In honor of Gene Kelly’s birthday, today’s scene that I love comes from the 1952 classic, Singin’ In The Rain. In this scene, Debbie Reynolds performs the song Good Mornin’ with Gene Kelly and Donald O’Connor.
Tag Archives: Debbie Reynolds
Scenes That I Love: “Good Mornin'” from Singin’ In The Rain
Today would have been the 92nd birthday of the great Debbie Reynolds.
Today’s scene that I love comes from the 1952 classic, Singin’ In The Rain. In this scene, Debbie performs the song Good Mornin’ with Gene Kelly and Donald O’Connor.
Retro Television Review: The Love Boat 4.2 and 4.3 “The Family Plan/The Promoter/May The Best Man Win/Forever Engaged/The Jurors”
Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Wednesdays, I will be reviewing the original Love Boat, which aired on ABC from 1977 to 1986! The series can be streamed on Paramount Plus!
This week, The Love Boat heads to the Virgin Islands in a special two-hour episode!
(For syndication purposes, this episode is technically listed as being two episodes.)
Episode 4.2 and 4.3 “The Family Plan/The Promoter/May The Best Man Win/Forever Engaged/The Jurors”
(Dir by Roger Duchowny, originally aired on November 1st, 1980)
One of the cool things about The Love Boat is that, at least once per season, the cast and crew would actually film on location on an actual cruise. You can always spot these episodes by the fact that they’re usually two-hours long, there’s more passengers than usual, and the guest stars tend to spend more time on the upper deck than in their cabins. It may not sound like much but there’s just something undeniably fun about seeing the actual ocean while the ship’s crew and the show’s guest stars go through the motions. It’s a reminder that we live on a beautiful planet and we should all make the effort to go out and see some of it.
The fourth season’s location shoot followed the boat as it sailed from the Virgin Islands to Los Angeles, with stops in Curacao, Venezuela, and Panama. Along with all of the usual romance and laughs, this episode is a bit of a travelogue as Gopher, Julie, and the Captain all take their turn telling the passengers about the history of where they are sailing. Isaac even gets into the act, pointing out the Virgin Islands to Doc Bricker. (Being the walking HR nightmare that he is, Bricker can’t hear that name without making a comment about it.) For a history and travel nerd like me, that was enough to make this episode fun.
As for the storylines, it was typical Love Boat silliness. Promoter Larry Evans (Darren McGavin) is promoting a contest in which 50 engages couples will be married by Captain Stubing in a mass wedding aboard the ship. (It’s kind of like what happens in cults, now that I think about it.) One lucky couple will win money, a house, and a car. Larry boards the ship with his wife, Sheila (Debbie Reynolds) and it quickly becomes apparent that their marriage is struggling, despite the happy facade that Larry attempts to put up. When Larry’s plan for a network television special falls through, he’s offered a bribe by one of the engaged couples. When Sheila learns that Larry is considering taking the bribe, she announces that she wants a divorce and then starts spending a lot of time with Captain Stubing. Again, Vicki gets her hopes up that she’ll soon have a stepmother.
Meanwhile, Carl Lawrence (Peter Graves) boards the ship to try to keep his son, Ted (Brian Kerwin), from rushing into a marriage with Carrie (Erin Moran). Meanwhile, Carrie’s mother, Mary Ann (Kathie Browne), boards to keep Carrie from rushing into a marriage with Ted. Carl and Mary Ann are eager to work together to keep this wedding from happening. But then Carl and Mary Ann fall in love and start planning a rushed wedding of their own. “Are we hypocrites?” Carl wonders. Yes, you are. But you’re also Peter Graves so you can pretty much do whatever you want.
Tom McMann (Ted Knight) and Mary Hubble (Rue McClanahan) have been engaged for ten years. Mary fears that Tom won’t go actually go through with the wedding and Tom suddenly finds himself unable to say the words, “I do.” Can Isaac help them out?
