It Happens Every Thursday

When things really were akin to 'It's a Wonderful Life!' Here it is almost just a good warm and wholesome feeling that evokes nothing but more goodness inly that is!

Even the characters , I don't know how they did it but almost everyone in this set irradiates goodness!

I just totally completely fell in love with this film and the ending was wonderful, there is something really cool and classic about these black & white's! They just , I don't know, make me want to stoke the fire and drink hot chocolate and pet a big scruffy shaggy dog sprawled out on the hearthrug and oh! eat some cheesecake? or apple pie even though its not time for the next repast! Gosh this was a nice!

And golly that lead actess, boy can she instill hope right? Talk about a good person, I mean good character , everyone in here is jolly nice!

P.S. its on youtube no less! :)

This is a charming film made back when films could be made just to be charming. It is the story of a big city couple that move to a small town to run the little weekly paper there. They find that their big city way of thinking can get them in trouble with small town minds and mores! I especially liked their photo file; when they wanted a picture of an arrogant citizen the only one on file was of him as a baby-naked on a bearskin rug! This film is another that I would love to see restored and made available on DVD.

John Forsythe, pregnant wife Loretta Young, and their son leave New York and his newspaper grind to take over a small town newspaper in California. There they struggle with small circulation, bad finances and a suspicious local crowd.

It's an innocuous, light-hearted drama that breaks no new ground, one of the utterly banal near-comedies of the era. Where it excels is in its wealth of supporting actors, including Edgar Buchanan as yet another big-hearted printer, Jimmy Conlin, Frank McHugh, Jane Darwell, Gladys George, Regis Toomey, and even Francis Ford in his next-to-last movie.

Better known as John Ford's brother, Francis had started out in movies as part of the Melies company in Texas doing cowboy pictures. By 1915, he and Grace Cunard were major players on the Universal lot, doing serials, adventure pictures, often with Ford directing. When brother John came out west, Francis got him work on the lot. Ford continued as a supporting player through the 1930s, but eventually was reduced to bits in his brother's pictures. In all, he made almost five hundred shorts and features as a performer, 180 as a director. He died the year this picture came out, aged 72.

"It Happens Every Thursday" is a pleasant but undistinguished film. It's a shame, as it turned out to be Loretta Young's last movie and after a long career, you would have hoped it would have ended on a higher note than this.

The set-up for this film makes no sense...though it certainly isn't without precedent. Much like in films like "George Washington Slept Here", "The Egg and I" and "Mr. Blandings Builds a Dreamhouse", the film is about some city folk giving up everything and moving to the country. However, compared to the boobs in these other films, the characters in "It Happens Every Thursday" seem to have a lot less motivation and their move is much more inexplicable. Think about it....two New Yorkers with no experience in the newspaper business use all their savings to buy a tiny paper in a tiny country town. Why? Well, we really have no idea--and this is the biggest weakness of the film.

Fortunately, apart from this HUGE plot hole, the rest of the picture is pleasant and modestly entertaining as the couple (John Forsythe and Young) try their darnedest to make a go of it. It's less a comedy...and more a slice of life. The actors in this (and the supporting cast is quite good) try their best but the picture never really rises above mediocrity.

In Loretta Young's final big screen film there are so many familiar and wonderful character players you would think this came from Frank Capra. A few in It Happens Every Spring are Capra veterans.

Loretta and her husband John Forsythe are newspaper people and they work at different papers on different shifts. It's quite a pressure filled atmosphere so Forsythe and Young decide to use their savings and buy a small town weekly newspaper.

The usual problems of city folk adjusting to small town living and small town news stories are in her. The biggest item on people's minds is the drought the community is suffering. Forsythe tries to do something about it and ends up in a public relations jackpot.

This is a pleasant piece of entertainment so reminiscent of some of the Frank Capra classics. Young picked a good one as her farewell to the big screen.