"In A World Where..."

You've heard those words in countless movie trailers.

They were spoken by Don LaFontaine, voiceover artist extraordinaire, who has narrated over 5,000 trailers.

The Associated Press has a brief audio interview, accompanied by photos of LaFontaine at work.

Be sure to check out his personal website. The intro is a kick.

You may not recognize his name, but I can guarantee you'll recognize his voice.

The White House Easter Page

The White House has a lovely web page up marking the Easter holiday, including photos of Easter eggs sent to the White House by each state. I was unaware of that Easter egg tradition, which began in 1994, and enjoyed looking at the eggs. The California egg is lovely!

There is also a page on the history of the White House Egg Roll, which will be held on Easter Monday, April 9th.

President Bush's Easter message can be read here.

(Hat tip: Missyisms.)

Easter Blessings

Best Wishes for a Very Happy Easter Sunday.

Tonight's Movie: Dancing Co-Ed (1939)

DANCING CO-ED (1939) is a wonderful trifle about a movie studio holding a contest for a college girl to win a leading dancing role in its next big musical. The studio plants a ringer (Lana Turner) on the campus of Midwestern University, but when Artie Shaw and His Orchestra show up to play for the final dance contest, things don't go quite as planned.

This is the kind of movie that might have been shrugged off as just one more little "B" movie with a flimsy plot closer in time to its making, but viewed from the perspective of today, it's a treasure trove of enjoyable personalities and good music. Watching the film, one also realizes how extensively MGM trained its talent; Turner and Rutherford might not have really been dancers, but they move gracefully and carry off their roles with confidence.

I think Turner was at her most appealing in her earliest roles at MGM, before she started playing harder-edged characters. A very young Richard Carlson plays a reporter for the campus paper who suspects the contest might be rigged. Sweet Ann Rutherford plays the movie studio secretary who becomes a college student alongside Lana. Monty Woolley steals his two scenes as a college professor, and Lee Bowman plays the studio's big dancing star. Familiar faces including Roscoe Karns, Mary Field, Thurston Hall, Mary Beth Hughes, and June Preisser also appear.

Veronica Lake and Robert Walker are said to have bit parts in the film; I didn't spot them on the first viewing, but I'll be looking for them next time I watch it.

Shaw and his orchestra have a couple fun scenes, including one where they shake up a traditional parade with their swinging brand of music. Drummer Buddy Rich gets plenty of screen time in these sequences, and he sure looks like he's having fun.

Turner and Shaw were married briefly in 1940. Shaw's longest marriage, to the last of his eight (!) wives, was to Evelyn Keyes, star of last night's movie DANGEROUS BLONDES (1943). Unfortunately Turner didn't fare any better than Shaw in the marriage department.

In 1939 Ann Rutherford also had a role in the biggest film of the year, playing Carreen O'Hara in GONE WITH THE WIND (1939). Her older sister Suellen was played by...Evelyn Keyes.

DANCING CO-ED was directed by S. Sylvan Simon, who specialized in "B" movies in which MGM trained and spotlighted its young talent. Earlier in 1939 Simon had directed Turner, Carlson, Rutherford, and Hughes in THESE GLAMOUR GIRLS (1939); also that year he directed Rutherford in FOUR GIRLS IN WHITE (1939), reviewed here in April 2006. In 1940 he directed Turner in TWO GIRLS ON BROADWAY (1940). Simon directed Rutherford many times, including KEEPING COMPANY (1940), WASHINGTON MELODRAMA (1941), WHISTLING IN THE DARK (1941), WHISTLING IN DIXIE (1942), and WHISTLING IN BROOKLYN (1942).

The movie runs 84 minutes and was filmed in black and white.

TCM has made the trailer available on their website.

To date this film has not been released on video or DVD. A Lana Turner DVD set is said to be in the works from Warners, and it would sure be nice if they would include at least one of her early "B" movie titles, such as this one, in the set.

Summer 2010 Update: DANCING CO-ED is now available in DVD-R format from the Warner Archive.

January 2017 Update: I've reviewed the DVD here.

Fred Thompson Joins the Blogosphere

Senator Fred Thompson is blogging at Redstate.

Thompson on the "Pirates of Tehran":

"To misrepresent unpunished piracy as a victory is as Orwellian as the congressional mandate banning use of the term 'the global war on terror.' What are we — Reuters?"