Marv Prine (Don Most), who previously sailed on last season’s Alaskan cruise, boards as the best man for the wedding of his friend Brian (Lloyd Alan) and Emily (Charlene Tilton). However, Brian decides he’d rather run off with an old girlfriend and he leaves it to Marv to break the news to Emily. Marv can’t bring himself to do it so he keeps making excuses and promising Emily that Brian will meet them at the next port. Marv falls in love with Emily but suddenly, Brian shows up. When he finds out that Marv didn’t tell Emily the truth about him standing her up, Brian decides to go ahead with the wedding. Emily becomes convinced that Marv was trying to steal her away from Brian but then she finds a receipt from a cheap hotel and she realizes the truth. “You’re not a man,” Julie tells Brian. WAY TO GO, JULIE!
Finally, the Captain assigns Doc Bricker the task of judging the couples contest. Doc thinks that it sounds tedious so he passes the job onto Gopher. However, when Doc sees that the other two judges are Valerie (Dawn Wells) and Rena (Ann Jillian), he conspires to take Gopher’s place. While docked at Curacao, Doc sends Gopher assure to pick up some medical supplies. Gopher, of course, walks up to a cop and asks for help finding “the drugs.” When the cop doesn’t understand, Gopher says, “I want to buy drugs.” Long story short, Gopher ends up in jail and the ship sails off without him.
Wow, that’s a lot to deal with! But don’t worry it all works out.
Gopher meets a Spanish diplomat’s daughter and is not only freed from jail but he also gets a girlfriend and a limo for his trouble. When the ship docks in Los Angeles, Valerie and Rena abandon Doc so that they can take a ride in Gopher’s new limo.
Larry does not take the bribe and saves his marriage.
Everyone else gets married.
Yay! A happy ending! Except, of course, for Vicki, who thought she was going to get a stepmother. But don’t worry, Vicki. There’s still 6 more seasons to go.
This was a fun episode. It made me want to take a cruise. Interestingly enough, this is also a prophetic episode. A cruise for engaged couples in which one couple wins a big prize? Today, there’s not a network around that would pass on that.
See? The Love Boat knew exactly where America sailing.
Retro Television Review: Jennifer Slept Here 1.4 “Boo”
Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Thursdays, I will be reviewing Jennifer Slept Here, which aired on NBC in 1983 and 1984. The entire show is currently streaming on YouTube!
This week, Debbie Reynolds drops by!
Episode 1.4 “Boo”
(Dir by John Bowab, originally aired on November 11th, 1983)
This week’s episode of Jennifer Slept Here opens with Jennifer tormenting Joey while he tries to make a snack. Whenever Joey tries to grab a bowl and a box of cereal, Jennifer materializes and says, “Boo!” I guess when you’re a ghost, you have to find a way to pass the time. Seriously, though, Joey acts like he’s about to have a heart attack every time that he sees Jennifer. He should be used to her by now.
In other words — STOP BEING SUCH A WIMP, JOEY!
Joey is upset because he’s stuck at home while his parents take his little sister to a costume party but then Marc shows up with two twins (played by Jacqueline and Samantha Forrest). The twins seem to like Joey and Marc but again, Joey can’t leave the house. Jennifer suggests to Joey that he suggest that they just have a party at the house. Joey follows Jennifer’s advice and it turns out that the twins really want to have a …. séance!
Joey is totally excited because he has his own ghost! However, Jennifer informs him that she doesn’t want to perform like a trained seal so he’s going to have to figure out his own way to party with the twins. Suddenly, the studio audience goes wild as Debbie Reynolds materializes in Joey’s bedroom. It turns out that Debbie Reynolds is playing Jennifer’s mother, who is also a ghost. Jennifer’s mom has spent 24 years searching for Jennifer. Why? Because she’s still upset over the fact that Jennifer didn’t thank her when she won a Golden Globe. Jennifer’s mother has tracked down her daughter so that she can demand to be given credit for her daughter’s career!
(Really? It’s just a Golden Globe.)
Jennifer and her mother argue over whether or not Jennifer has ever given her mother enough credit. Jennifer’s mother eventually announces that she’s leaving and proceeds to walk through a wall. Desperate for her mother to return, Jennifer asks Joey to perform a …. wait for it …. a séance! Joey gets Jennifer to agree to help him to impress the twins in return for him trying to contact her mother.
