#project1952 day 39

[project1939]

Ok, here it is! The salmon mold mini-monstrosity! It looks horrific, and the taste is not much better. Serving it with lettuce and mayonnaise is a must. On its own it could be a torture device. Mixing it up with lettuce and mayo at least gives it more of a tuna salad/salmon salad feel. But can you imagine having friends over and setting this down on the table?!? "Dig in everybody!"

[project1939]

Motion Picture and Television Magazine, June 1952. Home permanents were seemingly the thing in 1952. Toni makes you forget your hair was ever straight! Or that it ever didn't smell like pools of chemical waste outside a factory somewhere! But don't worry, this dainty little priceless pink lotion won't make your hair start falling out for years!

[project1939]

Motion Picture and Television Magazine, June 1952. Awww... here's another one of my loves! Jeff Chandler has been one of my favorite discoveries of the project so far. He's a really talented and versatile actor, and he's also seriously dreamy.

[project1939]

Motion Picture and Television Magazine, June 1952. Oh look! Yay! It's my gorgeous, perfect, love her, want to marry her, Esther Williams! I could even win $10,000 ($116,000 today!) for writing an ode to Lux Toilet Soap! "Like Esther Williams, I use Lux Toilet Soap, and here's why_______" I'd just get sidetracked and write "and here's why I want to marry her!" Or "and here's why I think you should stop calling it 'toilet soap!'"

[project1939]

Motion Picture and Television Magazine, June 1952. Doris Day is on the cover. Also, exclusive photos of Liz's wedding! Which one?

[project1939]

Day 39- Film: Has Anybody Seen My Gal? 

Release date: June 25th, 1952. 

Studio: Universal 

Genre: Comedy 

Director: Douglas Sirk 

Producer: Ted Richmond 

Actors: Piper Laurie, Rock Hudson, Charles Coburn, Gigi Perreau, Lynn Bari 

Plot Summary: In 1920’s New York, a hypochondriac millionaire thinks he is about to die with no heirs. Remembering the lovely woman from his youth who refused his proposal, he becomes convinced she is what spurred him on to financial riches. What if he left his fortune to her family? He locates her descendants and decides to check them out incognito, hoping to discover that he can trust them with the money. 

My Rating (out of five stars): **½  

I’ll admit I was disappointed with this movie. It looked kind of cute and colorful and fun. Well, it was colorful. It was also a bit overly cute and a bit under the bar of fun.  

The Good: 

The color was gorgeous Technicolor in all its glory. 

Rock Hudson. He was really charming and charismatic, and his acting wasn’t stiff at all. I can see why he was just on the edge of becoming a huge star. 

The little daughter Roberta, played by Gigi Perreau. She was so natural for a child actor, I even paused the movie to look her up. By the end of the movie, however, her character was pretty grating. 

Another James Dean blink-and-you'll-miss-it cameo! He played a guy at the soda fountain asking for a ridiculously complicated drink. He had literally one line. But this is the third time of the project so far he’s had that. 

The cuteness of the time period, the clothing, etc. Part of it was good fun, but... 

The Bad: 

The way the film was trying so hard to be overly nostalgic, constantly hitting us over the head with the fact that it was the 1920s. Remember prohibition? Scoff-laws? Speakeasies? Old time soda shops? Cloche hats? The Charleston? They even showed you how to do it, in case you forgot. Can you believe steak was 35 cents a pound? And eggs were 33 cents? If you compare it to Singin’ in the Rain, which also took place in the 1920s, you can really see the difference. Singin’ definitely had reminders of the time period, but the plot always took precedence. It never stood still for nostalgia p*rn. 

The way the plot went off the rails for the last hour. Forty-minutes in, daughter Millie gets engaged to Hudson, and the family anonymously receives the fortune. And there’s almost an hour left! Everything kind of fell apart from there. The plot just wasn’t structured well at all. 

I didn’t really like Charles Coburn’s millionaire character. I can’t put my finger on exactly why, but I was really sick of him by the end of the movie. 

The other characters were not really fleshed out enough for me to feel really invested in them. Piper Laurie was given top billing as Millie, but I couldn’t really tell you anything about her except that fact that she was of marrying age. 

