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When our movie-watching buddy Robert Osborne died a couple of weeks ago a
Daily Beast article from 2012 started making the rounds - titled
"Robert Osborne's Secret Favorite Movies" it lists eleven lesser-appreciated films that the TCM host loved and recommended. Of the 11 there were only 3 that I had previously seen (
Dodsworth,
Indiscreet, and
Remember the Night) and all three are indeed fabulous, so I figured I'd make a go of seeing as many of these new-to-me titles as I could right quick. It didn't hurt that several of them were billed as thrillers. And so while lounging around gratuitously this past weekend I watched four of the movies in one long go of it. And now I shall rank them, from Least Good (although not bad, by any means) to Most Good, as I see them, because why not!
4. The Narrow Margin (1952) -- Nicely shot Film Noir from early in the career of director Richard Fleischer (he made everything from
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea to
Red Sonja) starring Charles McGraw (he played the fisherman in the diner in
The Birds) as a policeman who's forced to transport a mobster's about-to-sing moll across country via a train where Every Passenger Has Secrets. The last 15 minutes worth of surprises make it worthwhile but the moll herself is a real pain in the ass you're actively rooting against safe passage for. I suppose that's part and parcel for the moral murkiness of the Noirs but you don't love to hate her, you just kinda hate her.
3.
The Big Clock (1948) -- Ask me again in five minutes and I might have totally rearranged the placement of these other three films, because I enjoyed all three of them immensely. I am planning on having more to say on
The Big Clock tomorrow though for our "
Thursday's Ways Not To Die" series, because it's got a death scene in it that I rewound and watched three times in a row. It's terrific. It stars Ray Milland as a crime magazine reporter tasked with working out a crime that he's personally just been framed for. He's trying to throw his fellow sniffing reporters off his own scent as the noose tightens; it's a great set-up, and the scenery (mid-century office building) is grand, and he's surrounded by a stellar supporting cast including Maureen O'Hara and my beloved husband-wife duo of Charles Laughton & Elsa Lanchester (the latter typically hysterical).
2.
The Mating Season (1951) -- Every time I watch a Gene Tierney movie I kind of can't even process how extraterrestrially gorgeous she is - that woman was not of this Earth. I don't know why she isn't remembered more - she honestly might be the most beautiful Classic Hollywood actress there was.
The Mating Season isn't entirely hers though - she plays a rich lady rescued from falling off a cliff (seriously) by a poor gentleman (John Lund, who's a bit of a dud frankly); the rest of the movie is a charming farce in which his mother (an Oscar nominated Thelma Ritter, typically delightfully Thelma-Ritter-ian) pretends to be their maid, et cetera shenanigans. Easily the best part of the movie is Miriam Hopkins playing Tierney's rich bitch mother - a total gas.
1.
My Name is Julia Ross (1945) -- This movie rules! How had I never heard of this gem? It stars an adorably irritable Nina Foch as a woman who applies for a secretary position only to be kidnapped, drugged, and forcibly cast as the crazy wife of a crazy man in a mansion beside the sea in service of a murder plot most foul. How I went this far in life without a deranged Dame May Whitty I'll never understand.
Julia Ross is utterly ridiculous, and I was enthralled.
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So have you seen any of these?
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