Lost Preston Sturges Film: Hotel Haywire

Posted on November 10, 2015 at 3:17 pm

A column by Michael Hiltzik in the LA Times about 700 “lost” Paramount films caught my attention. The first paragraph mentioned one of my favorite movies, “Alias Nick Beal,” with Ray Milland as Satan bargaining for the soul of a politician played by “Gone With the Wind’s” Thomas Mitchell. And then it mentioned a film I’d never heard of, written by one of my all-time favorite screenwriters (and later a director as well), Preston Sturges, a master of wisecracking screwball comedy (“The Lady Eve,” “Sullivan’s Travels,” “The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek”).

The film is “Hotel Haywire,” originally written for Burns and Allen, and then rewritten when they were not available. It was directed by Arthur Archainbaud, apparently his only credited film.

Fortunately, I live just outside of Washington, DC, which means that the Library of Congress is practically my neighborhood library. I love their Motion Picture and Television Reading Room, which has the nicest and most knowledgeable staff any movie lover could ever hope for. They have been inestimably helpful to me many times. It took them about ten minutes to track down the film at their Culpepper, Virginia storage facility and arrange for it to be brought in for me to watch.

It’s not a classic, but it was a lot of fun, partly because it was a rare lead role for Spring Byington, who usually played the mother of the main character (“Little Women”). In this, she plays the wife of a dentist (Lynne Overman) who is very caught up in spiritualism and horoscopes, as practiced by a charleton known as Dr. Zodiac Z. Zippe (Leo Carrillo). The dentist plays a prank on a friend by slipping a frilly camisole into his pocket, but the friend outsmarts him and puts it in the dentist’s pocket instead. When the wife finds it, instead of asking him about it she consults Dr. Zippe, who ends up advising both husband and wife in a manner that creates as much chaos as possible, especially after he hires some out-of-work vaudevillians as his “detectives.” Oh, and there’s also the dentist’s daughter, who wants to marry her boss’ son. And it all ends up in some door-slamming, who’s in what room shenanigans in a haywire hotel.

I hope this film, and the other 699 Hiltzik wrote about, will all be available soon, via streaming or DVD. Until then, we have the Library of Congress, and I will try them on another lost gem soon.

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More Halloween Movies

Posted on October 27, 2015 at 3:57 pm

In honor of Halloween, the Indiewire critics discuss the non-horror movies that scared them most. There are some great choices on the list, including Julianne Moore in “Safe,” about a woman who is being poisoned — or thinks she is — by the toxic, synthetic chemicals in everyday products. And there are scary documentaries about terrifying real-life events like “Deliver Us from Evil,” about child abuse and cover-up by the Catholic church, and
“Fed Up,” about what is in our food that is not good for us. Someone even mentioned the wonderful “Up” series that documents the lives of a group of children from London as they grow up, now in late middle age. And of course nothing is as scary to an adult as a movie like “Bambi” or “Pinocchio” is to a child.

For those who would enjoy something a little spooky but not too scary, the wonderful Legion of Leia as The Top 15 Halloween Movies for Those of Us Who Don’t Like Scary Movies.” Legion of Leia’s Jenna Busch includes some of the films on my list, like “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown,” and “Hocus Pocus,” along with some of Tim Burton’s best, “Frankenweenie,” “The Nightmare Before Christmas,” and “The Corpse Bride.” Enjoy!

Rent This Instead: A Better Ed Helms Raunchy Comedy (that isn’t “Hangover”)

Posted on July 31, 2015 at 3:05 pm

“Vacation” is a gross, dumb disappointment. If you want to see Ed Helms in a much better raunchy comedy, try the neglected gem Cedar Rapids. Helms plays a mild-mannered, small town insurance guy who is tapped at the last minute to go to the “big city” trade conference in Cedar Rapids, where he is exposed for the first time to all kinds of bad behavior. The entire cast is outstanding, including Anne Heche, John C. Reilly, Isiah Whitlock Jr., and Sigourney Weaver. It is everything “Vacation” is not — smart, funny, and full of heart.

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Neglected gem Rent This Instead

The 100 Best American Films — From Movie Critics Around the World

Posted on July 24, 2015 at 3:46 pm

The American Film Institute has its top 100 list and the Library of Congress has its National Film Registry. But how do movie critics around the world see our films? The BBC prepared a list of the 100 greatest American films, based on the selections of international movie critics. Of course there is a lot of overlap. You know “Citizen Kane” and “The Godfather” and “Singin’ in the Rain” and “The Searchers” are going to be there. The top 10 are pretty easy to guess (though I still think “Vertigo” does not deserve to be ranked so high).

10. The Godfather Part II (Francis Ford Coppola, 1974)
9. Casablanca (Michael Curtiz, 1942)
8. Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960)
7. Singin’ in the Rain (Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly, 1952)
6. Sunrise (FW Murnau, 1927)
5. The Searchers (John Ford, 1956)
4. 2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick, 1968)
3. Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958)
2. The Godfather (Francis Ford Coppola, 1972)
1. Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941)

But there are some nice surprises in the rest of the list, like “Ace in the Hole,” “Heaven’s Gate,” “Marnie,” and “Imitation of Life.” Crank up that Netflix queue and add some of the ones you haven’t seen yet.

Happy 99th Birthday, Olivia de Havilland!

Posted on July 2, 2015 at 10:20 am

Two-time Oscar winner Olivia de Havilland turns 99 years old today. She was one of the biggest stars of the Golden Age of Hollywood, appearing memorably opposite Errol Flynn eight times, most memorably in “The Adventures of Robin Hood.”

She could appear beautiful and glamorous, but some of her best roles were when insisted on looking plain: “Gone With the Wind,” “The Heiress,” and “The Snake Pit.” She is best remembered for her dramatic roles, but she was also a gifted comic performer, as shown in “The Strawberry Blonde” with James Cagney.

Entertainment Weekly had a wonderful tribute to her last year.

At 98, Olivia de Havilland is the last great star of Hollywood’s golden age, a woman who began her career during the rise of Technicolor in 1935, formed one of the most indelible screen couples of all time with Errol Flynn, and went on to work with James Cagney, Rita Hayworth, Montgomery Clift, Bette Davis, Richard Burton, Clark Gable, and Vivien Leigh. With her deep brown doe eyes and apple-cheeked smile, the two-time Best Actress winner excelled at playing heroines whose demure bearing belied a feisty core. The most famous of these great ladies was Melanie Hamilton, the tenderhearted foil to Leigh’s scheming Scarlett O’Hara in 1939’s Gone With the Wind. Based on Margaret Mitchell’s best-seller, the beloved epic has sold more tickets in its lifetime than any other film. And 75 years ago it cleaned up at the Academy Awards, winning eight of its 13 nominations.

Having outlived all of her costars (as well as the movie’s mad-genius producer, David O. Selznick, and the three directors he hired to steer the massive ship), de Havilland has been GWTW’s principal spokesperson for almost five decades, the sole bearer of the Tara torch. It’s a privilege she calls “rather wonderful,” as her affection for the film is genuine and deep. She’s seen GWTW “about 30 times,” she says, and still enjoys watching it for the emotional jolt it brings as she reconnects with those costars—Gable, Leigh, Hattie McDaniel, and Leslie Howard—who have long since passed on.

“Luckily, it does not make me melancholy,” she says via email a few days after our meeting. (Though an expert raconteuse, she’s conscientious about facts—”I want to be a font of truth”—and will discuss the finer points of her career only in writing.) “Instead, when I see them vibrantly alive on screen, I experience a kind of reunion with them, a joyful one.”

Ms. de Havilland lives in Paris, now, so we will wish her a bon anniversaire, with many thanks.