Movie Quote of the Week

Oh, there are no strangers on Christmas Eve.
--Charles Winninger, Beyond Tomorrow (1940)

God Rest These Merry Gentlemen

Stop me if you heard this one but once upon a time, there were these three ghosts and they were haunting this guy, you see... No, I'm not talking about A Christmas Carol. As much as I love Dickens, I'd like to think that he would prefer that I not mention his name every December. And anyway, I'm talking about yet another story -- the 1940 film Beyond Tomorrow.

Beyond Tomorrow can be described as one of those old-fashioned holiday movies that really should not work but end up doing so anyway. Of course, it helps your appreciation of this movie if you actually like people and have gotten sick and tired of holiday movies that seem perpetually obsessed with gloom and misery. As much as I appreciate social realism, I cannot help but wonder if it's always a kindness to continually remind people of the down side of life at a time when most folks are getting all too many real-life reminders of such a side, especially when said movie does not really have anything novel to say apart from “Life really stinks sometimes, doesn't it?”

Anyway, Beyond Tomorrow does have enough dark scenes toward its end to satisfy the most determined pessimist but it also has a lot of likable characters and a genuine love for humanity. It may lean a bit too heavily on certain character types but it is never eyerollingly bad.

The movie begins in the mansion of three eccentric millionaires. One is a pessimistic Okie named George Melton (played by Harry Caray). Another is an optimistic Irishman named Michael O'Brien (played by Charles Winninger). And the third is an Englishman named Allan Chadwick (played by C. Aubrey Smith) whose temperament falls somewhere between Melton's and O'Brien's. Playing housekeeper for them is a White Russian refugee named Madame Tanya (played by Maria Ouspenskaya) who generally plays mother hen to the three aging bachelors.

The three men are awaiting guests for a Christmas Eve dinner, only to find that the guests have canceled at the last minute. Melton believes it had something to do with an old unnamed scandal he was once associated with; O'Brien tries to persuade him otherwise. When such persuasion fails to lift Melton's spirits, O'Brien decides to conduct a Twainian experiment by going to the window and throwing out three wallets containing only ten dollars and one of the millionaires' business cards. The idea behind the experiment is to select the ideal stranger to be a guest for dinner by seeing who among the passersby is honest enough to pick up a wallet and return it to its rightful owner.

One woman named Arlene Terry (played by Helen Vinson) blatantly flunks the test by taking the ten bucks and tossing the wallet aside. But a visiting young gentleman from Texas named James Houston (played by Richard Carlson) and a female refugee from New Hampshire named Jean Lawrence (played by Jean Parker) prove more honest and return their wallet to their rightful owners. The two honest folks get invited to dinner, get acquainted afterward and celebrate Christmas Eve with the three millionaires and their servants.

Pretty soon it becomes obvious to even the slowest observer that Houston and Lawrence are falling in love with each other and the three millionaires do their part to ease the path of Cupid. But then tragedy strikes and despite a warning from Madame Tanya, the three millionaires end up dying in a plane crash.

The two young people get an inheritance from the late gentlemen and do their best to honor their memory. But the path of true love is never all that easy and pretty soon the two lovers are parted by the above-mentioned Terry. Terry uses the promise of a singing career and her own rep as an entertainer to lure Houston away from Lawrence. At this point the movie enters rather questionable territory by modern standards because even though the movie has already established that Terry is hardly an honest person, it seems a bit much to believe that Houston bears absolutely no responsibility for allowing himself to be seduced by her. Indeed, for such an honest fellow, he seems to forget Lawrence -- his one true love -- remarkably fast.

The three old gentlemen return from the dead and witness all these goings-on but prove powerless to stop them. For a long time, O'Brien remains in denial about the situation, continually insisting to Melton that Houston is a good lad who will eventually see the light. But then Melton is called away to face his own version of the afterlife and it does not seem likely that he will be meeting St. Peter. Then Chadwick is called away to a happier fate and O'Brien alone is left to try to mend matters on the mortal plane. So obsessed he becomes with fixing things that he forgoes a chance to go to Heaven in order to stay on Earth and bring the two lovers back together. But, alas, Terry appears to have a jealous ex and he has other plans...

It is tempting to dismiss this film as yet another predictable soap opera from those thrilling days of yesteryear but I found it quite entertaining. Granted, I wish Lawrence and Houston showed a little more backbone toward the end but then there probably would not be much of a story. Besides, the best part of the movie occurs towards the beginning when we are being introduced to the main characters. Not every movie can make good people interesting and it seems ironic that despite all the palaver from critics about how bad guys are always more interesting than the good guys, this appears to be one of those rare movies in which the good guys are actually more entertaining. I'd rather rewatch that multilingual session of “Jingle Bells” that our heroes take part in during the Christmas Eve party than any scene Terry appears in. And though it's tempting to declare the fate of our characters to be hokey and corny, I kinda like the fact that for all its darker scenes, the movie actually ends on a happy note. Besides, my inner Catholic relishes the thought of an afterlife in which a heavenly messenger can be forced to change his plans because of an especially feisty deceased matriarch -- and I cannot help but wonder my own mother would think of this flick. Somehow I doubt she would hate it.

