Du Barry Was A Lady (1943)

Of all the silly 40’s musicals I have seen, Du Barry Was A Lady (1943) must be one of the silliest. I happened upon it after discussing 18th century in the movies with Pimpinett and found that you can watch the whole movie on Youtube. Watching it was a bit of a revelation, because I had seen it before as a child. You see, when I saw Singin’ In the Rain as an adult I was very puzzled, because I had distinct memories of being largely an 18th century movie. Seems I had mixed the two movies into one- Gene Kelly stars in both of them, so perhaps it isn’t so strange. So I had great fun watching this movie!

The plot is very simple. Beautiful but poor singer (Lucille Ball) rejects true love with dashing, but equally poor dancer (Gene Kelly). Instead she plans to marry a newly rich washroom attendant instead (Red Skelton) instead. After a dream sequence where everyone is transported to the 18th century where Ball is Madame Du Barry, everyone realizes (despite that it’s Skelton’s dream) that true love is the most important after all.

Lured 1947

I stumbled over this movie as I have a bit of a thing for George Sanders. I mean, what is not to love over suave bad boys with an English accent and a great fashion sense? He is so cynical and cool in All About Eve that you doesn’t realize until the very last scenes what a sinister character he really is. However, in Lured (also known as Personal Column) he seems to have been cast as first lover. The movie is a thriller- a serial killer lures young women through the personal columns and taunts the police with sending quotes of Baudelaire. Sandra (Lucille Ball) is a friend of the last victim that is drafted by the police to help with the investigation. While she answers various ads she encounters some more or less sinister people like a crazed fashion designer (Boris Karloff) and a butler that runs a white slavery rings. She also meets the playboy Robert Fleming (George Sanders) and his friend Julian (Sir Cedric Hardwicke). Sandra and Robert fall in love, but then evidence seems to point to Robert being the serial killer. Is that really true?

The Pirate 1948

In June I wrote a post about using historical movies as inspiration and the movie that triggered that post was the musical The Pirate from 1947 starring Gene Kelly and Judy Garland. Manuela (Garland) dreams about a dashing pirate, Mack “the Black” Macoco, but agrees to marry a rich, boring and much older Don Pedro. A circus performer, Serafin (Kelly) falls in love with her and pretends to be Macoco in order to woe her. After some twists and turns- it turns out that Don Pedro is the aging Macoco, everything ends happily for Manuela and Serafin. And as it is a movie with Garland and Kelly, there is a fair amount singing and dancing. The movie is set in the Caribbean in the 1840’s, but the costume designer, Tom Keogh, plays rather fast and loose with historical accuracy and nods quite equally to the contemporary fashions of the 1940’s. A hundred years earlier the fashion dictated sloping shoulders, puffed sleeves, a rather high, but narrow waist and a full skirt with many petticoats. There were also some rather oddly shaped hairstyles, like this fashion plate indicates.

Casablanca 1942

Do I need to describe the plot of Casablanca in detail? Let’s just quote IMDB; ”Set in unoccupied Africa during the early days of World War II: An American expatriate meets a former lover, with unforeseen complications.”. And I guess you already know it features Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman, not to mention such dependable actors as Paul Henreid, Claude Rains, and Peter Lorre. And you can probably quote it, even if you haven’t seen it. Though “Play it again Sam”, was never said, even if it’s probably the most quoted of all. And of course, most people know the tune too.
Dooley Wilson (Sam), sings As Times Goes By


It’s not a big costume movie, but perhaps that makes it even more interesting for those who want to incorporate the 40’s in their ordinary wardrobe. Looking as lovely as Ingrid Bergman isn’t easy, though.

Rebecca

Last night I dreamt about Manderley.

Rebecca from 1940 is my favourite Hitchcock movie and in my view also a very good adaption from the book by Daphne du Maurier. A young and rather insecure woman (Joan Fontaine) meets and falls in love with the glamorous widower Max de Winter (Laurence Olivier. Despite knowing that he mourns the loss of his prefect wife Rebecca, who has drowned a year previously, she marries him and comes with to his manor house Manderley. There she is confronted with the very scary housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers (Judith Anderson) who was fanatically devoted to Rebecca. The heroine feels if anything even more insecure and increasingly uncomfortable at Manderley and when Rebecca’s body is recovered from the sea, everything comes crashing down.

This is not a grand costume movie, but just because the heroine is so very ordinary, her clothes are quite interesting anyway. And of course, the movie is well worth watching for the suspenseful plot and the excellent actors. Joan Fontaine is perfect as the ugly duckling and Laurence Olivier is dreamy. Judith Anderson is perfectly horrible and then there’s my favourite Golden era bad boy George Sanders as Rebecca’s nasty cousin.

