Movie Review: The Perfect Furlough (1958)

A romantic comedy about a dream vacation turning to farce, The Perfect Furlough (also known as Strictly For Pleasure) delivers flighty entertainment.

Army psychologist Lieutenant Vicki Loren (Janet Leigh) conceives of a vacation competition for one soldier to boost the morale of all 104 batchelors stationed for a long year at a remote army base in the Arctic. After some clever scheming and fast talking Corporal Paul Hodges (Tony Curtis) wins the draw to enjoy three weeks in Paris with Argentinian Hollywood actress Sandra Roca (Linda Cristal), who was convinced to participate by her agent Harvey Franklin (Keenan Wynn). 

Hodges is a rampant womanizer, and even before they arrive in Paris he sets his sights on seducing Sandra. With the army terrified of bad publicity Vicki clamps down, placing Hodges under guard and denying him opportunities to engage in romance. He does not stop trying, leading to unintended escapades with both Sandra and Vicki.

A standard romance-in-the-military comedy, The Perfect Furlough has modest ambitions and rides the magnetism of star Tony Curtis to expected laughs. The Stanley Shapiro script draws predictable lines around a stuffy and somewhat incompetent military establishment clashing with fun-loving sex-starved troops, and Blake Edwards hustles the action along with a combination of deadpan humour and wide-eyed farce.

Despite the CinemaScope production The Perfect Furlough does not exude high budget aspirations. Many of the scenes in Paris are painfully flat backscreen jobs, and most of the action is confined to multiple hotel rooms, complete with the usual window ledge escapades.

Edwards builds his way up to farce-level misunderstandings and packs in a French magistrate, a doctor, an elderly winemaker, his more elderly father, and a few surprise revelations into the mix. And recognizing the delicately thin extent of the premise, all the antics are wrapped up in 93 minutes.

The film treats a woman in military leadership with surprising matter-of-fact respect, but without fully avoiding moments of sexism. Janet Leigh owns the pioneering role and walks a fine line between exerting authority and melting into romance on cue. Curtis aces his lothario persona, bending but not quite breaking the rules and not beyond manhandling a superior to prove a point. Linda Cristal is full of vitality as the exotic Hollywood beauty wringing exposure from the army publicity machine but also hiding a few secrets.

Colourful and charismatic, The Perfect Furlough is frivolous fun.

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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: Royal Wedding (1951)

A Fred Astaire musical set mostly in London on the eve of Princess Elizabeth's wedding in 1947, Royal Wedding offers breezy fun and plenty of comic romance, but the musical numbers rarely rise above average.

Popular brother-and-sister Broadway musical act Tom and Ellen Bowen (Astaire and Jane Powell) are both happily not married. Tom is dedicated to his craft and has no time for romance, while Ellen toys with men for a matter of days at a time and leaves a trail of broken hearts in her wake. When their agent Irving (Keenan Wynn) arranges for the Bowens to star in a London show in the lead-up to Princess Elizabeth's royal wedding, Tom and Ellen jump at the chance.

On the boat to London, Ellen meets Lord John Brindale (Peter Lawford), a British man who shares her love for quick affairs and no commitments. But Ellen and John start to seriously care for each other, and once in London, Tom meets and falls in love with back-up dancer Anne (Sarah Churchill), although she tells him that she is engaged to a man based in Chicago. With the London show a big success, Tom and Ellen find their new romantic relationships complicating their previously straightforward lives.

Royal Wedding has a few drawbacks that prevent it from joining the absolute top ranks of 1950s musicals. Jane Powell was at least third choice for the role of Ellen. June Allyson (pregnancy) and then Judy Garland (absenteeism) both dropped out. Plucked from the obscurity of MGM's low-budget second tier musicals, the 21 year old Powell is ironically more watchable as an actress with a deft comic turn than as a musical performer. Her singing is unremarkable despite a good range, while her dancing is passable without ever being memorable.

