Five Favorite Films of the 1950s

Today is National Classic Movie Day and to celebrate Rick of The Classic Film and TV Cafe is hosting the Five Favorite Films of the 1950s Blogathon, an event that is sure to perplex all of its participants for how can any movie lover narrow down their 1950s favorites to five?! 

What makes it so difficult is determining the criteria that constitute calling a film a favorite. The first thing I eliminated was thinking in terms of Best Pictures or Most Important Films of the 1950s and, instead, I picked only the ones that really made me happy. If just the title of a film makes you happy than it is worth more than ten Best Picture winners. But, even then, it was hard to narrow down because so many of those happy-favorites are seasonal and day/time dependent, such as Favorite Film on a Friday Night ( The Bat, Here Come the Nelsons ), Favorite Film to Watch When the Magnolias Bloom ( Picnic, Giant ), Favorite Saturday Morning Breakfast-in-Bed Musical ( Kiss Me Kate, Annie Get Your Gun ), Favorite Week-Before-Halloween Must-See ( Harvey, The Trouble with Harry ) or Favorite Meaty Drama ( A Catered Affair, A Place in the Sun ). 

Ultimately, it boiled down to the pictures that I enjoy the most because I have fond memories of all the times when I viewed it....those titles that hold a so-dear-to-my-heart place. And, not surprisingly, only two could be considered important films of the 1950s. 

Here are the top faves....in no particular order ( Goodness gracious, ordering them would have been impossible! ).

Gigi ( 1958 ) 

The Arthur Freed MGM classic. One of the last great musicals that MGM made. It was based on the book "Gigi" by Colette that tells the story of a young girl named Gigi ( Leslie Caron ) who - upon her blossoming into a woman - becomes the love interest of an old and dear family friend, Gaston ( Louis Jourdan ). As was the custom in Paris, she was instructed in the ways of becoming a good mistress to him for marriage was rare among the rich and influential bachelors of the city. But she does not want to be his mistress and plainly tells him so!

Gigi is not only a personal favorite but a three-generation favorite in our family. My dear Oma Rozi lived for many years in France and always talked fondly of Paris, so this film was especially dear to her and we loved watching it with her. All of us have our favorite scenes. For my father, it is Gaston's walk in the park when he turns from being upset to being in love. For my sister, it is the scenes in Trouville and, for myself, Gaston's visit to Mamita's for camomille tea and a game of cards. 

Journey to the Center of the Earth ( 1959 )

Jules Verne's classic tale of exploration was beautifully adapted to film in 1959 featuring James Mason heading the expedition to the center of the earth. Along for the journey is Pat Boone, Arlene Dahl, Peter Ronson, and Gertrude the Duck. This is one of those adventure films you can never tire of. From the opening at Edinburgh University to their kidnapping in Iceland and their descent into the volcano, each and every scene is a favorite. The film has a beautiful color scheme, great music by Bernard Herrmann and Mason and Dahl's slowly growing romance throughout the expedition also make this film extra charming. 

You're Never Too Young ( 1955 )

Like Abbott and Costello, Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis are a comedy duo that you either love or hate. Personally, I love them, even though they did make a number of film duds. You're Never Too Young is a musical remake of The Major and the Minor ( 1947 ) which starred Ginger Rogers and Ray Milland. That film was about a young woman who has to spend a week at a boy's military academy and - in order not to put one particular major in a jeopardizing position - pretends she is a little girl. For the Martin/Lewis film, the gender was changed and the setting is now a girl's private school in Washington state. To make things a little more interesting, the screenwriters tossed in a jewel robbery incident with Raymond Burr playing the thug on the hunt for Lewis. 

The film has its moments of silliness, but overall it is never tiresome. Dean Martin croons some wonderful tunes, the colorful pinewoods/lake setting is fantastic, the gangster addition adds to the merriment, and Diana Lynn ( the leading lady ) is cute as a button. 

The Bat ( 1959 )

Cornelia Van Gorder ( Agnes Moorehead ), a famous mystery writer, rents a secluded mansion in the country in order that she can work in peace on her next novel. But a mysterious killer known as The Bat is on the loose in the neighborhood. His face is cloaked in a black mask and he wears gloves with metal claws to slay his victim's throats! Along with her faithful maid Lizzie ( Lenita Lane ), she attempts to unmask this culprit before he murders them both. 

The first time I saw The Bat was a good 17 years ago when it aired on Cleveland's popular "The Big Chuck and Little John Show" on a Saturday morning. It's a cheaply made film ( from Allied Artists ) but Agnes Moorehead and Vincent Price's presence make it so entertaining. Price was a master in the horror/sci-fi genre but I always thought he was particularly good at mysteries, too. This film, often mistakenly classified as horror, gives him a chance to show just how good he is at keeping the audience baffled as to whether he is a murderer or not. And to tell you the truth, after 20+ viewings, I still don't know the answer to who really was "the Bat" in each scene! 