At the séance, Marc says they should contact Jennifer’s mother but Joey is like, “Let’s contact her mother!” As it storms outside, Jennifer does things like forcing everyone to keep their hands on table and causing candles to float around the living room. It scares and impresses the twins and they suggest a trip to their place where they have a hot tub. But Jennifer tells Joey that he can’t leave because the séance isn’t over. Realizing that Jennifer is right, Joey says he can’t go to the hot tub because he has to clean up the house.
“Joey,” Marc announces, “I don’t know what’s wrong with but someday, it’s going to keep you out of the army.”
Okay, 80s TV show, way to be cringey there.
Anyway, Jennifer’s Mother does eventually appear and Joey gets to go hot tubbing with the twins while Jennifer and her mom work on their relationship in the living room. And I have to say that, after a really silly 19-minute build-up, the final scene between Ann Jillian and Debbie Reynolds was actually very sweet and touching, perhaps more so than you would expect from a sitcom about a ghost and her dorky teenage roommate.
This episode did not get off to a great start but that final scene between Ann Jillian and Debbie Reynolds saved it. The show definitely worked best when it focused more on Jennifer and less on the people who lived with her.
What A Glorious Feeling: On Stanely Donen and SINGIN’ IN THE RAIN (MGM 1952)
I constantly tout CASABLANCA as my all-time favorite movie here on this blog, but I’ve never had the opportunity to talk about my second favorite, 1952’s SINGIN’ IN THE RAIN. Sadly, that opportunity has finally arisen with the death today of Stanley Donen at age 94, the producer/director/choreographer of some of Hollywood’s greatest musicals. Donen, along with his longtime friend Gene Kelly, helped bring the musical genre to dazzling new heights with their innovative style, and nowhere is that more evident than in SINGIN’ IN THE RAIN.
The plot of SINGIN’ IN THE RAIN is fairly simple: Don Lockwood (Kelly) and Lina Lamont (Jean Hagen) are a pair of silent screen stars for Monumental Pictures. Lina believes the studio publicity hype about them being romantically linked, though Don can barely tolerate her. At the premiere of their latest film, Don is mobbed by rabid fans, and jumps into a car…
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Lisa Reviews An Oscar Nominee: How The West Was Won (dir by Henry Hathaway, George Marshall, John Ford, and Richard Thorpe)
(With the Oscars scheduled to be awarded on March 4th, I have decided to review at least one Oscar-nominated film a day. These films could be nominees or they could be winners. They could be from this year’s Oscars or they could be a previous year’s nominee! We’ll see how things play out. Today, I take a look at the 1963 best picture nominee, How The West Was Won!)
How was the west won?
According to this film, the west was won by the brave men and women who set out in search of a better life. Some of them were mountain men. Some of them worked for the railroads. Some of them rode in wagons. Some of them gambled. Some of them sang songs. Some shot guns. Some died in the Civil War. The thing they all had in common was that they won the west and everyone had a familiar face. How The West Was Won is the history of the west, told through the eyes of a collection of character actors and aging stars from Hollywood’s Golden Age.
In many ways, How The West Was Won was the Avatar of the early 60s. It was a big, long, epic film that was designed to make viewers feel as if they were in the middle of the action. Avatar used 3D while How The West Was Won used Cinerama. Each scene was shot with three synchronized cameras and, when the film was projected onto a curved Cinerama screen, it was meant to create a truly immersive experience. The film is full of tracking shots and, while watching it on TCM last night, I tried to imagine what it must have been like to see it in 1963 and to feel as if I was plunging straight into the world of the old west. The film’s visuals were undoubtedly diminished by being viewed on a flat screen and yet, there were still a few breath-taking shots of the western landscape.
The other thing that How The West Was Won had in common with Avatar was a predictable storyline and some truly unfortunate dialogue. I can understand why How The West Was Won was awarded two technical Oscars (for editing and sound) but, somehow, it also picked up the award for Best Writing, Screenplay or Story. How The West Was Won is made up of five different parts, each one of which feels like a condensed version of a typical western B-movie. There’s the mountain man helping the settlers get down the river story. There’s the Civil War story. There’s the railroad story and the outlaw story and, of course, the gold rush story. None of it’s particularly original and the film is so poorly paced that some sections of the film feel rushed while others seem to go on forever.
