October 1945. Now that the war's officially over, there's some tidying up to do. Remaining Japanese troops in Taiwan surrender, the Nazi Party is officially dissolved, and 29 countries come together to establish the United Nations, making Woodrow Wilson's dream a reality; throughout the year, more will join.
In Hollywood, a six-month strike by the Set Decorators' union came to a head as a fight broke out between scabs, police, Warner Bros. security, and 300 strikers. The fallout contributed to the passage of the Taft-Hartley Act in 1946, limiting the power of labor unions, and the slow dissolution of the Conference of Studio Unions, which spearheaded the strike.
Though the strike caused delays on films like Duel in the Sun, for the most part, studios had a backlog of films to release. The month Hollywood Black Friday occurred, here's what the output looked like:
The Spanish Main
release: October
nominations: Best Cinematography - Color
dir: Frank Borzage
pr: Robert Fellows / Stephen Ames
scr: George Worthing Yates and Herman J. Mankiewicz, story by Æneas MacKenzie
cin: George Barnes
A Dutch ship captain becomes a pirate, terrorizing a Spanish Caribbean settlement. Been waiting to talk about Binnie Barnes as lady pirate Anne Bonny, who really existed, because this is the performance and role that really popped for me. She goes pistol-to-pistol against Maureen O'Hara, mouths off to the hero, goes sword-to-sword against a villain, and generally is a bad-ass. Beautiful cinematography, sexy Maureen O'Hara, surprisingly fun Paul Henreid, wonderfully detailed costumes, but Barnes as Bonny is boffo.
Love Letters
release: October 4
nominations: Best Actress (Jennifer Jones), Best Score (Victor Young), Best Original Song ("Love Letters"), Best Art Direction-Interior Decoration - Black-and-White (Hans Dreier / Roland Anderson / Sam Comer / Ray Moyer)
dir: William Dieterle
pr: Hal B. Wallis
scr: Ayn Rand, from the novel by Christopher Massie
cin: Lee Garmes
Joseph Cotten is a soldier writing letters on behalf of a platoon-mate, but he's fallen in love with the object of the other guy's affection, sight unseen; years later, he meets a widow with amnesia who turns out to be the very woman. And there's more besides, including a murder and Gladys Cooper and fun London drunks. Reteaming Cotten and Jennifer Jones for the second of four times, I have now completed the quartet and can say with some certainty that this is the nadir, an unpleasant plot that becomes ever more ridiculous and vile, in which Jones demonstrates the limits of her skills as an actress. I hated this movie.
Sunbonnet Sue
release: October 6
nominations: Best Musical Score (Edward J. Kay)
dir: Ralph Murphy
pr: Scott R. Dunlap
scr: Ralph Murphy and Richard A. Carroll, from "Belle of the Bowery" by Paul Gerard Smith and Bradford Ropes
cin: Harry Neumann
A young saloon performer is at the center of conflict between her widowed tavern-owning father and her prim-and-proper society aunt. Get over it, Auntie, look what a good time we're all having! Breezy musical with a charming leading lady and some grand snooty side-eye from Alan Mowbray.
Why Girls Leave Home
release: October 9
nominations: Best Musical Score (Walter Greene), Best Original Song ("The Cat and the Canary")
dir: William Berke
pr: Samuel Sax
scr: Fanya Foss Lawrence and Bradford Ropes, story by Fanya Foss Lawrence
cin: Mack Stengler
Girl wants to have fun, falls in with a bad crowd, including Elisha Cook, Jr., and his clarinet of seduction. The "evil" jazz numbers and nightclub tunes are great (songs by Jay Livingston and Ray Evans - we like 'em!)! The finger-wagging moralizing? Well, that comes with the territory, you can't get the good stuff like mob hits and sexy chanteuses and dumbasses offing themselves in melodramatic ways without having someone tell you it's all bad and you shouldn't enjoy it. Though to be fair, aside from the songs it's all a bit "meh" anyway.