Picnic ( 1955 )

Picnic is one of those movies that you watch once and then feel a need to re-visit. It is when you go back to it the second time that you find an even deeper meaning in the film, messages of hopes, dreams, failures and successes, change and constancy. It is all about a drifter ( William Holden ) who comes to a small town in Kansas looking for a job. He falls in love with Madge ( Kim Novak ), the most popular girl in town, much to the chagrin of her mother ( Betty Field ) who hopes to see her married to Alan ( Cliff Robertson ). Interwoven in their struggle is the life of a lonesome schoolteacher ( Rosalind Russell ). During the annual Labor Day picnic, each of them feels a sense of desperation to open a new chapter in their life. 

William Holden claimed that he was too old for the part and turned it down initially, but thankfully he was convinced otherwise. His role was supposed to be that of a youth in his mid-20s, but because Holden was indeed older ( 37 years old ) he made the character seem all the more pitiable. 

This is one of my favorite films to watch in May/early June and for years I always thought the picnic was a Memorial Day event because it looked so much like May in the film. If you watch the picnic sequence you'll notice the beautiful cottonwood seeds falling - a clear giveaway that Picnic was indeed filmed in May. 

Want to see more picks of Five Favorite Films of the 1950s? Click here to check out the full roster of classic film bloggers who participated in the event! 

Scared Stiff ( 1953 )

Phyllis of Phyllis Loves Classic Movies is currently hosting They Remade What?!, a blogathon exploring film remakes and the original pictures that inspired these films. Our choice for this grand event is Scared Stiff, the 1953 remake of the 1940 Bob Hope classic The Ghost Breakers, which in itself was a remake of a silent film remake ( 1922 ) of the original film starring H.B Warner. If you are going to write about a remake you might as well go all out and pick a granddaddy!

This old war horse told the story of a young man who aids an Aragon princess in recovering a valuable locket. Their quest for the bobble leads them to a haunted castillo in Spain. Warner had performed this role with great success in the 1913 Broadway revival version of Paul Dickey and Charles W. Goddard's 1909 play "The Ghost Breaker". 

In 1940, Paramount reunited Bob Hope and Paulette Goddard, stars of the previous year's hit The Cat and the Canary, for a mystery-comedy version of The Ghost Breakers. 

For this production, screenwriter Walter DeLeon moved its setting to New York City and practically discarded the original story. This time around Hope played Larry Lawrence, a radio show host continually dishing to his audience the inside scoop on New York's most notorious gangsters. One thug in particular doesn't enjoy his broadcasts. On a dark and stormy night Larry is summoned to meet him at a hotel and mistakenly believes he has killed a man in the corridor. To hide from the police, he sneaks into Mary Carter's ( Paulette Goddard ) trunk bound for Cuba via steamer. Once on board he finds himself falling for Carter and embroiled in a fate worse than being the target of murderous gangsters....being left in a castle filled with zombies, ghosts, and a hidden treasure! 

"I don't mind dying, I just hate the preliminaries" 

The Ghost Breakers proved to be even more popular than The Cat and the Canary and it inspired a whole new genre of mystery-comedies which reached its popularity in the mid-1940s with comedy duos such as Abbott and Costello, The Bowery Boys, and The Three Stooges all hunting for ghosts and ghouls. 

During this time, Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis were clowning around at a nightclub in New York City keeping audience in stitches with laughter. Within a month after their debut, they were show business supernovas. Coast to coast, audiences packed into nightclubs eager to catch the latest show of the crooning gentleman and his monkey-like companion. With an act that combined singing, slapstick, and spontaneous hi-jinks, the duo sold tickets faster than speeding duo and then went on, in quick succession, to conquer radio, television and film. 

When they hit Hollywood in 1948, their first film, a B-production called My Friend Irma, became a sudden box-office smash. Producer Hal Wallis didn't know whether the crowd's enthusiasm for the dynamic duo would cool as fast as it ignited, so he thrust them into one picture after another. The year 1953 alone saw them in three features - Money from Home, Scared Stiff, and The Caddy.

Scared Stiff marked the duo's ninth picture together and since the studio was churning out Martin/Lewis films faster than they could write scripts for them, they naturally tapped into their vast archive to pull out an oldie-but-goodie to copy- The Ghost Breakers. Hope's hits were always good box-office. And not taking any chances, Wallis put director George Marshall in charge once again utilizing a script that had little alterations from the 1940 version. 

"You killed a perfect stranger?"
"Nobody's perfect!"

The husky-voiced siren Lizabeth Scott took on Paulette Goddard's part of Mary Carter ( now changed to Mary Carroll ) while Martin and Lewis split the task of acting as ghostbusters. Also cast was George Dolenz, Dorothy Malone ( who would later appear in another Martin/Lewis hit Artists and Models ) and Paul Marion. 

In The Ghost Breakers, Willie Best had co-starred as Larry's valet, butler, and general right-hand man Alex and it was Best who became the shivering stooge, seeing zombies and ghosts when others didn't. In Scared Stiff, Jerry Lewis takes on this part as Myron Myron. Some of the highlights of the picture include the ventriloquist sequence with Frank Fontaine ( "Do it again! Do it again!" ); the Myron-in-the-mirror part and the infamous "Enchilada" number. 