The whole piece is a great read. Thompson clearly "gets it" -- whether we're talking about the War on Terror or using the Internet to reach an interested public.

Update: Quick reaction from Kathryn Jean Lopez and Ed Morrissey.

Lopez: "If after reading that 'Pirates of Tehran' blog post and FDT commentary like it, if the right-blogosphere readers could election [sic] a president RIGHT NOW I wonder if Fred Thompson's straight talk might just win him the election."

Morrissey: "Read all of Thompson's post, and ask yourself this: could he have picked a better way to enter the race, as far as the conservative blogosphere is concerned? If Thompson really still had not made the decision to throw his hat in the ring, he would not bother posting at Redstate. It's not a one-off by a Hollywood star, because Redstate is not the Huffington Post. This is a clear indication that he has heard the calls from conservatives and will shortly start working on an exploratory committee."

Coming to DVD: Dream Factory Musicals, Vol. 2

This week came the good news that Warners will be following up last year's Classic Musicals From The Dream Factory with a new set of MGM musicals.

Classic Musicals From the Dream Factory, Vol. 2, will be comprised of THE PIRATE, ROYAL WEDDING, BELLE OF NEW YORK, WORDS AND MUSIC, TOAST OF NEW ORLEANS, THAT MIDNIGHT KISS, and the highlights film THAT'S DANCING!

The set will be released on July 24th, 2007. The DVD artwork can be seen at the subject link.

THE PIRATE and WORDS AND MUSIC will contain commentary tracks. The ROYAL WEDDING disc will include last year's PRIVATE SCREENINGS interview with Stanley Donen.

Other extras include outtakes, audio-only outtakes, "making of" featurettes, and trailers, as well as shorts and cartoons from the years the films were released.

A 2-disc special edition of AN AMERICAN PARIS will be released within the next year. Esther Williams, Eleanor Powell, Garland/Rooney, and Fred Astaire sets are also in the works. HIT THE DECK and KISMET are expected to be released in 2008.

There are a number of somewhat less well-known MGM musicals I'm still anxiously awaiting on DVD, including YOLANDA AND THE THIEF (perhaps this will be in the Astaire set), THE GLASS SLIPPER, LOVELY TO LOOK AT, TWO GIRLS AND A SAILOR, LILI, and a host of Jane Powell films, especially TWO WEEKS WITH LOVE.

Fred Barnes on Nancy Pelosi

Fred Barnes writes on Nancy Pelosi's unfortunate antics in Syria (above).

And don't miss Robert F. Turner in Opinion Journal, questioning whether Pelosi committed a felony undertaking her little diplomatic jaunt.

Of course, as Turner writes, "The administration isn't going to want to touch this political hot potato, nor should it become a partisan issue."

The precedent, however, is disturbing, as editorial pages including USA Today and The Washington Post realize.

Tonight's Movie: Dangerous Blondes (1943)

DANGEROUS BLONDES (1943) is a comedic murder mystery which follows the popular THIN MAN formula, featuring a husband-and-wife detective team. Allyn Joslyn and Evelyn Keyes star as Barry and Jane Craig, who team up to solve a string of murders. Barry is a mystery writer, while Jane is a former actress. Joslyn and Keyes may not be Powell and Loy, but they had nice chemistry and this film is great fun on its own merits.

This "B" movie has a clever script, played with zest by the leads. It's wonderful to see the always-funny Joslyn playing the lead for a change, when he was so often cast in supporting roles. Joslyn, incidentally, was the original Mortimer Brewster in ARSENIC AND OLD LACE on Broadway, a role which went to Cary Grant in the film version. Joslyn's friendly nemesis in DANGEROUS BLONDES, Inspector Clinton, is played by Frank Craven, who created the role of the Stage Manager in the original Broadway production of OUR TOWN. This might have been a "B" movie, but it had "A" talent.

Joslyn and Keyes make a delightful team, and I found myself wishing they had made a series of these pictures as I would have liked to see more of the Craigs.

The supporting cast includes Anita Louise, John Hubbard, Edmund Lowe, and Frank Sully. It was directed by Leigh Jason. The movie was filmed in black and white and runs 81 minutes.

DANGEROUS BLONDES has not been released on VHS or DVD. It was recently shown on Turner Classic Movies for the very first time.

September 2010 Update: Here's a look at a semi-sequel Joslyn and Keyes made the following year, STRANGE AFFAIR (1944).

