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May 12 movie: The Seventh Cross. Spencer Tracy stars as one of seven escapees from a concentration camp, who are recaptured and killed one by one, except Tracy, because he's the star. That makes it sound grim, and it kind of is. It's also a pretty inspiring story about the innate goodness of ordinary people.

Things I didn't love about this movie:
-I could really, really have done without the plot device of narration from the ghost of the first escapee to die. The ghost sort of hovers over the story mumbling platitudes about the strength of the human spirit. Ugh.
-Tracy was a terrific actor, but no acting could make his stocky build any less ridiculous as a recent inmate of a concentration camp. He looked like someone who should lay off the ham sandwiches, not someone who had been starved by the Nazis for three years. It required a suspension of disbelief that I wasn't able to muster.

Things I did love about this movie:
-Tracy's acting was genuinely tremendous. He conveys a character who starts out embittered, desperate and half-dead, and ends up inspired and inspiring. And he does it without dialogue for the first part of the movie.
-The surprise joy of the movie was Hume Cronyn as a likeable joe who shows unexpected heroism. I just looked up this movie on IMDB and found out that Cronyn's wife was played by Jessica Tandy, who was his wife in real-life!

May 12 movie: The Great Lie. I love this movie. Mary Astor is the perfect foil to Bette Davis. Oh yeah, and George Brent is in it too. And Hattie McDaniel, as the maid in some strange alternate universe where 1930s Maryland is exactly the same as the antebellum deep South (down to the live oaks and Spanish moss). Was McDaniel ever in a movie where she didn't play the maid? She was a great actress and someday I would like to see her get to do something besides wait on the stars.

May 1 movie: Dancing Lady. Fred Astaire's first movie! He plays himself and is only in it for a few minutes. The stars of the movie are Joan Crawford as the titular dancing lady, and Clark Gable and Franchot Tone as two guys vying for her.

The plot is that Crawford gets a job starring in a Broadway show, and it's kind of ridiculous to have everyone falling all over themselves about what a brilliant dancer she is (for one thing, she looks at her own feet almost continually), but it allows her to do two numbers with "Freddy" Astaire, who costars in her show. Unfortunately Astaire doesn't get to do much; like Eleanor Powell dancing with Jimmy Stewart in Born to Dance, he has to tone it way down so Crawford can keep up. The best part is they do a dance number where they ride a magic carpet to Bavaria and sing about beer. Fred Astaire seems like the unlikeliest person in show business to sing a song about beer: he's better suited to evening jackets and champagne cocktails. And yet, I always love the beer songs. The one in The Bandwagon has Oscar Levant bellowing "More beer!" and somehow pronouncing "more" with four syllables, but this one has Astaire wearing lederhosen. That's a tough call.

May 1 movie: Tunnel of Love. This movie, starring Doris Day and Richard Widmark as a young couple trying to adopt a baby, was a seething mass of ugly gender stereotypes. Ten minutes in I was so offended I wanted to put my foot through the screen. After half an hour it was just hilarious.

I recommend this movie if you're a huge Doris Day fan, you're intrigued by the sheer weirdness of Richard Widmark as a neurotic, weak-spirited husband, or if you're amused by the ugly gender stereotypes of the late 50s.

April 30 movie: Born to Dance. Another outing for Eleanor Powell and Buddy Ebsen. This one costars Jimmy Stewart, Virginia Bruce, Una Merkel and Sid Silvers, and includes music by Cole Porter and a really ridiculous plot. Stewart, Ebsen and Silvers play Navy men, which leads to a scene where Virginia Bruce's pomeranian dog falls over the side of a battleship, then two hundred sailors leap in after it, and somehow it isn't hurt.

Ebsen doesn't have any dance numbers as inspired as "Sing Before Breakfast," but he does get some nice moves in this ensemble number to a very, very lesser Cole Porter song:

Skip to about 2:30 to see Ebsen sing to and dance with Frances Langford, or watch the whole thing to see Eleanor Powell dancing (sort of -- she has to tone it way down so Stewart can keep up) and some charmingly terrible singing by Stewart. In the intro Robert Osborne said this movie was painful for Stewart to watch because of his singing voice. I'd probably also be horrified if I had to sing in public, much less in a movie, and my singing voice can't be as bad as his was. I really felt for him doing "Easy to Love." Not an easy song even for a talented singer. They had intended to dub his singing, as was commonly done at the time -- Powell is dubbed by Marjorie Lane in this movie. But the dubbing sounded really fake because Stewart's speaking voice is so distinctive. So they had Stewart do his own singing.

You can really tell Powell had ballet training by some of her dance moves. She does this one thing (in another number not on Youtube) where she kicks up until her foot touches her head -- ankle actually, she had long legs -- and then she bends over backward with her foot still in the air. Simply amazing.

April 28 movie: Bluebeard's Eighth Wife. This movie was delightful! Directed by Lubitsch and written by Charles Brackett and BIlly Wilder, with terrific acting from stars Gary Cooper, Claudette Colbert, David Niven and Edward Everett Horton. Cooper and Colbert have wonderful chemistry, and they have great material to work with. I was laughing out loud throughout this -- at the jokes, and also just because the movie made me feel so happy. That's the Lubitsch touch.

April 28 movie: Gambling Lady. This movie had a twisty, implausible plot made enjoyable by the stars: Barbara Stanwyck and Joel McCrea. I adore both of them, and together? A treat. Stanwyck is a professional gambler who marries rich, innocent McCrea. Then there's a false murder rap and they're forced apart by a designing woman, and then, well if this were a weeper I wouldn't be smiling while I write this. Which I am. Also starred Pat O'Brien and C. Aubrey Smith, both marvelous.

April 24 movie: Some Came Running. I think I wasn't in the mood to see this movie. It's highly praised, but I didn't like it at all. Frank Sinatra is a war vet with anger issues. Shirley Maclaine is a dumb, classless girl from the wrong side of the tracks who debases herself to Sinatra over, and over, and over. It's really rather unpleasant.

April 21 movie: In Person. Ginger Rogers plays a glamorous actress who has a nervous breakdown and starts wearing an ugly costume (fake teeth, bad wig, etc) so she can go out in public without being recognized. George Brent spends time with her because he feels sorry for the poor ugly girl. Things progress from there as one would expect in a screwball comedy. In general I cannot stand movies about beautiful women pretending to be plain, and this was no exception.

April 19 movie: H.M. Pulham, Esq. I really enjoyed this thoughtful movie about a Boston society man (Robert Young) looking back on the road he didn't take: a New York career and romance with Hedy Lamarr.