Even with its moments of humor, Hal Wallis sensed that the film lacked a certain spark the original possessed and so he threw in the Brazilian bombshell Carmen Miranda to enliven the festivities and this bit of casting enabled Lewis to do one of his most famous bits of shtick - donning pineapple-topped attire and lip-singing "Bingo Bongo". 

The Ghost Breakers was a hit because of its mixture of comedy with real thrills. Scared Stiff lacked the thrills but more than made up for it with an extra dose of zaniness and Dino's devil-may-care attitude towards ghost-hunting. Even though it was a slapdash production, Martin and Lewis fans found it a scream and today it remains one of their most popular films. 

Be sure to head on over to Phyllis Loves Classic Movies to read about more classic film remakes! 

Nugget Reviews - 19

If You Knew Susie ( 1948 ) 14k

A show business family retires from the stage in the hopes of opening a restaurant in a small village in New England but find themselves snubbed by the locales for their lack of an illustrious forefather. When they find that a letter from George Washington expressing his debt to their ancestor, the town accepts them - and the billions of dollars that the US government supposedly owes them! Eddie Cantor, Joan Davis, Allyn Joslyn, Bobby Driscoll. RKO Pictures. Directed by Gordon Douglas.

Eddie Cantor rolls his eyes and friskily skips about in this delightful outing with comedienne Joan Davis, riddled with some fine one-liners and plenty of vaudevillian humor. They were such a great team in Show Business it's no wonder they were reunited for another picture. Keep your eyes out for Bobby Driscoll and Margaret Kerry ( as their children ). These two talented youngsters later worked together in Walt Disney's Peter Pan with Driscoll voicing and modelling for Peter and Margaret modelling for Tinkerbell. 

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Artists and Models ( 1955 ) Elct. 

An artist and his roommate try to break into the booming comic book industry after meeting a famous comic illustrator and her creation - "Bat Lady".  Dean Martin, Jerry Lewis, Dorothy Malone, Shirley MacLaine. Paramount Pictures. Directed by Frank Tashlin. 

The Martin and Lewis films rarely featured memorable plots ( or the scripts to enhance them ) but this one seemed particularly lacking in direction...at least for the first hour. Its splendid Technicolor, the peek into the comic industry of the 1950s, and Dino's songs redeem it somewhat, but on the whole it is an embarrassing entry in the comedic duos string of films with about twenty minutes of plot stretched to two hours. Kathleen Freeman, who had small parts in twelve different Jerry Lewis movies, plays a sour landlady. 

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Stowaway ( 1936 ) 14k

When invading armies attack a Chinese village, the young ward of a missionary family gets sent to Shanghai to safety. En route she meets an American playboy who takes to her fondly and becomes a stowaway on his ship. Shirley Temple, Robert Young, Alice Faye, Eugene Palette, Helen Westley. 20th Century Fox. Directed by William A. Seiter. 

Stowaway is not considered one of Shirley's most famous films, but - when compared to her classics Heidi and The Little Princess - I find it much more entertaining, especially since it is set in an exotic location - the Orient. Only the ending of the picture disappoints. Shirley Temple plays her usual oochie-coochie self in this Asian outing, save for a few Chinese proverbs tossed into her repertoire, while Alice Faye is lovely as ever, singing a great song - "Goodnight, Sweetheart". Robert Young was such a clean-cut young man during the 1930s, it is very difficult to believe him to be a wild playboy - especially since his parts with Shirley are so wonderful - however, Young did have problems with alcohol later in life, so perhaps he did enjoy an extra slug or two in his youth. 

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Father Goose ( 1964 ) 18k

An alcoholic island hopper gets blackmailed into accepting a job as a Navy coast watcher. He then - unwillingly - rescues a diplomat's daughter and the seven schoolgirls she is escorting. In spite of their hatred for each other, they try to work together until a rescue plane could come to their aid. Cary Grant, Leslie Caron, Trevor Howard. Universal Pictures. Directed by Ralph Nelson.

Cary Grant takes his ten fine toes and wiggles them in the sand with ease for his role of the boozy beach bum, Walter. Years later, Grant claimed that this part was the most natural for him to play. Cary Grant wanted Audrey Hepburn to play the part of the French diplomat's daughter but she was already committed to My Fair Lady, which ironically, Cary Grant had turned down the lead in ( Henry Higgins ) in favor of this role. Leslie Caron did a great job on her own. Beautiful location filming and a highly entertaining script make this an all-around winning comedy. 

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On an Island with You ( 1948 )  14k 

A Hollywood star finds herself kidnapped by a navy officer and taken to a secluded island for the sole purpose of having one dance. Of course, she falls in love with him after that dance. Who can resist Peter Lawford in dress uniform? Esther Williams, Peter Lawford, Ricardo Montalban, Jimmy Durante, Cyd Charisse. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures. Directed by Richard Thorpe.

After watching an Esther Williams film one can't help but have a lingering smile on the heart, it must be all that Technicolor, water, sand and rumba music. This outing to the "islands" ( filmed at Cypress Gardens, Florida ), has some particularly good hip-swinging music and a great overall look but lacks an engaging script. Even with all the right elements and a great cast, if it ain't got that zing, it ain't got that zing! It's a good Saturday night picture nevertheless.