Tonight's Movie: Come Live With Me (1941)
COME LIVE WITH ME is a slight but enjoyable trifle starring two of Hollywood's most appealing actors, James Stewart and Hedy Lamarr. Lamarr plays a Viennese refugee who marries struggling writer Stewart "in name only" to avoid being deported. Matters are complicated by Lamarr's involvement with a married man, but all is set right when Stewart takes Lamarr to visit his grandmother on the family farm and they decide to embark on a "real" marriage for love. All is happily wrapped up in a brisk 86 minutes.
Lamarr was not only a great beauty, she has the unique distinction of being a co patent holder for ground-breaking "frequency hopping" technology during WWII. THE FILMS OF HEDY LAMARR by Christopher Young is an excellent chronicle of her Hollywood career.
The solid supporting cast includes Verree Teasdale, in her last film role, in an interesting turn as the understanding wife of Stewart's publisher, who also happens to be the married man involved with Lamarr, and Adeline De Walt Reynolds in her first movie as Stewart's philosophical, hardy grandmother. De Walt Reynolds was nearly 80 when this film was made and amazingly would go on to act for close to another two decades.
COME LIVE WITH ME was directed by MGM stalwart Clarence Brown, whose best films included THE HUMAN COMEDY and NATIONAL VELVET.
Here's a nice article on the film from the Turner Classic Movies website. COME LIVE WITH ME is not available on video or DVD, but next airs on TCM on March 28, 2006.
Summer 2010 Update: COME LIVE WITH ME is now available on DVD-R format from the Warner Archive.
December 2014 Update: Here is a review of this film as seen on the Warner Archive DVD.
posted by Laura @ 11:13 PM
4 Comments:
This is such a sweet, fun, old movie. I love it when Jimmy quotes the poetry "Come live with me and be my love and we will all the pleasures prove..." but then he gets so frustrated with himself because he can't remember all the words--so much with impressing the girl! ;-)
Isn't that a great scene? So real.
There's a great anecdote in the TCM article about someone approaching Jimmy many years later with a vague memory of poetry and fireflies...Jimmy said that movie moments remembered like that are "pieces of time." TTYS, Laura
Thanks for the info and the Bluetooth link. I read it to H and we both had a pleasant little history lesson. I'll be sure to set my DVR to tape the movie.
Glad you enjoyed that info too...some fascinating movie & history trivia. Hope you will enjoy the movie! Best wishes, Laura
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