The Film Detective will be celebrating Independence Day with
five new film restorations that are destined for the DVD collectible market
place … so let’s light that fuse and see what film fireworks will be on display
on July 4!
The war in Europe had literally just ended in Europe when 20th
Century-Fox released the light-hearted comedy Molly and Me, a pre-war
themed story starring Gracie Fields (Holy Matrimony, Queen of Hearts) as
a down-on-her-luck London stage actress who lands a fish-out-of-water housekeeping
job. The timing was perfect for the
theatrical launch as audiences of the day were looking for something light and
happy.
It’s not just any job that she’s conned her way into, but
one as the housekeeper to a political bigwig by the name of John Graham (played
by Monty Woolly) … not only does she have to keep the butler (played by Reginald
Gardiner) — a fellow actor — from spilling the beans about her past, but she
has to become a jack of all trades when she discovers that other members of the
household are robbing Graham blind and they up and quit on her.
She has a good nature — in a sort of “the show must go on” kind
of way — and is able to
Also heading to retail on July 4 from The Film Detective is
director Please Murder Me!, an independently produced film noir entry from the spring of
1956. The film came at the end of the
post-war film noir cycle and was an
indie, so it pretty much came and went … gone, but not forgotten.
The film starred a fellow by the name of Raymond Burr as Craig
Carlson, a criminal attorney, who begins to have pangs of guilt when he
discovers that his defense of Myra Leeds (played by Angela Lansbury) was so
good that he actually got a murderer off.
If that name, Raymond Burr, rings any bells it is because
the next year (1957) he would start a ten-year run as the star of the Perry
Mason television series (271 episodes) … he was attorney Craig Carlson
first!
Please Murder Me! is told in flashback (much like Double
Indemnity) as Carlson dictates the details of what he discovered about
Leeds, but since she cannot be tried again for her husband’s murder, Carlson
finds another way to sink her (a terrific twist at the end).
Rounding out the July 4 selections are Fisherman's Wharf (1939,
directed by Bernard Vorhaus and starring Bobby Breen and Leo Carrillo), Niagara
Falls (1941, romantic comedy with Marjorie Woodworth, Tom Brown, Slim
Summerville and Zasu Pitts) and Outlaws of the Desert (1941,
Hopalong Cassidy — William Boyd — leaves the wild west to buy horses in
“Arabia”).
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