Special Subject – Stanning for Anna Sten: NANA (1934), WE LIVE AGAIN (1934), THE WEDDING NIGHT (1935), & LET’S LIVE A LITTLE (1948)
There's Sometimes a Buggy: Irresponsible Opinions About Classic Film
Release Date: 03/21/2025
Acteurist Oeuvre-view – Gloria Grahame – Part 4: A WOMAN’S SECRET (1948) and ROUGHSHOD (1949)
There's Sometimes a Buggy: Irresponsible Opinions About Classic Film
Our Gloria Grahame Acteurist Oeuvre-view continues with A Woman's Secret (1949), an oddball psychological drama with a screenplay by Citizen Kane writer Herman J. Mankiewicz and directed by Grahame's new husband Nicholas Ray; and Roughshod (1949), a consciously feminist Western written by a bunch of leftists. Proving her versatility-within-typecasting yet again, Grahame moves easily from the unlikely comic centre of a noirish vortex to a sympathetic sex worker in a fallen woman melodrama that uses the Western genre to deconstruct masculinity. (And if that makes it...
info_outline
Hollywood Studios Year-by-Year – Fox Film Corporation – 1931: A CONNECTICUT YANKEE and SURRENDER
There's Sometimes a Buggy: Irresponsible Opinions About Classic Film
A curious pairing for this Fox 1931 Studios Year by Year episode: an unsung WWI drama, but as good as any, William K. Howard's Surrender, starring Warner Baxter, Leila Hyams, and an almost unrecognizable (both his appearance and his performance) Ralph Bellamy; and the Will Rogers version of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, which mainly seems to exist so that Rogers can lasso a lance from a knight in a joust. Spoiler: modernity proves to be more than either King Arthur's Court or Ralph Bellamy want to handle, and we dig into their discontents. Time Codes: 0h 00m 25s:...
info_outline
Special Subject - Farrow vs. Allen – Part 4: ALICE (1990); SHADOWS AND FOG (1991) & HUSBANDS AND WIVES (1992)
There's Sometimes a Buggy: Irresponsible Opinions About Classic Film
We say farewell to Farrow and Allen (for now, although we'll probably encounter them individually on the podcast again) with this final episode on their cinematic collaboration, covering Alice (1990), Shadows and Fog (1991), and one of their very best, the ill-fated Husbands and Wives (1992). In the first two, two more Allen characters struggle to live the good life in what couldn't be more different settings, and then we join Allen in meditating on all of the different ways that romantic relationships attempting to function at a high level can go wrong. Then,...
info_outline
Acteurist Oeuvre-view – Gloria Grahame – Part 3: SONG OF THE THIN MAN (1947) and MERTON OF THE MOVIES (1947)
There's Sometimes a Buggy: Irresponsible Opinions About Classic Film
In this Gloria Grahame Acteurist Oeuvre-view episode we get to see more of what MGM was (not) doing with our acteur's career. Underused in Song of the Thin Man (1947), in which she brings the only real noir energy to the final Thin Man film, she gets a similarly brief but memorable role in the Red Skelton vehicle Merton of the Movies (1947), playing the most innocent nymphomaniac in cinematic history. We uncover the legacy of Harry Leon Wilson's 1922 Merton of the Movies novel and surprise ourselves with our appreciation of Red Skelton's acting. Time Codes: 0h 00m...
info_outline
Hollywood Studios Year-by-Year – Warner Brothers - 1931: NIGHT NURSE & BLONDE CRAZY
There's Sometimes a Buggy: Irresponsible Opinions About Classic Film
This round of Warner Bros. 1931 brings us two gems by a couple of Pre-Code masters, Roy Del Ruth's Blonde Crazy and William A. Wellman's Night Nurse, showing off the early star charisma of Jimmy Cagney (oozing vulnerability) and Barbara Stanwyck (spitting fire), ably supported by Joan Blondell in both cases. Bonus: Young Clark Gable shows up for another, even nastier 1931 turn. Dave makes the case for Blonde Crazy as a proto-screwball comedy (Warner Bros. does Trouble in Paradise?). And in another Fear and Moviegoing discussion of Now, Voyager, we discuss the...
info_outline
Acteurist Oeuvre-view – Gloria Grahame – Part 2: IT HAPPENED IN BROOKLYN (1947) and CROSSFIRE (1947)
There's Sometimes a Buggy: Irresponsible Opinions About Classic Film
Our second Gloria Grahame Acteur-Oeuvre-view episode includes a curious under-use of our acteur in the all-around baffling musical comedy It Happened in Brooklyn (nevertheless memorable for the chemistry between Frank Sinatra and Jimmy Durante), and a judicious use of her by RKO in Edward Dmytryk's anti-fascist noir Crossfire (also 1947). We try to work out just what Grahame's ongoing avant-garde skit with Paul Kelly (as "The Man") brings to Dmytryk's portrait of a dysfunctional post-war America. One thing's for sure: she sure hates him! Time Codes: 0h 00m...
