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.

Wednesday, September 20, 2017

TWO SMART PEOPLE (1946)

Alternate title: One Dumb Script. M-G-M had the devil of a time finding good vehicles for Lucille Ball during her mid-‘40s stay. (Per Ball, she spent a lot of ‘down time’ hanging out with an equally underused Buster Keaton, talking comedy technique.) The studio didn’t do much better with co-star John Hodiak, either; each would shine brighter on other lots. And this hopelessly wan comic/ romantic noir certainly wasn’t the answer. Director Jules Dassin, another misused contract talent*, tries to follow the playbook about confidence man Hodiak scamming to deal half a mill in stolen bonds; Ball’s confidence gal (playing her own angles while falling for the guy); easy-going detective Lloyd Nolan (letting Hodiak take the scenic route back to NYC & a ‘doable’ prison term); and weaselly Elisha Cook Jr (claiming half the loot), but it's a logic-free mess. Though as it winds thru Mexico & New Orleans’ Mardi Gras, a studio-bound picaresque, you can see faint outlines of the glam adventure they were shooting for. That and a nickle would buy a phone call in 1946.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: One of the film’s scripters never earned another credit, the other had a seven year drought. The producer made one more feature for a grand total of two. Who says there’s no justice in Hollywood?

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: The sole takeaway is a ludicrous one: Elisha Cook Jr sporting a Harlequin unitard for Mardi Gras. Yikes!

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: Don Siegel’s THE BIG STEAL/’49 (a little known delight with Robert Mitchum, Jane Greer, William Bendix) gets this sort of thing just right. OR: *Ill-used at M-G-M, Dassin broke thru at Universal on his next pic, BRUTE FORCE/’47, an ultra-tough prison drama for Burt Lancaster & Hume Cronyn.

No comments: