Toby is just a little kid who doesn’t ask for much. He’s poor and lives with relatives who hate him, but he is super-stoked when the circus rolls in to town. And this isn’t some newfangled circus that hands out coupons at the local grocery store. This is a full-blown, traveling circus that comes right up Main Street, U.S.A. in all its brightly colored glory. In short, exactly the sort of kick ass circus any brat with a cruddy home life would run away with. Continue reading “Toby Tyler, or Ten Weeks with a Circus (1960)”
Category: Classic
Demetrius and the Gladiators (1954)
Nine months after Richard Burton was harassed into becoming a Christian by a red beach towel in The Robe, Hollywood decided it was time for a sequel. Since this whole Christian thing worked out so well for Burton and co-star Jean Simmons (you might recall they ended up on the wrong end of the archery field at the end of The Robe), it was left to Victor Mature to run around squawking about this robe and how it can just butt out of his life when things get rough.
Everyone’s favorite character in this movie (well, aside from the robe – it’s kind of hard to be a real Christian and not pick the robe) is Strabo, the tough but lovable guy that runs the gladiator school and played by Ernest Borgnine. Continue reading “Demetrius and the Gladiators (1954)”
The Robe (1953)
Richard Burton’s Marcellus Gallio is a tribune in the Roman army and we meet him as he hangs out in a town marketplace. He peruses the slaves, fights with his girlfriend, and meets up with a gal from his youth. Since she is played by Jean Simmons (The Big Country and Elmer Gantry) his fight with the girlfriend understandably doesn’t seem as important as it once did. If I thought for one second that anyone from my childhood ended up looking like Jean Simmons instead of Gene Simmons, I’d probably be booking my hotel room for my high school reunion now instead of planning on egging my English teacher’s car that night. Continue reading “The Robe (1953)”
Cass Timberlane (1947)
Cass Timberlane is an awful film from the very beginning when we first encounter Spencer Tracy camped out on the bench as the Circuit Judge of Backwoods, Minnesota where he delivers a smug sermon to a couple seeking a divorce about the sanctity of marriage. Easy for him to say, what with his old lady dying in the first year of their marriage.
I will confess that I gave Judge Cass some credit when he thought to himself about how boring it was to be sitting there listening to all these boring cases. But then again, it wasn’t like he had to sit through a movie about it, either. Continue reading “Cass Timberlane (1947)”
Father Was a Fullback (1949)
A comedy with Fred MacMurry as the hapless coach at good ole State U? Losing season? Job in jeopardy? Bring on the Flubber! Where’s the field goal kicking mule? And how about that invisibility serum and/or speed pill? And the mascots? You know they’re going to get kidnapped or at the very least eat the playbook right before State U takes on City Tech, right? Continue reading “Father Was a Fullback (1949)”
The Bad and the Beautiful (1952)
The shocking conclusion you come to after watching Kirk Douglas, Lana Turner, Dick Powell, and Barry Sullivan cavort around in one of these typically self-loathing movies about the movies is that no matter how bad someone hosed you in the past, if there’s a hit picture to be made with them again, no professional or personal vendetta you have against him or her is so great that it couldn’t be put aside for at least the duration of shooting.
As Kirk’s reviled producer John Shields tells Dick’s author James Bartlow, some of the best movies have been made by people that hate each other. That’s a fascinating concept and must make for some fun days at work, but I’m not sure that it adds up to much of anything beyond the film industry’s obsession with itself. Continue reading “The Bad and the Beautiful (1952)”
Blossoms in the Dust (1941)
Here’s a movie that’s signed onto the pro-orphan agenda that certain special interests groups continuously push in this country. It’s one of those do-gooder fairy tales where stuff like suicides and dead kids occur at convenient intervals just so that our heroine can be inspired to new heights of self-sacrifice while the audience is inspired to new depths of self-loathing for ever firing up a movie about a woman who crusades to have Texas’ law about illegitimate kids having to be identified as such on birth certificates and marriage licenses changed. Continue reading “Blossoms in the Dust (1941)”