1h 23min | Comedy | 26 July 1952
Director: Claude Binyon
Stars: Clifton Webb, Ginger Rogers, Anne Francis, Jeffrey Hunter, Elsa Lanchester, Fred Clark
Watched online, excellent print.
Placed in the watch queue for Gwen Verdon's credit as girl in commercial. This happens early, and only at the end of the brief singing/dancing jingle for prune juice ("you want to be a regular guy"), do we zoom into the set enough to confirm that was her.
I also invested the time in case CW did any singing/dancing of his own. He was supposedly a rival of Fred Astaire on the stage, and paired with GR here held unfulfilled promise. The films are silent swashbucklers, and some of the more athletic stuff looks like it's from Douglas Fairbanks' Zorro. No reference to that on the Connections page, but that doesn't mean it ain't so.
Here's why the film is interesting: it deals with issues of privacy (of a former film star) and sexual harassment (of CW by EL).
One of the topics on the IMDb forum at the moment involves the desire of people to have themselves or some of their information removed from IMDb. In fact, one thread talks about an actress who was successfully removed (former versions of her Name page exist on the Internet Archive) versus the Junie Hoang age discrimination lawsuit.
In this film, CW brings suit against a TV network for broadcasting enhanced versions of his old films (music, sound effects added, and advertising inserted as though it were dialog in the film.) I think he wins, which is preposterous. (At one point, the network argues that he is trying to deprive them of a primary source of content: old movies. No wonder the studios are happier now to include TV in films; after the '48 divestiture suit, this is a helpful source of income.)
Also, EL (b. '02), the president (dean?) of the college, who will decide whether to fire him, finds herself so attracted to his past identity that she makes very overt passes at him, and ties them to his employment. EL is not a pretty woman, and is not young. Then, and likely now, her advances would appear comical to most audiences, and EL is an excellent comic actress. But she is aggressive, and does fire him when he resists. CW would be tweeting #MeToo if the film took place in 2018.
So I recommend this for social history. It would be interesting to view this again in 10 years to see where we are on these issues.
Fox, dir. Binyon; 7-
Placed in the watch queue for Gwen Verdon's credit as girl in commercial. This happens early, and only at the end of the brief singing/dancing jingle for prune juice ("you want to be a regular guy"), do we zoom into the set enough to confirm that was her.
I also invested the time in case CW did any singing/dancing of his own. He was supposedly a rival of Fred Astaire on the stage, and paired with GR here held unfulfilled promise. The films are silent swashbucklers, and some of the more athletic stuff looks like it's from Douglas Fairbanks' Zorro. No reference to that on the Connections page, but that doesn't mean it ain't so.
Here's why the film is interesting: it deals with issues of privacy (of a former film star) and sexual harassment (of CW by EL).
One of the topics on the IMDb forum at the moment involves the desire of people to have themselves or some of their information removed from IMDb. In fact, one thread talks about an actress who was successfully removed (former versions of her Name page exist on the Internet Archive) versus the Junie Hoang age discrimination lawsuit.
In this film, CW brings suit against a TV network for broadcasting enhanced versions of his old films (music, sound effects added, and advertising inserted as though it were dialog in the film.) I think he wins, which is preposterous. (At one point, the network argues that he is trying to deprive them of a primary source of content: old movies. No wonder the studios are happier now to include TV in films; after the '48 divestiture suit, this is a helpful source of income.)
Also, EL (b. '02), the president (dean?) of the college, who will decide whether to fire him, finds herself so attracted to his past identity that she makes very overt passes at him, and ties them to his employment. EL is not a pretty woman, and is not young. Then, and likely now, her advances would appear comical to most audiences, and EL is an excellent comic actress. But she is aggressive, and does fire him when he resists. CW would be tweeting #MeToo if the film took place in 2018.
So I recommend this for social history. It would be interesting to view this again in 10 years to see where we are on these issues.
Fox, dir. Binyon; 7-
