Now Over 5500 Reviews and (near) Daily Updates!

WELCOME! Use the search engines on this site (or your own off-site engine of choice) to gain easy access to the complete MAKSQUIBS Archive; more than 5500 posts and counting. (New posts added every day or so.)

You can check on all our titles by typing the Title, Director, Actor or 'Keyword' you're looking for in the Search Engine of your choice (include the phrase MAKSQUIBS) or just use the BLOGSPOT.com Search Box at the top left corner of the page.

Feel free to place comments directly on any of the film posts and to test your film knowledge with the CONTESTS scattered here & there. (Hey! No Googling allowed. They're pretty easy.)

Send E-mails to MAKSQUIBS@yahoo.com . (Let us know if the TRANSLATE WIDGET works!) Or use the Profile Page or Comments link for contact.

Thanks for stopping by.

Tuesday, June 7, 2016

MAISIE (1939)

Delightful, talented, good-lookin’ & largely wasted; Hollywood didn’t quite know what to do with Ann Southern. (Lucille Ball had similar hiding-in-plain-sight troubles before chucking big screen for small.) Southern's vibe was something between Joan Blondell’s tough good-girl and Jean Arthur’s wry sentiment, plus she could really sing though not in this MAISIE start-up pic, first of a series of ten. She’s a show girl, stuck in Hicksville, who talks her way into a job on a farm run by Robert Young for absentee owner Ian Hunter. Actually, he’s due for a rare visit to the place, hoping to make a fresh start on his failing marriage to Ruth Hussey. Too bad she’s a rotter, thru & thru; something Southern immediately spots. There’s a lot of dramatic action packed into the film’s 85 minutes, and a melodramatic third act right out of left field. (Hint: there’s a murder trial.) Involving stuff all the same, with a cast that’s fun to be around. Maisie never did settle down, there’s new man in every film.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: Southern got herself an A-pic lead in Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s A LETTER TO THREE WIVES/’49. OR: Hear more MAISIE in her radio incarnation here: https://archive.org/details/AdventuresOfMaisie

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Southern was a stylish/sophisticated singer, perfect for Kurt Weill’s LADY IN THE DARK/’54 which she did as a tv spectacular. You can find the original tv cast album on Spotify. (Avoid the direct tv track recording of same.)

No comments: