as an absent-minded professor involved in a research project. This time he's a chemist seeking a "fountain of youth" formula that will revitalize middle-agers both mentally and ...
Having supped full of success with the multi-storied O. Henry's Full House, 20th Century-Fox assembled another all-star "omnibus" film, We're Not Married. The unifying factor of this enjoyable seriocomedy is provided by justice-of-the-peace Melvin Bush (Victor Moore), who learns to his horror that his license is invalid. Bush and his wife (Jane ...
Belated honeymooners Polly (Jean Peters) and Ray Cutler (Casey Adams) arrive at their Niagara Falls cottage only to find that Rose (Marilyn Monroe) and George Loomis (Joseph Cotten) have not yet checked out. Though the Cutlers temporarily take another cabin, the lives of the two couples are bound together for the next two days. Polly discovers ...
Love Nest is a thoroughly likeable formula comedy with a most engaging cast. William Lundigan plays Jim Scott, an aspiring writer who, together with his wife Connie (June Haver), moves into the basement of an apartment building that they've bought. Scott's hopes to keep financially solvent are thwarted by the everyday travails of maintaining the ...
This anthology film assembles five respected directors and a top-notch cast to bring a handful of stories by the great American author O. Henry to the screen. In The Cop and the Anthem , a tramp named Soapy (Charles Laughton) tries to get arrested so that he can spend the winter in jail, only to find that is not as easy as it used to be. Marilyn ...
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