Sarah Churchill is another drag on Royal Wedding. Winston's daughter, labouring under the misconception that she has a future in acting, is a wooden, unconvincing presence, and there is never a threat of chemistry with Astaire. Her casting must have surely been a stunt to trade on her father's name in the British market.

With Peter Lawford his usual anonymous self, the most passionate relationship in the film is between Tom and Ellen. As siblings singing and dancing together often in vignettes with romantic undercurrents, there is a scratchy discomfort in the physical and emotional closeness on display between brother and sister.

But there are also several positives to enjoy. Deprived of a stellar partner, Astaire delivers two brilliant solo dances. In Sunday Jumps he dances with props in the gym of the cross-Atlantic ship, turning a hatstand into an elegant companion. And in You're All the World to Me, Astaire seamlessly dances on the walls and ceilings of his hotel room. It is one of Astaire's most famous on-screen highlights, an eye-popping technical achievement delivered with aplomb by director Stanley Donen. In the best of the Astaire/Powell dances, they slide with the waves as the Atlantic high seas turn their dance floor into a tilting surface.

Keenan Wynn is a delight in the dual role of New York-based Irving and his twin brother London-based Edgar, and he gets to enjoy a couple of humorous telephone conversations with himself. Overall, Royal Wedding enjoys a steady current of wry comedy that makes up for the more creaky elements of the production.

A polished and colourful event despite suffering from some unruly moments, this wedding is still well worth attending.

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Movie Review: The Belle Of New York (1952)

A routine Fred Astaire musical, The Belle Of New York is short, sweet, silly and stuck on the sound stage.

It's early in the 1900s, and Angela (Vera-Ellen) is blossoming into an attractive woman, dangerously pretty for her job at a Salvation Army-like mission in New York City. Meanwhile, playboy bachelor Charles (Astaire) is threatening to get married again, although he rarely goes through with his threats, and instead leaves a succession of women at the altar.

When Charles meets Angela on the streets of New York, the attraction is immediate. She explains to him that being in love feels like walking on air, and sure enough Charles finds that he can float, sing and dance high above the ground. Much to the shock of his rich Aunt Lettie (Marjorie Main) and lawyer friend Max (Keenan Wynn), Charles proceeds to woo Angela by accepting a succession of honest day jobs, but his playboy reputation and tendencies get in the way.

The Belle Of New York has the definite whiff of a project slapped together in a hurry. With a small cast, stage-bound sets and a minimum of plot, the material is lightweight, and frequently threatens to be blown away with all the other floating-in-the-air cheesy effects.

Once Charles and Angela meet and the love affair starts about 20 minutes into the film, director Charles Waters struggles to generate substance. The film defaults to a succession of song and dance numbers ever so briefly interrupted by a few acting scenes and some slapstick-level humour. The dialogue is often sharp and clever, but there is not much of it. The vivid colours do add welcome vibrancy, but keeping the luminous Vera-Ellen mostly hidden in the drab clothing of a mission volunteer is quite self-defeating.

Fortunately Astaire and Vera-Ellen make for a good duo, and what they lack in chemistry as unconvincing lovers they make up for in energetic and innovative song and dance performances. Astaire hovers elegantly high above the Washington Square monument in Seeing's Believing, they team up for the cleverly choreographed Oops in and and around a horse-drawn streetcar before lighting up the dance floor in A Bride's Wedding Day Song. Vera-Ellen finally shows off her legs in Naughty But Nice while Astaire enjoys a superlative solo in I Wanna Be A Dancin' Man.

At just over 80 minutes The Belle Of New York drifts away humming a few good tunes, the featherweight airiness not leaving much of a lasting impression.

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The Movies Of Keenan Wynn

All movies starring Keenan Wynn and reviewed on the Ace Black Movie Blog are linked below:

The Hucksters (1947)

The Three Musketeers (1948)

Annie Get Your Gun (1950)

Three Little Words (1950)

Royal Wedding (1951)

The Belle Of New York (1952)

Battle Circus (1953)

Touch Of Evil (1958, uncredited)

The Perfect Furlough (1958)

Dr. Strangelove (1964)

The Americanization Of Emily (1964)

The War Wagon (1967)

Point Blank (1967)

Once Upon A Time In The West (1968)

MacKenna's Gold (1969)

The Mechanic (1972)

The Internecine Project (1974)

Best Friends (1982)

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The Movie Star Index is here.

