Chicken Every Sunday

I stumbled across this offering on TCM during a Natalie Wood movie night. I wasn't certain I'd stay with it till the end, but I wound up doing so. It's a great example of the kind of movies "they don't make anymore". Corny & schmaltzy in spots...OK a lot of spots...it nevertheless was amusing, downright comical at times, & the actors made it work. It was great to see Alan Young, as all I recall him from is Mr. Ed. Celeste Holm is a gem, as is Dan Dailey. This could be a very effective stage play. I was a bit disappointed that Natalie Wood had such a small role, but I would recommend this flick for an evening of sheer escapism!

It's interesting to see the very mixed reception this 20th Century Fox Americana receives among reviewers. It's very typical of the studio's output around that time--nostalgic, suffused with old, cheap songs, sentimental, and you're never in much doubt as to whether Celeste Holm and Dan Dailey will end up together. They're a loving married couple in turn-of-the-century Tucson, and his frequent get-rich-quick schemes usually end in ruin, but he's popular with the townsfolk. And why wouldn't he be, with Dailey using every ounce of his underrated charm, reveling in private jokes and convincingly playing an errant but very loving husband. Holm rather overdoes her character's quirk of lapsing into Southern accent when asked to charm somebody (she's from an old Dixie family of means), but she completes Dailey as a couple in a way few screen couples do. Unlike some other reviewers, I found this marriage very persuasive and even touching, and though it's not a sterling supporting cast, there are a couple of standouts--Connie Gilchrist, always good for a laugh, is a hoot as a drunken mother-in-law to William Frawley. George Seaton and Valentine Davies intended this as a sort of follow-up to "Miracle on 34th Street," a love story for John Payne and Maureen O'Hara, but both were busy (Natalie Wood wasn't, and has a couple of scenes of cute). It wraps up quickly and not altogether credibly, but emotionally, it's very satisfying.

When the film begins, Emily (Celeste Holm) is visiting with a lawyer, as she wants a divorce from her husband of 20 years. What follows is a long account of their marriage...and why Emily is fed up and finally has had enough. It seems that although Jim (Dan Daily) has a good job as the vice president of the bank, he's always throwing away their money on various get rich quick schemes. None of them ever work out and to make ends meet, Emily turns their home into a boarding house. This makes up the first 10-15 minutes of the story...the rests are about a variety of things, but mostly Jim's schemes. The final one is the last straw, as at this point, they are about to lose pretty much everything because of Jim's stupidity.

On one hand, it's an enjoyable film because the various side stories about the boarders are fun and interesting. On the other, it's not fun watching a louse like Jim...and frustrating. He is a horrible man and it's hard to enjoy the rest of the film because of this. I really think, in hindsight, it would have been better had they softened Jim a bit. As it is, it's a very mixed bag...and the film's message that women should put up with all this...well it's a lousy message. I sure hope folks who watched the film didn't fall for this!

From the novel by Rosemary Drachman Taylor -- who wrote some sequels as well -- this film more or less accurately portrays the life of a pioneer Tucson family at the turn of the last century. As such, it cannot survive much fictional tampering or other kinds of cinematic tricks. It has to be taken strictly as a straightforward tale of ordinary people engaged in ordinary life struggles.

What sets it apart from other stories of its kind is the unique character of the entrepreneurial father, as played moderately well by the late Dan Dailey. An engaging man who was known as well as an accomplished dancer, he played the role of the author's father always looking for but never quite arriving on "Easy Street." Celeste Holm, who has come to be almost a legend in her own time, is the long-suffering but constant and practical mother.

Certain license is involved with some outdoor takes, but on the whole I recommend the film highly as an amusing and true story. Don't be put off by the absence of any clever or unusual plot twists or weird characters. This is the very definition of "G" rated.

I grew up a few houses down from the actual Drachman house. It was only one story, but capacious.

Faintly ridiculous piece of nostalgic film-flam concerning newlywed couple in early 1900s Tucson; he's the vice-president of the bank and she's the jovial sort of housewife who prides herself on knowing her husband better than he knows himself. Due to the husband's investments and charity, the twosome are forced to take in boarders immediately following their wedding and, as the years progress, their household turns into the neighborhood room-and-board, complete with children of their own. Nothing more than a contract picture for Fox, cheaply-made and cheaply-felt. Valentine Davies and director George Seaton based their script on both Rosemary Taylor's book and the later play by Julius J. and Philip Epstein, which some critics have since compared to the 1970s television series "The Waltons". But even "The Waltons" had a bit of vinegar underneath its homespun scenario; here, beaming wife Celeste Holm plays mommy to her ne'er-do-well hubby, her children, her boarders...she even plays matchmaker for her high-strung daughter and the bashful kid upstairs who can't dance. Natalie Wood appears briefly as one of the tykes, and William Frawley adds some zip as a potential investor in a copper mine, but otherwise this rosy-hued hokum fails to stay the course. *1/2 from ****