Stella

I came to this film as a fan of Victor Mature and was not disappointed. It is a great story, really good fun and a true dark comedy, a very well balanced cast with Victor on good solid form. Some great laugh out loud moments, I would say the 'corny' music to lighten up certain scenes is overplayed but I don't have too many criticisms. Seeing Frank Fontaine was a treat, I only knew him from his hilarious turns in Jackie Gleason's Saturday Night Shows but... he was no actor it has to be said :-) David Wayne carried enough humour in this film as the two of them as brothers in law were together in all their scenes. Victor had his his quota of 'off the cuff' flippant lines scattered through the film which he delivered in his usual wonderful way, and the ending is really excellent and unexpected. It crossed my mind that Preston Sturges could have done a lot with this story and with his magic touch all over it, it could have fitted in with his best films.

At the beginning of the film, drunk old Uncle Joe falls and dies and the family decides not to tell anyone and just bury him!! This is no ordinary family, that's for sure. You see, they are a greedy pack of lazy jerks and Uncle Joe was their meal ticket...and with him dead they might have to get real jobs. In addition to Joe, the family also regularly sponges off Stella (Ann Sheridan)...a nice lady who is the ultimate enabler. Inexplicably, once she learns of their scheme, she decides to go along with their plot...and that's a problem because an insurance investigator (Victor Mature) is hot for Stella and is spending way too much time around this pack of vultures. There's also a bigger problem when Uncle Joe's girlfriend shows up and when they cannot produce him, she reports him missing. The family also finds out he has insurance and if they can identify some corpse, they can collect. So, again and again, they say that bodies are Uncle Joe...and each time the authorities figure out it isn't.

While this could have been a very funny film and had many interesting elements, I was pretty much irritated by the characters as they were just too selfish and nasty. And, while family loyalty is fine, Stella is the ultimate enabler...and that doesn't make her especially endearing. These are huge problems with the story. I think making them dumber and more kooky would have worked much better than making them lazy and greedy. While a very WEIRD film, "The Trouble With Harry" did this sort of thing better.

When Uncle Joe hits his head on a rock at a family picnic, he dies. The others worry that the police will think that David Wayne killed him, so they bury him on the spot. Soon, lady friend Lea Penman files a missing persons report with police chief Chill Wills. When Ann Sheridan, the only member of the family worth a darn, finds out, she wants to tell the police, but is talked out of it. A body shows up. Wayne and brother-in-law Frank Fontanne identify it as Joe, and Miss Sheridan's boss and fiance, Leif Erickson tells her Joe had a $10,000 life insurance policy with a double indemnity clause. Matters grow complicated for Miss Sheridan when insurance investigator Victor Mature shows up to offer Erickson competition for Ann, and a series of corpses are identified as Joe and turn out not to be.

It's a rather lugubrious dark comedy from Doris Miles Disney's novel FAMILY SKELETON. One problem I had with the movie was the way everyone spoke their lines very fast. The other seems to be a couple of scenes that should have been cut; the entire trip to New York City seems superfluous. Screenwriter/director Claude Binyon was a good comedy writer -- his best-known piece of writing was when, as a VARIETY writer, he came up with the headline "Stix Nix Hix Pix" -- but his directorial efforts were undistinguished. Wayne and Wills are amusing, but everyone else come off a trifle flat.

Ann Sheridan at her best. David Wayne and Frank Fontaine give the two best performances by comedic actors ever caught on film. This is a must see. You don't know funny till you see this gem. Please e-mail if you see it in your local paper to be shown. I need a copy today!!!

The title role of Stella is played by Ann Sheridan, the only one in a family of lunkheads who earns a decent living, as a secretary to Leif Erickson as an insurance salesman and head of the branch in their Cabot Cove like New England town. She puts up with a lot with a daft mother Evelyn Varden, a pair of scatterbrained sisters, Marion Marshall and Randy Stuart, and most of all a pair of seasonal workers the congenitally lazy David Wayne and Frank Fontaine.

And there's Uncle Joe who dies at the beginning of the film. He was sparking the widow Lea Penman who owns the resort hotel the whole family is employed at but Sheridan. The description of him is a lazy lout and obnoxious and apparently good for only one thing as Penman attests. The family employment is seasonal, they all go on unemployment when the season is over.

But one fine day a family picnic which Sheridan is not at Uncle Joe gets drunk and stupid and gets himself killed trying to pick a fight with the nephews-in-law. Instead of reporting the crime the two geniuses Wayne and Fontaine bury the body. But then when there's insurance money involved we've got to find a body and then they have a bumper crop of stiffs.

As this involves an insurance claim the most proper Mr. Erickson gets to investigate before approving a claim. At the same time Victor Mature from the home office gets in the act on the claim and in competition for Stella. Both Mature and Erickson are a bit guilty of thinking with their male members, but Erickson decidedly more so.

Stella reminds me of one of Alfred Hitchcock's lesser efforts The Trouble With Harry. Hitch tried for black comedy, this film is far less subtle. Both were passably entertaining, but really miss the mark.

Victor Mature kind of misses in the light touch department. He's all right but can you imagine Cary Grant in the same part?

I also can't imagine why the sisters couldn't do better in their choices of husbands. Both married way below their league.

Stella does have a few laughs in it however. The punishment worked out for Wayne and Fontaine is quite appropriate.