Movie Review: A Stranger In My Arms (1959)

A sudsy melodrama, A Stranger In My Arms features enough talent to survive a torrid story of misplaced passion.

Test pilot Major Pike Yarnell (Jeff Chandler) is approached by widow Christina Beasley (June Allyson) with an invitation to attend a memorial service for her deceased husband Donald (Peter Graves). Towards the end of the Korean War, Pike and Donald drifted for days in an ocean survival raft before Donald expired. Now the dead man's domineering mother Virginie (Mary Astor) is intent on building a case for posthumously awarding her son the Medal of Honor, and needs Pike's testimony to support her lobbying.

Pike knows Donald is far from deserving of any medal, and reluctantly travels to the small Georgia town dominated by the Beasleys. He is interested in pursuing a romance with Christina, but also finds himself targeted by the flirty Pat Beasley (Sandra Dee), Donald's younger sister. Virginie and her father-in-law Vance (Charles Coburn) are soon working on Pike to spin the right story, but from the desperate days on the raft Pike knows enough secrets about the family to resist their crass pressure while still trying to win Christina's heart.

An adaptation of the Robert Wilder novel And Ride a Tiger, A Stranger In My Arms is ambitious but also vaguely under-resourced. Filmed in CinemaScope but in black and white, featuring a healthy number of intriguing characters but a less than stellar cast and clocking in at just 88 minutes, the production appears in conflict with itself. Nevertheless director Helmut Kautner conjures up a passable drama centred on a mother in love with herself and the phantom idea of an ideal son, with all those around her acquiescing to her warped reality and afraid to confront her with the truth.

Mary Astor bites into the role of Virginie Beasley with some venom, her manipulative antics a hot pepper amidst all the hot sauce emotions. June Allyson and Jeff Chandler are supposed to be the main characters but both are relatively bland. Sandra Dee delivers the other notable role, Pat not allowing her self-awareness and precocious maturity to stifle a purring sexuality.

Kautner would have had an even shorter film on his hands had the clenched-jawed Pike revealed exactly what happened on the raft the first time he met Christina. Instead the revelations are stretched out in flashback snippets, the running time occupied with stand-ins riding muscular horses in pretty landscapes, until a rather tepid climax in which a key letter is not even read out. A Stranger In My Arms generates heat but does not always quite know what to do with it.



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The Movies Of June Allyson

All movies starring June Allyson and reviewed on the Ace Black Movie Blog are linked below:

The Bride Goes Wild (1948)

The Three Musketeers (1948)

Too Young To Kiss (1951)

Battle Circus (1953)

Executive Suite (1954)

A Stranger In My Arms (1959)

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The Movie Star Index is here.

Movie Review: Battle Circus (1953)

A semi-documentary highlighting the difficult work of army medical units under fire, Battle Circus features a tepid romance floundering within a narrative void.

During the Korean War, Major Jed Webbe (Humphrey Bogart) is a battle weary doctor and part of the leadership team for Mobile Army Surgical Hospital (MASH) unit 8666. Operating out of large tents near the front lines, MASH has to be ready to redeploy frequently and at short notice, and sometimes overnight. New arrivee Lieutenant Ruth McCara (June Allyson) joins the unit as a nurse, and Jed first saves her life during an enemy air raid and then tries to initiate a romance within the confines of a hectic military environment.

In addition to treating wounded soldiers and remobilizing to new locations, Jed and the other unit leaders including Sergeant Orvil Statt (Keenan Wynn) and Lieutenant Colonel Hilary Whalters (Robert Keith) have to deal with columns of displaced civilians requiring treatment, injured prisoners of war, enemy bombing raids, ambushes, foul weather, and the uncertainties of shifting front lines. Ruth initially resists Jed's advances and the other nurses in the unit warn her about him. But eventually a deep love emerges, although he refuses to reveal whether or not he is married.

Before the much more famous (but no better) MASH movie and television series, Battle Circus ventured to the front lines with doctors and nurses given the unenviable task of patching up bodies close to the arena of combat, although this is a field hospital with no visible blood or injuries, and remarkably pain-free and well-behaved patients. Director and co-writer Richard Brooks cobbles up a non-script most interested in featuring men-at-work putting up and taking down large tents, and occasionally dodging unconvincing and quite wayward enemy attacks.

Bolted on to the appreciation of American medical ingenuity under fire is a miserable love story, consisting of Jed lecherously pursuing Ruth. His pushiness to get his hands all over her borders on assault rather than romance. Regardless she falls passionately in love for reasons lost in the muddy terrain between the tents. Bogart and Allyson are far from convincing as medical professionals, and even less so as lovers, sharing no chemistry.

Brief glimpses of human drama poke their helmets out of the foxholes in the form of an injured Korean child who arrives at the field hospital near death, and later a delirious enemy soldier waving a hand grenade. The doctors carry on with their surgeries and disregard the wobbly intruder, just as this film is best ignored.

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Movie Review: The Three Musketeers (1948)

A swashbuckling adventure, The Three Musketeers is reasonably entertaining but undeniably frazzled.