Using historical movies as inspirations sources

This post started out to be about The Pirate from 1948, but it evolved so much into a discussion on how historical movies and contemporary looks that I save The Pirate for another occasion.

It may sound a bit odd when I say that even movies in a historical setting, may work well as an inspiration source. They are set in another time, with other fashions, right? Yes, they are, but historical accuracy has not always been particularly important, especially not during the golden era. Generally speaking the costumes had a more or less accurate look, hair had a somewhat right look and make-up was completely contemporary. There are reasons behind that, for example, even if the moviegoer expects something different s/he still needs to recognize things. If every single detail was to be historically correct, the final look would be something so alien to the modern eye that it would be rejected. Now, those expectations change too. Nowadays period movies usually strife for accuracy in costume and hair and even modify make-up to make it look at least somewhat different to our modern eyes. The modern moviegoer has learned to expect this. The moviegoer in the 1940’s did not and thought nothing when Lizzie in Pride and Prejudice, 1940 (played by Greer Garson) looked like this, false eyelashes and all.



(The movie was set in the 1830’s, not the Regency, but the hair has most to do with the 40’s.)

Even if you try, it is hard to completely remove all traces from the time we live in, even when that is the goal. Some things gets so ingrained as to be considered natural that a movie that is considered perfect when it is released may seem dated after a few years Let’s look at a modern actress, Elizabeth Mcgovern. In 1981 she had a part in Ragtime, a movie set in the early 20th century. It is a very good costume movie and it has dated well, but still… Brooke Shields eyebrows, anyone?

Ball of Fire

I only recently realized that one of my childhood favourites, A Song Is Born , is a remake and the original movie was made in 1941 and was called Ball of Fire. I just had to find it, of course. It’s a bit funny, in my view, to do a re-make just a few years after the original movie and they are really quite similar. A Song Is Born is in colour and the professors are working on a musical encyclopedia, not an encyclopedia. Gary Cooper in Ball of Fire plays his professor straight when Danny Kaye plays his for laughs, while Barbara Stanwyck is more playful than Virginia Mayo, but the plot is basically the same.

Gilda

I know I say that I love most of the movies I talk about, but Gilda from 1946 (actually filmed in -45) is definitely in my top ten list.

Born Yesterday

Born Yesterday was originally a show, well still is, and has also been filmed again in 1992 with Don Johnson and Melanie Griffith. The movie I’m talking about is the one from 1950. Born Yesterday is a comedy with a rather Pygmalionesque plot. A brutish and somewhat shady millionaire (Broderick Crawford) arrives in Washington, ready to let his money make an imprint. He also brings his mistress Billie (Judy Holiday) a pretty, but shrill and vapid blonde. He soon finds her a bit embarrassing and hires a journalist (William Holden) to refine her. Of course she isn’t stupid, just uneducated and quickly gets a bit more refined than a shady millionaire really finds comfortable. Doesn’t matter, as Billie has fallen in love with her journalist and him in her.

A Song Is Born

I had a crush on Danny Kaye when I was a kid; he looked so kind and funny. A Song is Bornfrom 1948 is the only one I have seen again as an adult and I still like it a lot. I didn’t know, until I started to write this post that it is actually a remake of a Ball of Fire from 1941 with Gary Cooper and Barbara Stanwyck- I need to find that movie! As I understand it the plot is basically the same, but A Song Is Born is a musical, collecting a number of the times great musicians, like Benny Goodman and Louis Armstrong.

Down To Earth

Down To Earth from 1947 is a rather silly story, plot-wise. A muse, Rita Hayworth, gets enraged over a musical that she finds offensive and gets down to earth as a dancer to put things right. Of course she is quite wrong. Of course she fall sin love. But Hayworth is lovely as usual.

All About Eve

A bad cold have made me very unproductive that last few days, but to put some good use of being too tired to move, I watched a number of old movies instead. So today there will be some pictures from All About eve. It's from 1950, so a little out of line, but I feel generous and include it, because it is such a great movie. If you haven't seen it, do.

Cover Girl

Movies are always a good source for inspirations. So yesterday I watched one of my favourites; Cover Girl from 1944. It is a musical with Rita Hayworth and Gene Kelly and the story is pretty light-weight. A talented dancer, Rusty, would like to get famous quickly, which puts her at odds with her handsome, but rather priggish boyfriend, who thinks there are no short-cuts to fame, but only hard work. Rusty, however, comes to attention to a media mogul who was once in love with her grandmother and he decides that she is to get everything. Of course, that means she has to forego true love, but in the very last minute (marriage) she is reminded of that and reunited with her priggish boyfriend.