info_outline
Hollywood Studios Year-by-Year – MGM – 1931: THE EASIEST WAY & THE CHAMP
There's Sometimes a Buggy: Irresponsible Opinions About Classic Film
For this MGM 1931 episode we watched The Easiest Way, a feminist subversion of melodrama tropes by director Jack Conway and screenwriter Edith Ellis, starring Constance Bennett as the fallen woman and a young Clark Gable, verging on stardom, as her judgemental brother-in-law; and possibly the most sentimental movie ever made, King Vidor's The Champ, starring Wallace Beery as a ne'er-do-well ex-boxing champ dad and Jackie Cooper as his passionately devoted son. MGM delivers again in this new round of 1931! Time Codes: 0h 00m 25s: The Easiest Way (1931) [dir. Jack Conway] 0h 43m 55s:...
info_outline
Special Subject - Farrow vs. Allen – Part 3: SEPTEMBER (1987); ANOTHER WOMAN (1988) NEW YORK STORIES (1989) & CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS (1989)
There's Sometimes a Buggy: Irresponsible Opinions About Classic Film
Our Farrow v Allen series continues with four more collaborations: September (1987), Another Woman (1988), Oedipus Wrecks (1989, part of the anthology movie New York Stories), and Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989). We count the ways in which Allen mashes up his favourite playwrights, filmmakers, and Russian novelists, trace the development of Allen's "survivor" theme through these movies, and discuss the different flavours of invisible that Farrow brings to them. And in Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto, Charles Burnett, in town to present De...
info_outline
Acteurist Oeuvre-view – Gloria Grahame – Part 1: BLONDE FEVER (1944) and IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE (1946)
There's Sometimes a Buggy: Irresponsible Opinions About Classic Film
Welcome to our inaugural Gloria Grahame episode, which is also our final Acteurist Oeuvre-view! In this episode we consider Gloria's first significant movie role, as the cause of Blonde Fever (1944), in which she and Philip Dorn confuse each other and provide occasion for Mary Astor's multiple levels of irony. We then turn to Gloria's breakthrough role in one of our very favourite movies, It's a Wonderful Life (1946), examining it through the lens of Gloria's iconic character, Violet Bick. We consider Violet's thematic link to George at a crucial moment, Capra's...
info_outline
Hollywood Studios Year-by-Year – Paramount – 1931: 24 HOURS and LADIES OF THE BIG HOUSE
There's Sometimes a Buggy: Irresponsible Opinions About Classic Film
Our streak of finding gynocentric crime film gems continues with our second Paramount 1931 episode, featuring two movies directed by Sylvia Sidney specialist Marion Gering. 24 Hours pairs a despairing Clive Brook and Miriam Hopkins, haunted by marriages they can't escape in one way or another. And Ladies of the Big House, starring a radiant Sidney as a hapless shopgirl who (like Hopkins' nightclub singer) becomes the target of a gangster's obsession, depicts life in prison as a curious quasi-utopia of racial equality and solidarity among American's socioeconomically oppressed....
info_outlineWe've got a big one for you this week: four main movies plus four Fear and Moviegoing viewings. Our main feature is Stanning for Sten: Anna Sten's three movies for Samuel Goldwyn, Nana (1934), based on (more like inspired by) the Zola novel, We Live Again (1934), with a Tolstoy source, and The Wedding Night (1935), plus a glimpse at one of her later supporting roles in Let's Live a Little (1948), a Robert Cummings comedy vehicle. Goldwyn infamously brought Sten to Hollywood with the intention of creating his own Dietrich-Garbo hybrid and lavished the most prestigious Hollywood talent (Arzner, Mamoulian, Vidor, Gregg Toland, and co-stars like Frederic March and Gary Cooper) and literary source material on her, only to have the public reject her; but we argue that Goldwyn's care didn't go to waste. And in Fear and Moviegoing, we look at the career of actress/director Mai Zetterling, discussing two movies directed by her, and two early films in which she appears (one directed by Ingmar Bergman, the other written by him).
Time Codes:
0h 00m 25s: A Few Words About Sten and Goldwyn
0h 08m 02s: NANA (1934) [dir. Dorothy Arzner]
0h 28m 11s: WE LIVE AGAIN (1934) [dir. Rouben Mamoulian]
0h 58m 08s: THE WEDDING NIGHT (1935) [dir. King Vidor]
1h 27m 28s: LET’S LIVE A LITTLE (1948) [dir. Richard Wallace]
1h 39m 20s: FEAR & MOVIEGOING IN TORONTO: Mai Zetterling’s Loving Couples (1964) & Scrubbers (1982); Ingmar Bergman’s Music in Darkness (1948); Alf Sjoberg’s Torment (1944)
+++
* Listen to our guest episode on The Criterion Project – a discussion of Late Spring
* Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s
* Intro Song: “Sunday” by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive)
* Read Elise’s piece on Gangs of New York – “Making America Strange Again”
* Check out Dave’s Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist’s 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project!
Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy
Write to us at [email protected]
We now have a Discord server - just drop us a line if you'd like to join!