New Book: How to Raise An American

Myrna Blyth writes at National Review Online about reaction to her new book, HOW TO RAISE AN AMERICAN: 1776 FUN AND EASY TOOLS, TIPS, AND ACTIVITIES T0 HELP YOUR CHILD LOVE THIS COUNTRY.

Sounds like a book worth checking out.

DVD Case Sizes Shrinking...

...and not a moment too soon for avid collectors like me. :)

Early Daylight Savings: Increased Gas Use

"In a bid to save energy, Congress moved up daylight-saving time by three weeks this year. But so far, the change appears to have backfired after Americans last month used record amounts of gasoline as they got out to enjoy the extra hour of sunshine. Average daily gasoline demand for the three weeks after the time change rose 2.8% from the same period a year ago and was the highest ever for the period, according to the Energy Department."

Increased gasoline demand has also led to prices rising more quickly than is typical for spring.

New Book by Thomas Sowell: A Man of Letters

Mona Charen reviews Thomas Sowell's upcoming book, A MAN OF LETTERS, at National Review Online.

Thompson Gears Up

Mike Allen of Politico writes that Senator Fred Thompson "is getting more serious every day" about running for President.

More from National Review Online's Jim Geraghty, writing for the New York Sun.

I'd Like to See This

The Hill reports that Newt Gingrich and John Kerry will debate global warming next Tuesday in Washington, D.C.

The article doesn't state whether the debate will be aired on TV.

Tonight's Movie: Daughters Courageous (1939)

Tonight I enjoyed a Warner Bros. double bill, following TORRID ZONE with DAUGHTERS COURAGEOUS. DAUGHTERS COURAGEOUS was a somewhat unusual follow-up film to FOUR DAUGHTERS, reviewed here last week.

DAUGHTERS COURAGEOUS reunited FOUR DAUGHTERS director Michael Curtiz and 10 cast members in what film historian George Morris terms "neither a sequel nor a remake, but a unique mixture of paraphrase and elaboration." (As I wrote last week, sequels to FOUR DAUGHTERS would also follow.)

This time around the "four daughters," again played by the Lane Sisters and Gale Page, live with their mother (Fay Bainter) and housekeeper (May Robson) in a comfortable, book-filled home near the seaside in Carmel, California. The girls are all happy with their boyfriends (Jeffrey Lynn, Frank McHugh, Dick Foran), and the mother is about to marry her nice beau (Donald Crisp). Suddenly the girls' father (Claude Rains), who abandoned the family two decades previously, re-enters the picture. Further complicating matters is the attraction of the youngest daughter (Priscilla Lane) for the local bad boy (John Garfield), whose personality is very much akin to that of the errant father.

The storyline not only had echoes of FOUR DAUGHTERS, but I also found it a bit of a modern-day variant on LITTLE WOMEN, with Jeffrey Lynn cast in the "Laurie" role. Like the historian Morris, I preferred DAUGHTERS COURAGEOUS to the better-known FOUR DAUGHTERS. (Leonard Maltin, on the other hand, gives FOUR DAUGHTERS 3-1/2 stars compared to 3 for DAUGHTERS COURAGEOUS.) Although DAUGHTERS COURAGEOUS is not all sweetness and light, I liked its greater sense of optimism; in multiple ways, FOUR DAUGHTERS was a much darker picture.

The performances are uniformly fine. Fay Bainter is one of my favorite character actresses, and Claude Rains has a moving moment in his climactic confrontation with her, when the barest glint of a tear shows in his eye. Donald Crisp, playing a decent man whose life plans are in jeopardy, likewise has a strong scene with Rains near the end of the film. The daughters are all fun, with Priscilla Lane once more the standout. John Garfield is less abrasive than in FOUR DAUGHTERS, though his type of character still doesn't do much for me.

DAUGHTERS COURAGEOUS runs 107 minutes and was filmed in black and white. The trailer can be seen on TCM's site.

This film does not appear to have had a video release.

May 2011 Update: DAUGHTERS COURAGEOUS is now available on DVD-R from the Warner Archive. It can be purchased individually or as part of the Four Daughters Movie Series Collection.

Tonight's Movie: Torrid Zone (1940)

TORRID ZONE is a zippy romantic comedy with great dialogue and charismatic leads in James Cagney and Ann Sheridan.