It's the 1600s in France and young d'Artagnan (Gene Kelly) leaves the countryside and heads to Paris seeking to join the elite Musketeers, who form the King's guard. He proves his swordsmanship in a battle alongside Athos (Van Heflin), Porthos (Gig Young) and Aramis (Robert Coote) and joins them as they defend the King (Frank Morgan) from evil plots. The main threat is posed by the nefarious Prime Minister Richelieu (Vincent Price), who wants to trigger a war with England and regularly conspires with Milady, Countess de Winter (Lana Turner).

d'Artagnan meets and falls in love with Constance (June Allyson), one of the maidens of Queen Anne (Angela Lansbury). The Musketeers set off on a mission to England to retrieve jewels from the Duke of Buckingham (John Sutton), but that is just the start of many adventures to try and thwart the persistent Richelieu.

A disorganized mess of a film, The Three Musketeers just about scrapes through. The energy level is admirably high and athletic swordplay setpieces erupt at regular intervals. Yet a lack of tonal cohesion, weird casting choices, characters rotating in and out of the movie with no explanation, plot points that border on incomprehensible, and plenty of seemingly important action occurring off-screen all combine to create a disconcerting experience.

Most of the trouble originates within a lazy script intent on thoughtlessly cramming too much of Alexandre Dumas' episodic stories into a two hour movie. With no appreciation for the need to focus to achieve depth or cohesion, the film thrashes around in shallow waters gasping from one side quest to the next, barely explaining why everyone is running around, or even who everyone is or why they matter.

Director George Sidney cobbles together enough swashbuckling sword fights to paper over most of the cracks, with Gene Kelly's athleticism put to great use. The lavish sets, locations and costumes often look gorgeous in technicolor, and a certain level of joie de vivre helps hustle the film along.

Gene Kelly as d'Artagnan and Van Heflin as Athos seem to be acting in two different movies. Kelly is all smiles as he peddles a light hearted attitude and half-threatens to break out into a song-and-dance routine at every opportunity. Heflin is dour, reflective and dramatic as he pauses often to drone on about his lost love.

Porthos and Aramis barely register as the other two musketeers, but the ladies fare worst of all. Lana Turner is top billed but her role is almost incidental, June Allyson as Constance is both mis-cast and underwritten, and Angela Lansbury's Queen Anne is detached from most of the various plots.

The Three Musketeers gallops across the landscape with impressive bravado, but forgets to bring along any sense of structured significance.

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Movie Review: Too Young To Kiss (1951)

An adult-roleplaying-as-a-child romantic comedy, Too Young To Kiss features an edgy June Allyson performance but also veers close to plenty of icky behaviour.

In New York City, Eric Wainwright (Van Johnson) is a womanizing and successful talent promoter besieged by wannabe performers. Cynthia Potter (Allyson) is a frustrated aspiring concert pianist, refusing to give up on her dream but unable to get Wainwright's attention. Her boyfriend John (Gig Young), a newspaperman, urges her to quit, but instead Cynthia gatecrashes a children's audition evening by pretending to be 12 year old Molly, Cynthia's younger sister.

Wainwright is stunned by Molly's precocious talent, and Cynthia cannot bring herself to tell him the truth. Eric books a high-profile concert for Molly and takes over the girl's life, parking her at his country estate and helping her practice to be a success. Cynthia is bitter that Eric thinks the world of Molly but cannot appreciate Cynthia, and proceeds to try and make his life a living hell.

Similar to other woman-having-to-pretend to-be-a-girl efforts from the era such as The Major And The Minor, Too Young Kiss is both more disconcerting and more fractious than the typical rom-com. Whether intentional or not, the film carries a welcome undertone of anger, with June Allyson's Cynthia seething for long stretches at the injustice of an entertainment world where her talent is celebrated as a child and ignored as an adult. Her revenge is to poke away at Eric's comfortable life as a Svengali.

Director Robert Z. Leonard, again perhaps inadvertently, steers towards uncomfortable territory in portraying Eric's dominating behaviour towards Molly. He is frequently leading her by the arm, approaching her too close, tucking her too tight, his actions bordering on a version of kidnapping and culminating in a spanking episode. Cynthia-as-Molly displays her disgust and annoyance, and pushes back with vexatious actions of her own, giving the film a pointy stance.

But this is ultimately a romantic comedy, and inevitably all obstacles and misunderstandings shall be overcome in order for the happy couple to find each other. This being the fourth of five teamings between Allyson and Johnson, their fans expected nothing else, and the script finds its way towards an awkward climax to unite them.

Along the way there are plenty of piano interludes, and Allyson is game in pounding away at the keyboards, never quite in synch with the advanced music. She was 33 at the time of filming, playing a 22 year old character impersonating a 12 year old girl. Her performance as Molly is more than passable, while Johnson stays within himself as suave and confident romantic interest. Gig Young is the unfortunate other man, getting regularly punched for his troubles.

Too Young To Kiss raises issues about the nature of talent, the treatment of women and twists of career fortune. The film may have been intended a flighty teaming of a popular screen couple, but it contains more talking points than expected.

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Movie Review: The Bride Goes Wild (1948)

An unbalanced romantic comedy, The Bride Goes Wild has no idea what it is trying to be and collapses in an inept heap.

