A Night to Remember (1942)

Fans of Sidney Toler’s Charlie Chan characterization will likely enjoy “A Night to Remember” (1942), a murder mystery comedy where Sidney plays Inspector Hankins, called in to investigate the murder of a man found in the backyard of a Greenwich Village apartment building.

The couple who discover the body are played by Loretta Young and Brian Aherne. He’s a mystery writer and she thinks their new Greenwich garden apartment is the ideal setting for him to write his mysteries. Of course, with a real murder mystery in their own back yard (literally), the couple decides to investigate the mystery on their own.

“A Night to Remember” was produced by Columbia Pictures, and what an odd coincidence that it should appear the same year Columbia produced “My Sister Eileen”, also set in a Greenwich Village garden apartment. Coincidence, or did a Columbia executive have a Greenwich garden apartment fetish? In another nod to Eileen, actress Jeff Donnell appears here too, again as an upstairs neighbor. (I also wonder if Columbia re-used the apartment set. It doesn’t look like the one used in Eileen, but Hollywood’s production designers are wizards at adapting their sets for more than one purpose.)

It’s an amusing enough trifle I suppose, and many think it’s one of the better comedy mysteries made in that era. I thought it took a while to get going and never really picked up steam.

Sidney Toler is good though. He was at an odd point in his career when he made this. Because of World War II, Twentieth Century Fox elected to cease production on their very popular Charlie Chan series. Even though Charlie was of Chinese descent, and China was our ally, it was still considered incendiary to have an Asian hero. In 1944, Toler purchased from Fox the film rights to the Charlie Chan character and brought the Charlie Chan series, with himself in the lead, to Monogram Studios, where the series continued for 11 more Charlie Chan B mysteries until Toler’s death in 1947.

Between Fox and Monogram though, Toler kept busy with a variety of assignments, including this outing. It’s fun to see Toler interview suspects wearing a dark suit, instead of Charlie’s usual white attire. In what I suspect is a nod to his Chan portrayal, at one point he even politely bows to one of the suspects, and says “Thank you so much.” It has to be a joke about his Chan portrayals.

The funniest exchange occurs between Inspector Hankins and Aherne’s Jeff Troy character, who explains to the Inspector that his pen name is Jeff Yort. Get it, he asks the Inspector?

The Inspector nods in understanding and tells him he read his last murder mystery, “Murder on the Terrace.” Jeff asks what he thought of it. Inspector Hankins says, “It knits. Get it?”

Young and Aherne both overact for my taste, and its up to a fine supporting cast to keep us interested. Welcome faces like Gale Sondergaard, Donald MacBride and Lee Patrick provide much amusement.

It’s all very light and pleasant enough. It’s not bad, but there’s not much to get excited about either. A better movie involving a mystery author who gets involved in a real life mystery is “Footsteps in the Dark: (1941) with Errol Flynn, Brenda Marshall and Ralph Bellamy.

Suez

I picture Tyrone Power sitting in his bungalow on the 20th Century Fox lot, about to read his new script, when he hears through the grapevine that Fred has been assigned to the new Ty Power flick. Power blanches, and begins to furiously go through his new script to see what kind of ordeal Fred is going to put him through this time.

The Fred is Fred Sersen, one of the unsung heroes in the history of special effects. He contributed special and visual effects to many of 20th Century Fox’s top productions from the 1930s through the 1950s.

Sersen put Power through the Chicago Fire in “In Old Chicago” (1937), fighting through hordes of locusts in “Brigham Young, Frontiersman” (1940), and surviving massive earthquakes and monsoons in “The Rains Came” (1939). For the latter, Sersen won the Academy Award for Special Effects, a remarkable achievement in a year that gave us “The Wizard of Oz” and “Gone With the Wind.”

It’s easy to see why, as the effects in “The Rains Came” are still impressive today and hold up every bit as well as modern day CGI fests. Sersen later won another Oscar for a later Power film, the WWII submarine flick “Crash Dive” (1943).