I hated the mom character. She was part of why everything suddenly went off the rails. Her personality after she acquired the wealth changed so fast it was totally unrealistic. The family mongrel? Get rid of him! We need French Poodles now! Sell the family business! We can't be working plebs anymore! Etc. 

The ending. It was also not very satisfying, not very realistic, and it left some significant strings flapping around. (Like flappers? Sorry, couldn’t resist a really bad groaner.) 

[project1939]

(Stills from the "All the Time in the World" episode of Tales of Tomorrow. A mysterious woman arrives with a strange bracelet and wants a man to rob a museum with it...)

Day 39- TV and Radio: 

TV: 

Tales of Tomorrow, season one, episode 37, “All the Time in the World,” June 13th, 1952. 

Westinghouse Studio One, season 4, episode 40, “International Incident,” June 16th, 1952. 

Radio: 

The Whistler, “Last Message,” June 15th, 1952. 

The Bob Hope Show, “Roy Rogers and Dale Evans,” June 10th, 1952. 

Suspense, “Concerto for Killer and Eyewitnesses,” June 9th, 1952. 

The Chase, “Terminate Professor Kolchek,” June 15th, 1952. 

Radio’s Best Plays, “On Borrowed Time,” June 15th, 1952. 

Tales of Tomorrow was the indisputable highlight today. A man meets a woman who sets down $100,000 in cash in front of him (about $1.2 million today) and asks him to steal priceless paintings from a famous art museum. But he will be in no danger- she gives him an odd bracelet that speeds up time so much within a 5 foot radius of him, that the rest of the world can’t even see him. Things only get more complicated from there, and it was quite a ride. 

The Chase wins the award for most ridiculous moralizing with a blind spot. Today’s show took place in the Soviet Union, and every single little thing ended up being about how America was the greatest country on earth. At one point a man who had Western sympathies was telling someone how much better things were in America. He said the Americans had rightfully joked that equality does exist in the USSR, just that “some people are more equal than others.” Unlike America, where true equality existed. In 1952. Yes, the America where the segregated lynching Jim Crow South was turning into a powder-keg. The America only a handful of years past Japanese internment camps. The America that had just integrated professional baseball and the army, to much dissent. The America where a Chinese-American man could not movie to the suburbs because the white people signed a petition to keep him out. The America where interracial marriage was still mostly illegal. Etc. Etc. It was just surreal to hear an American say with a straight face, “We’ve got real equality here!”  

...and now a word from today’s best sponsor: Chesterfield Cigarettes! Sound off! Sound off! For Chesterfield! Chesterfield cigarettes are the first and only ones to name all of their ingredients! And the list is so detailed! 1) the world’s best tobaccos, 2) costly pure moistening agents like natural sweeteners and glycerol, which “are totally safe for use in the mouth!” 3) The highest purity cigarette papers! Wow, how transparent they’re being! Nothing about the nicotine content, of course. And Chesterfield has “the best ingredients, the best manufacturing, and the best research.” Their research is the best that money can buy! It’s 100% bought! 

[project1939]

Day 39: “Some are more equal than others.” 

50s slang of the day: “You’ve got a lot of crust coming in here!” (You’ve got a lot of nerve coming in here!) 

Best/worst quote of the day: “Everybody’s jumpy. They read the papers. That’s what’s wrong with ‘em! You read the papers, you get all looped up.” 

Song of the Day: “Kiss of Fire,’ by Georgia Gibbs. This is one of those songs that sounds a lot more modern than 71 years old! I love everything about the recording except the first 10 seconds or so of the intro; that’s what dates it a little. The rest is killer, though. Gibbs’ vocal is full and expressive, and I love the little shifts in the time and tempo. 

Highlights: 

I took Jello mold number 4 out of the mold today. It looked both hideous and great. Hideous in terms of its edibility, great in terms of how it came out looking as a mold! 

I made some interesting bread from a recipe in the Carnation cookbook I got. It had caraway seeds, currants, and cheddar cheese in it. I don’t love the way it tastes, but it’s not too bad! 

I spent a lot of time just working on a new puzzle today. It’s not a vintage puzzle, but the image is Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks, which was painted ten years before 1952.

Watching Tales of Tomorrow. It’s such a good show!! 