Prim and proper schoolteacher Martha Terryton (June Allyson) wins a competition to be the illustrator for the latest children's book by celebrated author "Uncle Bumps", the pen name of Greg Rawlings (Van Johnson). Publisher McGrath (Hume Cronyn) knows that contrary to his reputation, Greg is a womanizing borderline alcoholic, still recovering from a long-ago failed relationship with Tillie (Arlene Dahl).

When Greg clumsily attempts to seduce Martha and plies her with alcohol, McGrath fears a scandal, and concocts a plot to elicit sympathy for Greg by creating a fake sob-story about the author as a single dad raising an unruly child. Young freckled kid Danny (Butch Jenkins) is plucked from an orphanage and asked to play the role of Greg's out-of-control son. Martha starts to fall for Greg, but the reappearance of Tillie complicates matters.

The film is as unstable as the synopsis suggests. The third teaming of Allyson and Johnson is devoid of charisma and chemistry, and frequently veers into obnoxious territory. The character of Greg Rawlings is a singularly irritating predator, and somehow writer Albert Beich doubles down on the loathsome behaviour by contriving the ludicrous introduction of the shin-kicking Danny.

Other than perpetuating the mythology that every bad man just needs a good woman to achieve a remarkable reformation, why a wholesome schoolteacher like Martha would ever fall for a lech like Greg is only explained in the minds of Beich and director Norman Taurog. Matters are made worse when Tillie reappears, clearly a better match for Greg, but yet somehow the romance between Greg and Martha has to blossom among the thorny weeds of bad behaviour.

The Bride Goes Wild (the title has nothing to do with the events in the film) ends with ants overrunning a wedding and then stunningly awful and prolonged scenes of hordes of kids pretending to be Indians. Almost bad enough to be good due to the utter lack of cohesion, the film just settles for a putrid type of awful.

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Movie Review: Executive Suite (1954)

A drama about a duel for dominance in the corporate boardroom, Executive Suite takes an admirably direct route towards its objectives, but in the process sacrifices character depth and elaboration on plot subtext.

In New York City, Avery Bullard, the President of large Pennsylvania-based furniture manufacturing firm Tredway Corporation, drops dead on the sidewalk. Avery never appointed a successor, and at the company headquarters office building a power struggle erupts as the Vice Presidents immediately start to manoeuvre themselves to succeed him.

The men in contention are the ambitious Finance chief Loren Shaw (Fredric March); the womanizing Sales VP Walter Dudley (Paul Douglas); the elderly Treasurer Frederick Alderson (Walter Pidgeon) who was closest to Bullard; the young and idealistic VP for Design and Development Don Walling (William Holden); and Jesse Grimm (Dean Jagger), VP for Manufacturing. Matters are complicated by majority shareholder Julia Tredway (Barbara Stanwyck), the daughter of the company's founder, and Board of Directors member George Caswell (Louis Calhern), who is looking to financially profit from Avery's unexpected death.

The women in the lives of the men are Don's wife Mary (June Allyson), who is urging her husband to quit Tredway and pursue his dreams away from corporate politics; Eva Bardeman (Shelley Winters), both secretary and mistress to Walter Dudley; and Erica Martin (Nina Foch), Avery's loyal secretary. As the Board of Directors gets ready to meet and appoint a new President, Shaw pulls all the strings to try and control the outcome in his favour. But his uncompromising bottom-line focus does not sit well with Alderson and Walling, who start looking for an alternative with unexpected results.

Directed by Robert Wise, Executive Suite is an almost mechanically-tuned examination of boardroom politics. The film is brisk and pointed, with the all-star cast in fine form. But the Ernest Lehman script is a bit too crowded with many similar middle-aged men, and a bare minimum of texture is offered to differentiate them. Tredway is plunged into a crisis, the power plays kick-off, and not enough breathing room is afforded for the men to establish who they are and why they may or may not deserve a promotion to the top chair.

Eventually Shaw emerges as the beady-eyed schemer and Don as the optimistic designer harbouring dreams of technical breakthroughs. Don gets the luxury of a family background to juggle with the unfolding workplace crisis, but the other men remain mostly office-dwelling creatures. The power struggle and tension builds to a nice sizzle, but the sub-plot involving Julia Tedway and her strained relationship with the deceased Avery never quite gains traction.

Executive Suite frequently circles the theme of driven men sacrificing everything, and mostly their families, for the sake of corporate ladder-climbing. The women are victims of neglect, pining either secretly or openly for attention they will not receive. Later the film explores the still relevant conflict at the heart of company priorities in the age of shareholders demanding instant gratification. Short-termism competes with loftier ideals of longevity and quality that demand investment in research and development.

The stellar cast members share the screen time, with Fredric March leaving the biggest mark as Shaw schools his competitors in the art of backroom company politics. William Holden is less convincing as the waffling Walling, while the other actors are somewhat trapped in straightforward characters. Barbara Stanwyck adds some drama as the economically powerful but emotionally weak link to the company's past, but her character is susceptible to slipping into melodramatics all too quickly.

Dispassionate and cold, Executive Suite is as ruthlessly efficient as the business world it represents.

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