lbbrooks

I was long awaiting this film as I love all things Irene Dunne but I must say I was disappointed. "Lady in a Jam" is a strange amalgam of screwball comedy and classic romance. It never seems to gel as either. I kept waiting for the film to pick up pace but it continues on at a slow, lackluster pace. There are the talents of character actors Eugene Pallette and Samuel S. Hinds to boost the film and leading man Patric Knowles is certainly handsome. But the movie just never really interests me. The only thing I can imagine is that Miss Dunne and her cast mates had an overriding interest in roughing it in Arizona, the site of its on location scenes. La Dunne is just as if not more beautiful when she goes "au naturel" as a gold prospector. She just glows. Jane Crawford, the little girl who plays "Strawberry" has the best role in the movie. The wisdom that she spouts to Irene Dunne's character is priceless. Ralph Bellamy as Dunne's hapless corn seed suitor is largely repeating the part he played opposite Miss Dunne in the much superior "The Awful Truth" five years earlier in 1937. I guess this movie would be okay if you're stuck inside on a rainy day or sick in bed with a bad cold.

My Granny and I never missed watching "The Big Valley" during its prime-time run on ABC during the 1960s. She was a major Barbara Stanwyck fan from back in the day when Miss Stanwyck was the Queen of Hollywood. I of course had no way of knowing this and I simply loved the bravado, sass and spunk with which Miss Stanwyck instilled her character Victoria Barkley. Loren Greene's Ben Cartwright is a well-meaning dud in comparison. I liked her sons better than the Cartwright boys too, especially Nick! Watching it now, I can spot a lot of inconsistencies, such as the Orlon carpeting on the staircase of the Barkley manse and the overabundance of that God awful pool cue chalk blue eye shadow so popular in the 1960s. I mean it's like Victoria and Audra had an account with an Avon lady on the prairie. Still, Miss Stanwyck is a treat and I still love to watch her in reruns. Since my Granny hipped me to her at such a young age, I made sure to catch her act from her Hollywood heyday. I think "Double Indemnity" is my favorite. My Granny's other favorites from back in the day were Bette Davis and Irene Dunne. Too bad those two ladies couldn't have had guest appearances on "The Big Valley". That would have been a hoot, maybe an episode where Bette gets to menace Joan Crawford or one where Miss Dunne out sasses Miss Stanwyck.

In what I believe was Irene Dunne's second to last acting role, she plays Margaret Henderson, a mild mannered widow and mother of two, who being fed up with the status quo, decides to fight city hall. After being involved in a potentially fatal accident at a blind intersection, Miss Dunne's character channels her outrage and frustration into a grass roots, clean sweep campaign. She runs up against indifference, political entrenchment, and abandonment by an ally who sells out to ensure his own political survival. She goes forward undaunted until her political opponent, played here by Allyn Joslyn at his slippery, slimy best, almost wrecks her campaign for good. Up to this point, we think that we are simply watching a retold tale about good vs. evil when Joslyn's corrupt Woody Purvis attempts to smear Margaret in a way so evil that his plan backfires. He tries to destroy her by revealing heretofore unknown information about her late husband's war record. Information so devastating, but yet so irrelevant to Margaret's political aspirations, that it backfires and she is swept into office. Miss Dunne's imbues her portrayal of Margaret with all the integrity that she herself possessed--a brave and noble woman who finds herself inundated in the dirt and evils that is politics but one who comes through it in the end triumphant.