Movie Review: Annie Get Your Gun (1950)

A joyous, vivid musical celebration of wild west travelling shows, Annie Get Your Gun is the staunchest proponent of its own merits. Cheese, fun, and exaggeration combine to pummel subtlety into submission.

An adaptation of the hit 1946 Rodgers and Hammerstein Broadway show, the story is loosely based on the real adventures of sharpshooter Annie Oakley and her romance with fellow expert marksman Frank Butler. It's the late 1800's and the Buffalo Bill show featuring Frank Butler (Howard Keel) as a star attraction arrives in Cincinnati, Ohio.

One of the publicity stunts is for Butler to challenge any local marksman to a clay pigeon shooting competition. Hotel owner Foster Wilson (Clinton Sundberg), disgruntled that the Buffalo Bill circus is thrashing his grounds, discovers young and scruffy Annie Oakley (Betty Hutton), who simply cannot miss with a shotgun, and enters her into the competition. Annie both handily beats Frank and falls madly in love with him.

Buffalo Bill (Louis Calhern) himself spots Annie's potential for generating a crowd, and invites her to join his troop. Chief Sitting Bull (J. Carrol Naish), who leads the large contingent of Indians participating in the show, adopts Annie as his daughter and makes her an honorary Indian. As Annie's fame grows, Frank's ego is bruised and he leaves Buffalo Bill to join the competing show of Pawnee Bill (Edward Arnold). With Annie broken-hearted but with a reputation enhanced through a grand tour of Europe, Buffalo Bill and Sitting Bull have to concoct a way for Annie and Frank to get back together.

Annie Get Your Gun is loud, colourful, and almost childish in its unbridled enthusiasm. After Judy Garland stumbled out of the production either as a result of sickness or personality conflicts (or both), Betty Hutton was thrust into the spotlight and threw herself into the role inhabited on Broadway by Ethel Merman with enough gusto to individually power a small town.

Particularly in portraying her adulation of Frank Butler, Hutton overacts with an eye-bulging theatrical zeal usually reserved for juvenile stage productions. It's an unsettling aspect of a film not necessarily targeted at children, and prevents the movie from weaving any kind of meaningful spell.

The other main weakness is the hopelessly dated, condescending portrayal of the Indians. Perhaps the only thing worse than their traditional Hollywood depiction as savages standing in the way of the white man's westward quest is reducing Indians to a crude joke. Here they are uncouth buffoons, comic sideshows both in the movie and in Buffalo Bill's show. Mercifully Chief Sitting Bull's character is allowed to salvage some redemption in displaying the wisdom needed to help bring Annie and Frank together.

Annie Get Your Gun is much better known for an outstanding set of songs, the Irving Berlin score for the Broadway production transported almost in its entirety to the film. Doin' What Comes Natur'lly and You Can't Get a Man with a Gun have the inherent bouncy energy to match Hutton's committed conviction, while There's No Business Like Show Business (Hutton with Keel, Calhern and Keenan Wynn) and Anything You Can Do I Can Do Better (Hutton and Keel) rightfully claim their place among the all-time great tunes of Broadway and Hollywood.

Working from a peppy Sidney Sheldon script, director George Sidney replaced Charles Walters (who in turn had stepped in for Busby Berkeley) to shepherd the troubled production to its conclusion. Sidney pulls together an efficient 107 minute movie without sacrificing narrative scope. The songs propel an impressive arch starting from Annie as a young, unwashed teenager and ending with her as an acclaimed international superstar having performed for Europe's royalty.

Annie Get Your Gun is enjoyable for what it is, an almost naive celebration of a slice of bewildering Americana. The music and songs are far more interesting than the story or the execution, confirmation that Annie's sharpshooting skills are more suitable for the theatre than the screen.

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