One of Sersen’s most famous sequences was the amazing sandstorm sequence he created for “Suez” (1938), a highly, and I can’t stress this enough, highly fictionalized account of the building of the Suez Canal.

I’ve waited to see this title for years and thanks to the fine folks at TCM, I finally got to see it the other night. After all those years of waiting, and it turned out to be…kinda dull. It has some good moments, including that sandstorm, but, alas, suffers from that bloat that many 20th Century Fox historical epics have.

I’m all for romance, but when it overpowers the film’s main thrust, the film suffers mightily for it.

Power stars as Ferdinand de Lesseps, a French diplomat who has a dream to build the Suez Canal, linking the Mediterranean Sea with the Red Sea. Much of the movie deals with political intrigue as de Lesseps seeks to get permission from the Egyptians, French and British to realize his dream. When not arguing his case, de Lesseps must fend off the advances of two equally strong-willed women.

“Suez” is notorious for being one of the most historically inaccurate films ever made. So much so, that the de Lesseps family sued 20th Century Fox for taking too many liberties with the facts.

Loretta Young, in her final film with Power, stars as the Countess Eugenie, who later becomes the wife of Louis Napoleon (Leon Ames). She’s distraught when he gets posted to Egypt, though they still carry the torch for each other. Once in Egypt, de Lesseps catches the eye of Toni (Annabella), a young French woman, during a surprisingly erotic scene where he spies her bathing nude in a pool. (Power and Annabella fell in love while making this film and were soon married. The marriage only lasted nine years, but they remained friends until Power’s premature death in 1958.)

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In reality, de Lesseps was a widow with four sons. And to say he looked nothing like Power would be an understatement. And, de Lesseps and Eugenie were cousins, not lovers, but I can’t remember if this was mentioned in the film. So I can see why the family may have been a little upset that their lineage is not mentioned in the film, but they should know Hollywood never lets facts stand in the way of historical romance.

However, the romantic triangle between Young, Power and Annabella is rather pedestrian, and the scenes of political wrangling over who should control the canal aren’t as interesting as they should be. Instead of bristling with all kinds of maneuverings and machinations, they’re staged here with little sense of urgency.

The supporting cast is wonderful, though, featuring such welcome faces as J. Edward Bromberg, Joseph Schildkraut, Henry Stephenson, Sidney Blackmer, Sig Ruman, Nigel Bruce, George Zucco and Miles Mander as British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli. (Watching Mander, and remembering George Arliss in his Disraeli portrayal, makes me realize the brilliant, though homely Disraeli, would never be elected today. Not handsome or charismatic enough.)

Director Allan Dwan has his name on many fine films, but this isn’t one of them. He does manage some lovely visuals though. There’s a brief shot of the early sun shining underneath the Arc de Triomphe which is drop dead gorgeous. The scenes of thousands of extras digging in the sand during the canal’s construction area are very impressive. Sersen no doubt helped stage an avalanche sequence where tons of rock are blown up by rebels to put a halt to the construction.

And then there’s that sandstorm. I’m sure Power was cursing a blue streak against Sersen and studio chief Darryl F. Zanuck for putting him through this sequence. It’s given a nice build up when the skies darken and de Lesseps and Toni notice a flock of birds flying through the air, far from their usual nesting places. Sure enough the winds kick up, a sand cyclone is seen approaching and for the next several minutes we’re treated to the awesome spectacle of the sandstorm blowing oceans of sand and masses of construction material through the air, as the workers scramble for shelter. What happens to one of the main characters is quite unusual for the time, proof that Hollywood did not always stick to formula.

I liked parts of “Suez” but it left me wanting more. Perhaps if there was more footage to the difficulties and challenges involved in building the canal, it would have been more rewarding. However, I was still glad to finally see it.

It did leave me wondering, though, how long Power and Annabella took to clean the sand out of every body nook, cranny, pore and orifice. Did that hasten the romance? I’ll leave that to the biographers.

