2013 CAPA Summer Movie Series (Columbus, OH)

It’s my favorite time of year in central Ohio, or nearly. CAPA, our local arts organizing group, has announced its lineup for the 2013 Summer Movie Series held in Downtown Columbus’ historic Ohio Theatre. For those of you unfamiliar with this seasonal gem, the June 28 through Aug. 25 series features a plethora of classic movies shown in the theater that was originally built as a movie house and is now used for concerts, ballets, etc.

Among this year’s offerings are two Hitchcock movies, which you know delights me. The wonderfully amusing The Trouble with Harry, To Catch a Thief and the Jimmy Stewart rendition of The Man Who Knew Too Much will certainly be on my schedule.

Other prize showings include An American in Paris, Grand Hotel, Citizen Kane, Bonnie and Clyde, The Thin Man, 1974’s The Great Gatsby, and Touch of Evil.

I have been notoriously bad about achieving all the CAPA Summer Movie Attendance goals I have set in years past, and I won’t pretend this year will be any better. I do hope to at least catch the Hitchcock flicks, but I’ll admit The Man Who Knew Too Much won’t be at the top of my list.

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Please Don’t Eat the Daisies

Gasser

Please Don’t Eat the Daisies (1960)

I have never really loved Doris Day as an actress and so do not often seek out her movies. In Please Don’t Eat the Daisies, however, she is ideally cast and stellar in her part. I think the star sort of grew into her attractiveness, as I tend to find her on the frumpy side in her earlier roles. In this flick, she is both sexy and a mother, a part that suited her well on screen at a time when she was reigning at the box office.

Day is Kate, mother of four and married to David Niven‘s Larry, all of whom live in an apartment in New York City. With all boys, Kate has perfected the art of child wrangling, thanks in part to a literal baby cage for the youngest. Larry has just left his position as a drama professor to become a prestige dramatic critic. The man promises his students upon his departure that he will not become like the other handful of critics who relish in the opportunity to tear apart a production because of the literary and comedic opportunities it affords.

The first play on Larry’s docket is one produced by his friend Alfred North (Richard Haydn) that happens to be horrible, a circumstance exacerbated by a sexy leading lady “who is no actress.” Alfred is very upset with Larry –as he expresses at the family’s kitchen table the next morning– and the actress is even more incensed. This Deborah Vaughn (Janis Paige) slaps Larry while he is out to dinner with Kate, and does so a second time for the camera.

The additional publicity leads Larry to write a column about how the show’s success is dependent on Deborah’s rear end. Not too much later, while at a party at which Kate finds herself exceptionally bored, Deborah sidles in to give Larry a glance and a chance to reconsider the value of her back side. From here a “friendship” forms between the feuding duo and Deborah begins her attempts to seduce the loyal husband.

In the midst of Larry’s success and transition into a writer of scathing reviews and attendee of snobbish parties, the couple are reminded of their intent to move to a home in the country. The transition comes rather forcefully when they are notified a new tenant will occupy their apartment in a matter of weeks because they indicated their intention some months ago not to renew. Larry is resistant to leaving the city because of the social status he has achieved, but the family nevertheless selects a dilapidated mansion in a small town.

Larry and Kate’s relationship is strained by the commute to and from the city for Larry’s work and the constant state of construction the home presents. Larry’s time away is regularly spent with Deborah.

Please Don’t Eat the Daisies is based on a book by Jean Kerr about her life with her husband Walter and their move to a suburban locale. Similar moves were becoming a trend for many families in the 1960s, so the subject material was apt. Although very amusing, the movie really could have been split into two –one about the strains on a marriage when the husband becomes consumed by fame and the desire to make people laugh and one about the strains on a marriage of moving to a suburban locale while maintaining a life in the city. In fact, the subject of moving to the country is mentioned at the beginning of the film and then not acted on until halfway through the picture at which point we have nearly forgetten about that conversation.

While Day is quite delightful as a capable mother and boy wrangler, deriving plenty of laughs from her interaction with the children, Niven is stiff. He is a suitable dramatic critic and pulls off the transition into an ass well, but his performance makes him quite unlikable in stark contrast to Day. I have never particularly loved Niven in comedies, as he relies on witty dialogue to drive the humor rather than any physical or facial affectations. But that is not to say the role of Larry did not necessarily call for someone on the straight-man side of things, he just does not become someone we root for.

Day managed to fit in a couple songs in Please Don’t Eat the Daisies despite it not being a musical. She throws in a few lines of “Que Sara, Sara” that she popularized in Hitchcock’s The Man Who Knew Too Much and sings a song, “Please Don’t Eat the Daisies”, while playing with children in a school yard. The title pertains to a scene in which one of the boys takes off with a bouquet of daisies and we later learn he ate them. The movie was also the last for actress Spring Byington, who plays Kate’s mother.

Source: Ben Mankiewicz

It’s a Great Feeling

Gasser

It's a Great Feeling (1949)

     I’ve never really been sold on Doris Day as an actress; however my vocabulary on the subject is limited. I would not say that It’s a Great Feeling –her third film– really showed her in the best light, but the flick itself is somewhat intriguing. Self reflexive pictures are not much of a rarity, with many titles from the thirties and forties showing us the backstage drama of theater and movie production. This movie, however, takes it to a new level.

     With the exception of some side characters and the producer role, Day is the only character who does not play herself. It’s a Great Feeling depicts the efforts of two actors —Jack Carson and Dennis Morgan— to convince the producer of their picture to hire an unknown actress/singer looking for a break. Besides screen tests, the story involves no actual filming of their feature, “Mademoiselle Fifi”. Instead, the duo try to have producer Arthur Trent (Bill Goodwin) discover Day’s character on his own by planting her as an elevator operator, cabbie, optometrist’s assistant, etc. Each time she comes into contact with the man, however, she flutters her eyes, quivers her smiling lips and emits a bizarre squeaking sound. Trent gradually loses his mind as he cannot understand why he keeps seeing the same woman everywhere he glances and fails to pick her up as a potential actress. Meanwhile Carson and Morgan are unsuccessfully vying for the protagonist’s affections.

     The story is a bit scatter-brained as the trio endeavor to force discovery of the young unknown onto their producer, instead of just offering her up themselves (Carson is directing the picture). The songs are pretty good, made better by Day’s lovely singing voice, but the best entertainment the flick offers is in its cameos. Not only does the film’s director David Butler show up to decline directing “Mademoiselle Fifi,” but so do King Vidor, Michael Curtiz and Raoul Walsh. Because the film is set primarily on the Warner Bros. lot, we are entreated to a variety of the studio’s stars at the time: Ronald Reagan, Gary Cooper, Jane Wyman and the prettiest and youngest Patricia Neal I have ever seen, and the list goes on. I particularly enjoyed Joan Crawford‘s spot during which she starts an uproar that concludes with her slapping both Carson and Morgan. In response to “what was that all about,” she says “I do that in all my pictures.”