Week-End at the Waldorf
release: October 17
dir: Robert Z. Leonard
pr: Arthur Hornblow, Jr. / Robert Z. Leonard
scr: Sam Spewack and Bella Spewack, adaptation by Guy Bolton, from Grand Hotel by Vicki Baum
cin: Robert H. Planck
Updated remake of Grand Hotel resets the action to the Waldorf Astoria in Manhattan. Ginger Rogers is the weary star (remember Greta Garbo?), Walter Pidgeon is a dashing reporter mistaken for a thief (a whitewashing of cat burglar John Barrymore), Van Johnson is a soldier with a terminal illness (youth-anizing Lionel Barrymore), Lana Turner is a gorgeous secretary (remember Joan Crawford?), and Edward Arnold is a desperate and amoral businessman (remember Wallace Beery?). Robert Benchley is also here, and not very effectively used. Come to that, I wasn't crazy about Johnson and Turner's plotline, either (I just don't care for him, I think). If the whole movie were just Rogers and Pidgeon, I would have been in heaven. It's fine, I guess, you can live without it.
The House on 92nd Street
release: October 18
wins: Best Original Story
dir: Henry Hathaway
pr: Louis de Rochemont
scr: Barré Lyndon & Charles G. Booth and John Monks, Jr., story by Charles G. Booth
cin: Norbert Brodine
A spy thriller that is simultaneously an original story based on various FBI records and a docudrama photographed "in the localities of the incidents depicted...in the actual place where the incident occurred." In the days before Pearl Harbor, a German-American student is recruited as a double agent to uncover a Nazi spy ring in America. Kind of goes how you'd expect it to, I guess, with crossings and double-crossings and our young man almost being found out multiple times and microfilm and codes. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Paris Underground
release: October 19
nominations: Best Score (Alexander Tansman)
dir: Gregory Ratoff
pr: Constance Bennett
scr: Boris Ingster and Gertrude Purcell, story by Etta Shiber in collaboration with Ann Dupre / Paul Dupre / Oscar Ray
cin: Lee Garmes
Frivolous expats in Paris become unlikely agents in smuggling Allied soldiers out of the country after the Vichy government takes over. What Price Hollywood? star Constance Bennett produces and stars, and don't you love it when a performer makes a project for themselves with a complex character, not immediately likable, who makes difficult decisions, not always the right ones, and refuses to climax with either triumph or martyrdom? She and onscreen bestie Gracie Fields (who later went on to be the first-ever Miss Marple in an American television version of A Murder is Announced) are credible as women who never expected to play such an active role against any government, yet their commitment grows by the hour - it's the least they can do, even if it means using their wiles to distract Nazi officers and influence Vichy administrators (including Bennett's ex-husband). A simple story about women meeting the moment.
Pursuit to Algiers
release: October 26
dir/pr: Roy William Neill
scr: Leonard Lee, from The Return of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
cin: Paul Ivano
Holmes and Watson accompany an incognito prince on a return trip to his homeland - but assassins and conspirators abound on their chosen vessel! A ship-set mystery is always a good time, you get a believable range of characters stuck in a single location that still has many nooks and crannies in which to execute foul deeds. And what a handsome prince! I believe the unusual setting and array of suspects is used to adapt elements of several Conan Doyle short stories, which is clever. It also makes for a more Watson-heavy entry, which I love.
And Then There Were None
release: Halloween
dir/pr: René Clair
scr: Dudley Nichols, from the novel by Agatha Christie
cin: Lucien Andriot
A movie I know better than some members of my own family, I've been watching and rewatching since high school! This is an adaptation of Agatha Christie's best-known and most-imitated work (and probably my favorite novel of hers), in which ten strangers are gathered together on a remote island, marooned by machination and storm, each accused of murder by a mysterious recording, and subsequently offed one by one. Is there a hidden killer on the island, or is one of them meting out deadly justice? An all-star cast that includes recent Oscar winner Barry Fitzgerald, Hollywood icon Walter Huston, caddish B-tier star Louis Hayward, and None But the Lonely Heart's breakout star June Duprez, and reliable character actors Judith Anderson, Mischa Auer, Richard Haydn, Queenie Leonard, Sir C. Aubrey Smith, and Roland Young. French director René Clair gives the whole proceedings a dash of black comedy with enough atmosphere to keep the air thick with fear and suspense. What a set! Mischievous score by Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco.
Tomorrow, the last films of 1945...
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