Love Is News; That Wonderful Urge

Movie remakes are nothing new, of course, but it’s rare to have a major actor remake one of his earlier successful films. But that’s what happened to Tyrone Power when he starred in “Love Is News” (1937) and it’s remake ”That Wonderful Urge” (1948). Both are pleasant, though hardly earth shattering, entertainment.

“Love Is News” is the better of the two, and takes place in that happy 1930s movie land of rich heiresses, fast talking reporters and even faster talking editors. Contemporary viewers might scoff at its plot, detailing a race among reporters to scoop front page headlines about the romantic adventures of an heiress, but in today’s era where so much ink and cyberspace is devoted to such vapid entities and talentless twits as the Kardashians and Paris Hilton, it doesn’t seen so far-fetched.

The difference here, though, is Antoinette “Tony” Gateson (Loretta Young), one of the richest women in the country, and its most eligible bachelorette, foregoes any publicity about her life and prefers to keep as low a profile as possible. Ace reporter Steve Leyton (Tyrone Power) disguises himself as an airline employee and gains her confidence, and she spills some details about her life while the two enjoy a smoke together.

The ruse is discovered and Tony decides to turn the tables. She tells all the other competing papers that Steve is her fiancée. She gives scoops to the other papers throughout, much to the consternatation of Steve’s editor Martin Canavan (Don Ameche), who hires and fires Steve over the course of the movie.

Of course the couple will eventually come to the conclusion that despite all the bickering, they really do love each other. Both incredibly attractive, Power and Young were a good team, appearing in five films together. It’s too bad that their best film together, the canal building epic “Suez” (1938) has yet to appear on DVD, and I can’t recall it ever showing on the Fox Movie Channel.

George Sanders has a small role as a fortune hunting count in this, his second American movie. His introduction is a delight, first seen in a series of flip images where he’s showing off his profile and then patting his hair down. It’s very amusing.

The careers of Powers and Sanders were interspersed in ways the two men could never have imagined. Sanders came to the attention of the American movie going public in his first American movie “Lloyds of London” (1936). (Is this the only movie ever made about an insurance company?) This was also the film that skyrocketed Power to stardom after a few minor roles.

They would again tangle in two of the best adventure films of the 1940s, “The Black Swan: (1942) and “Son of Fury” (1942). Power and Sanders were filming a dueling sequence for “Solomon and Sheba” (1959) when Power was felled by a fatal heart attack at age 44. Thus, Sanders was with Power at the very beginning of his career and at the very end. Offscreen, Sanders was very much like the haughty characters he played so well and could be dismissive of the roles and pictures he was assigned, but he liked Power and was truly devastated by his premature death.

In addition to Sanders, “Love Is News” boasts a sterling supporting cast, including such favorites as Slim Summerville, Dudley Digges, Walter Catlett, Jane Darwell, Stepin Fetchit (less irritating than usual) and Elisha Cook, Jr.

Those players have it all over the film’s remake, “That Wonderful Urge”, with Power again in the reporter’s role and Gene Tierney taking over the Loretta Young role. Tierney and Power were also a popular team in the 1940s, co-starring in “Son of Fury” and Power’s first assignment following his WWII service, the blockbuster “The Razor’s Edge.” (1946).

Oh, there are some welcome familiar faces on hand here, including Reginald Gardiner, Gene Lockhart and Porter Hall. But they’re playing their roles relatively straight, without the charming eccentricities of the earlier cast. The editor’s role here is played down much more than in the earlier version, and that’s because Lloyd Gough is no Don Ameche.

There is one very funny new scene in the 1948 version, where Power crashes a society party thrown by his “wife”, where he eats peanuts and regales the guests with stories of his 80-year-old West Virigina-born mother, and her encounters with the government when they try to take away her still.

It’s all pleasant enough, but as I said earlier, not particularly memorable. Power would have better luck that year with another comedy, the charming leprechaun comedy “The Luck of the Irish.”