Don’t let the fourth billing fool you, in the largest role, Thelma Ritter is both main attraction & reason enough for seeing what by all rights ought to be a pretty tired marital farce for newlyweds Gene Tierney (glam diplomatic service brat) & John Lund (striving young exec from a working-class background). Turns out Mom (that’s Ritter) has just closed the ol’ hamburger stand and hitched her way over to join her boy, only to discover the fancy social bracket Lund’s trying to climb into and, knowing she’ll never fit in, decides to keep her distance. Then, when she does try a belated appearance, a domestic mixup sets her up as hired help to Tierney, followed by a series of miscues that keep her there as troubles brew at home and office where she fine tunes everyone’s problems with her folksy commonsense wisdom and good cookin’. The usual (reverse) class condescending malarkey. Yet, it’s all but impossible not to fall for it here, with a script smart enough to almost make sense of the escalating missteps (Charles Brackett, Walter Reisch) and direction from Mitchell Leisen that rarely pushes too hard and largely avoids ‘the cutes.’ Miriam Hopkins is a natural pain as Tierney’s snob-of-a-mom and there’s rich support from Jan Sterling, Ellen Corby, Larry Keating as a sympathetic boss and a wonderfully odd perf from little known James Lorimer, a real wild card as slaphappy dipsomaniac heir apparent. Goodness knows what this might be like without Ritter’s preternatural sense of fun, immaculate comedy technique & spot-on timing, but since she is there . . . what’cher waiting for?
DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: Brackett double-dipped Ritter in ‘51 with THE MODEL AND THE MARRIAGE BROKER, this time with George Cukor directing. A bit less silly; it’s even better. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2019/08/the-model-and-marriage-broker-1951.html
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