Listening to Bob Hope make jokes about topical events on his radio show from June 10th. I knew everything he mentioned because I had just read about them in my issue of Life magazine from June 9th! 

Lowlights: 

Actually eating the salmon, cabbage, celery, and pickle Jello mold I made. Even with liberal amounts of lettuce and mayonnaise (of course, mayonnaise!) it was hard to stomach. The combination could have worked as salmon salad without the gelatin. So why the need to add it? 

Getting a bit too burned out working on the puzzle. Puzzles can be too addicting for me sometimes! 

Too much heavy moralizing in a radio show about how perfect America is and how hellish communism is. I’m not now, nor have I ever been a communist, but the way American shows in 1952 can lecture about equality, like we had some perfect version of it, is as hard to swallow as salmon Jello! 

Betty Furness wasn't selling anything new tonight on Westinghouse Studio One. Just the Frost Free refrigerator, the TV with the Electronic Clarifier, and the open-handled iron.

[project1939]

Day 41- Film: Scaramouche 

Release date: June 27th, 1952. 

Studio: MGM 

Genre: Action/Adventure 

Director:  George Sidney 

Producer: Carey Wilson 

Actors: Stewart Granger, Eleanor Parker, Janet Leigh, Mel Ferrer 

Plot Summary: We follow the adventures of Andre Moreau in pre-revolutionary France as he searches out his biological father, runs from the law with revolutionary friend Phileppe, tries to avenge Phileppe’s death at the hands of the Marquis de Maynes, hides out as famous comedian Scaramouch, and woos two different women. 

My Rating (out of five stars): ***½ 

It took me awhile to really get into this movie, but once I did, I enjoyed it. It was the kind of light-hearted colorful historical epic you would expect from 1950s Hollywood. Flashy and splashy but not overly complex in terms of character or nuance. And certainly not overly concerned with historical accuracy! Some spoilers ahead. 

The Good: 

The fencing! The fencing! If there is one thing that elevates this film and makes it worth checking out, it’s the sword fighting. There’s lots of it, and it is all convincing and well-staged. (Except for the speed at which blood spurts out of people when they get slashed!) The actors all did pretty extensive training to learn how to make it realistic, and it shows. The sword fight at the end of the movie is the longest in Hollywood history, as far as I know. 

This kind of goes with the above, but I absolutely loved the fact that the long swordfight at the end of the film had no non-diegetic music. The only sounds we heard were the swishes and clangs the swords made, the gasps of the crowd watching them, and the grunts from the two men as they battled with each other. It heightened the drama so much for me. 

Mel Ferrer. He is one of my favorite actors of the time period. He’s so good at playing wounded sensitive brooding people! In this he was generally a bad guy, but I still loved him more than the actual hero! 

Eleanor Parker. I always think of her as the Baroness in The Sound of Music, but in this movie she really stole my heart. She was just so captivating to watch at every moment- she was by far the most interesting female character in the film. Her luscious long red hair looked great as well. It was wonderful to see a woman who didn’t have a short tightly styled 1950s poodle cut! 

I liked part of the ending. The fact that they didn’t kill the Marquis de Maynes made me really happy. I was dreading Mel Ferrer’s death and knew it must be coming. When he was spared, I was legitimately satisfied and relieved. It also made the end more interesting and unusual. 

Janet Leigh was better in this than I expected. Her character was pretty boring, though. 

The light-hearted vibe of the whole film. The film was just good fun, and it didn’t take itself too seriously. 

The bad: 

The incest? I know it ultimately wasn’t really incest because Granger and Leigh turned out not to be brother and sister. But when you spend almost the entire movie believing they are, it’s hard to turn off the disgust switch when they suddenly get married at the end! I just did not like it at all. 

Granger got a little grating after a while. Maybe some of the stories I’ve heard about what a difficult person he was bled into my opinion of his character, but I didn’t totally like him. He seemed to be trying too hard to be devil-may-care charming. He was certainly hot, though, if you like the hunk-of-man-meat type. 

Historical accuracy! Costumes were especially loosely authentic to say the least. But you don’t really expect a 1950s Hollywood epic to be especially historically accurate. 

The plot could be overly tangled at times, and it took awhile for me to fully get into it. 

And again, why did Granger have to marry Leigh?