Movie Song of the Week: “Examination”

I'm not sure there's an official title for this number from 1931's Flying High but it provides yet another good example of what Hollywood used to get away with before the Hays Code. And as you might guess, choreographer Busby Berkeley staged the dances for this movie so I wouldn't be surprised to find out that this sketch/number/whatever-it-is was one of his ideas too.

This time, we see a 1930s take on health care. And by the way, that's Charles Winninger from Night Nurse playing the doctor.

I hope you all enjoy it -- even if the humor seems a bit dated.

She's a Night Nurse and Proud of It

In many ways, 1931's Night Nurse is the type of movie critics love to ridicule. Never mind that it has memorable dialogue and memorable characters, it dares to have a sense of humor about it so obviously there must be something wrong with it.

The film starts off with a wild ambulance ride and then goes on to show us a busy city hospital. We peek at several characters in the hospital including a pair of expectant parents in the maternity ward and a Chinese family in the midst of a bilingual argument. Then we stop and focus on one character in particular: Barbara Stanwyck's Lora Hart.

Miss Hart wants very badly to become a nurse but she does not have enough academic credits to please the crusty nursing supervisor, Miss Dillon. She manages to gain the attention of Dr. Arthur Bell (played by Charles Winninger), the hospital's chief of surgery, and suddenly Miss Dillon warms to Miss Hart and agrees to let her start as a probationary nurse.

Miss Hart gets paired up with a fellow probationer (played by Joan Blondell) and even attracts the attention of a smarmy intern. But it is not until she graduates as a nurse and gets her first long-term assignment that she meets her most serious challenge.

Miss Hart starts working as a night nurse (hence the title) for two young girls, Nanny and Desney Ritchey. Both girls are allegedly under the care of a Dr. Milton Ranger yet they both show signs of starvation. The widowed mother never comes to see them and Hart has the girls to herself for the night. But she soon finds out that that is not an ideal situation.

On her first night in the house with the girls, she discovered Mrs. Ritchey to be passed out in a room across the hall. When Ms. Hart gets hassled by one of the mother's male callers, a mysterious bathrobe-clad figure (played by Clark Gable) steps in and punches out the creep, only to punch out Miss Hart as well when she tries to summon the police. This figure is Nick the Chauffeur, and it is one of the few roles I have seen thus far in which Clark Gable plays an out-and-out villain.

The next morning, Miss Hart tries to tell Dr. Ranger about the situation at Mrs. Ritchey's house, only to be scolded for acting like a troublemaker. In frustration, Miss Hart takes her concerns to Dr. Bell, and allows herself to be convinced to go back to Dr. Ranger and work undercover until she has evidence of wrongdoing.

Along the way, she makes the acquaintance of a golden-hearted bootlegger (played by Ben Lyon) whom she met while she was a probationer. Nick the Chauffeur finds out about her plans, things get serious, and of course, complications ensue.

Is this a good movie? Well, I liked it, and not just because Ms. Stanwyck and Ms. Blondell show more skin in this film than Ms. Stanwyck showed in any of the Hays-code movies in which she played an actual stripper. The dialogue is snarky, the 30s outfits Ms. Stanwyck wears are cute, and the plot actually resolves itself in an unexpected manner. The movie does stress the difference between ethics and humanity a bit much but never in a pretentious manner and I enjoyed it even when its humor came close to being unintentional.

If I had to pick the most memorable character in this flick after Ms. Stanwyck's, it would probably be a toss-up between Blondell's wise-cracking nurse and Mr. Lyon's good-hearted bootlegger. But I also have a soft spot for Charlotte Merriam's performance as Mrs. Ritchey, which is perhaps the best Harlow imitation I have ever seen done by anyone save Ms. Harlow.

Mrs. Ritchey is the type of dysfunctional mother audiences love to hate and it says something that her character manages to linger on in my mind for so long despite having some of the silliest dialogue in the movie. She laughs, she gets drunk, she shares her drinks with a dog, and she gets jealous. She talks down to Miss Hart in one scene but never even comes close to dominating her. I guess the saddest part about the Mrs. Ritchey character -- apart from the way she is so oblivious to her daughters' fate -- is the fact that I actually have known some real-life mothers who would make her seem like Mother of the Year. But that is a topic for another day.