The setting is a Central American banana farm, where Pat O'Brien, who plays Cagney's cagey boss, manipulates Cagney into staying on the job after Cagney's resignation. Sheridan enters the mix as the pretty new American in town; despite her propensity for cheating at cards, Cagney can't help being attracted to her, and vice versa.

Some critics have compared the film's plot to THE FRONT PAGE and HIS GIRL FRIDAY. The script is quite funny, and in a couple of spots it's surprisingly provocative for the era. Cagney is particularly terrific; I loved watching his reactions. He's completely invested in the film physically, whether it's making small, funny gestures or executing surprising gymnastic maneuvers. Sheridan lives up to her marketing name as the "Oomph Girl," particularly in her first scene.

Cagney and O'Brien, lifelong friends, costarred in a total of nine films together, while Cagney and Sheridan were paired in two other films.

The great supporting cast includes Andy Devine, Grady Sutton, George Tobias, and Helen Vinson. The film was directed by William Keighley, and the cinematographer was James Wong Howe. The movie was filmed in black and white and runs 88 fast-paced minutes.

TORRID ZONE will be available on DVD as part of the James Cagney Signature Collection due to be released on April 24, 2007. It will also be available as a single title DVD release. It does not appear to have been previously released on video. (March 2018 Update: TORRID ZONE is being reissued on DVD by the Warner Archive.)

TORRID ZONE is also shown on cable as part of the TCM library.

TCM has the trailer available to view online here. It does a good job capturing the spirit of the film. Definitely a movie worth checking out.

Rudy Blows It

A number of conservatives like me have been very willing to consider voting for Rudy Giuliani. He has obvious strong points (including a good chance of beating Hillary), and although Giuliani is pro-choice, his promises to pick justices in the mold of Roberts or Alito sounded good to pro-life conservatives.

Last February I wrote: "...one of the things President Bush did his first week in office was withdraw federal funding for international abortion programs. Giuliani pledging not to restore that kind of funding would be a significant way to build bridges with pro-life conservatives."

Unfortunately the mayor blew it today, saying that he supports federal funding for some abortions, which are "a constitutional right."

Oh, Rudy, Rudy, Rudy...you were really in the process of winning me over. I won't support McCain and don't particularly like Romney, either -- and I don't think Romney could win the general election, in any event.

I am willing to bend to a certain degree -- we have a War on Terror and Hillary Clinton to worry about -- but the belief that I should have to fund someone else's abortion is just much too much for me.

As Ed Morrissey writes: "Even conservatives who adopt the more libertarian position on abortion as a personal choice object to the government funding of those procedures under any circumstances. Personal choice does not equate to government financing -- which makes each abortion so funded a public policy by definition."

Bring on Fred Thompson...please?

Update: Rudy's campaign follows up today with a pledge that Rudy "will not seek to change current law as described in the Hyde Amendment."

Bill O'Reilly on Tony Snow

A really nice piece, worth taking the time to read.

One of O'Reilly's comments: "Tony Snow was perhaps President Bush's best hire... Snow answers my questions on and off the record. And if Tony Snow tells me something, I can bank it. He doesn't lie or mislead, ever."

Roger Ebert: "Feeling Better Every Day"

Best wishes to Roger Ebert, who writes that he is slowly recovering from salivary gland cancer and ensuing complications.

Ebert, who this week celebrates 4 decades as the film critic at the Chicago Sun-Times, plans a gradual return to action, saying "I still love writing about the movies. Forty years is not enough."

Welcome back, Roger!

Would Lieberman Jump?

Senate Majority Harry Reid has reneged on his pledge not to defund the war and now threatens to do just that.

Ed Morrissey of Captain's Quarters: "Joe Lieberman has spent the last two months warning that his loyalty to the Democrats would end with a forced surrender in Iraq. Reid might believe he could get a Republican to cross the aisle to balance it out, but it's unlikely that Reid could get one to do so in support of a surrender bill. The current rules in the Senate preclude a leadership change even if the majority switches, but don't expect that rule to last too long after Reid loses control of the upper chamber."

I agree with everything except that last statement -- unfortunately Republicans have shown time and again they are very timid when it comes to dealing with Democrats (witness the unnecessary "power sharing" deal of 2001, when Republicans actually controlled Congress thanks to the vote of the V.P.), and I wouldn't be a bit surprised if the Republicans left the Senate rules as is until the next election! Perhaps, however, what's at stake -- the war and our national security -- would give them some gumption.