Some of the film’s uneven consistency was undoubtedly due to the fact that it was directed by four different directors. Henry Hathaway handled three sections while John Ford took care of the Civil War, George Marshall deal with the coming of the railroad, and an uncredited Richard Thorpe apparently shot a bunch of minor connecting scenes.
And yet, it’s hard not to like How The West Was Won. Like a lot of the epic Hollywood films of the late 50s and early 60s, it has its own goofy charm. The film is just so eager to please and remind the audience that they’re watching a story that could only be told on the big screen. Every minute of the film feels like a raised middle finger to the threat of television. “You’re not going to see this on your little idiot box!” the film seems to shout at every moment. “Think you’re going to get Cinerama on NBC!? THINK AGAIN!”
Then there’s the huge cast. As opposed to Avatar, the cast of How The West Was Won is actually fun to watch. Admittedly, a lot of them are either miscast or appear to simply be taking advantage of a quick payday but still, it’s interesting to see just how many iconic actors wander through this film.
For instance, the film starts and, within minutes, you’re like, “Hey! That’s Jimmy Stewart playing a mountain man who is only supposed to be in his 20s!”
There’s Debbie Reynolds as a showgirl who inherits a gold claim!
Is that Gregory Peck as a cynical gambler? And there’s Henry Fonda as a world-weary buffalo hunter! And Richard Widmark as a tyrannical railroad employee and Lee J. Cobb as a town marshal and Eli Wallach as an outlaw!
See that stern-faced settler over there? It’s Karl Malden!
What’s that? The Civil War’s broken out? Don’t worry, General John Wayne is here to save the day. And there’s George Peppard fighting for the Union and Russ Tamblyn fighting for the Confederacy! And there’s Agnes Moorehead and Thelma Ritter and Robert Preston and … wait a minute? Is that Spencer Tracy providing narration?
When Eli Wallach’s gang shows up, keep an eye out for a 36 year-old Harry Dean Stanton. And, earlier, when Walter Brennan’s family of river pirates menaces Karl Malden, be sure to look for an evil-looking pirate who, for about twenty seconds, stares straight at the camera. When you see him, be sure to say, “Hey, it’s Lee Van Cleef!”
How The West Was Won is a big, long, thoroughly silly movie but, if you’re a fan of classic film stars, it’s worth watching. It was a huge box office success and picked up 8 Oscar nominations. It lost best picture to Tom Jones.
(By the way, in my ideal fantasy world, From Russia With Love secured a 1963 U.S. release, as opposed to having to wait until 1964, and became the first spy thriller to win the Oscar for Best Picture.)
Grand Dame Guignol: WHAT’S THE MATTER WITH HELEN? (United Artists 1971)
The recent FX mini-series FEUD has sparked a renewed interest in the “Older Actresses Doing Horror” genre, also known by the more obnoxious sobriquettes “Hagsploitaion” or “Psycho-Biddy” movies. This peculiar film category lasted from 1962’s WHATEVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE? until winding down around the early Seventies. 1971’s WHAT’S THE MATTER WITH HELEN? came towards the end of the cycle, a creepy little chiller with Debbie Reynolds and Shelley Winters getting caught up in murder and madness in 1930’s Hollywood.
I wouldn’t exactly call Debbie Reynolds a “hag”; she was only 39 when this was filmed, and still quite a hottie, especially when glammed-up in a Jean Harlow “Platinum Blond” wig. Deb gets to show off her tap-dancing and tangoing in a few scenes, showing off her still amazing legs for good measure. She and Shelley play a pair of Iowa mothers who (as the opening newsreel footage tells us) have spawned two killer sons that…
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RIP The Unsinkable Debbie Reynolds
One day after the tragic death of her daughter Carrie Fisher, the unsinkable Debbie Reynolds has passed at age 84. I’m not going to update my previous IN MEMORIAM post; Miss Reynolds deserves a post of her own.
One of the last of the old studio contract players, Debbie got good notices in such musical films as THE DAUGHTER OF ROSIE O’GRADY, THREE LITTLE WORDS, and TWO WEEKS WITH LOVE, but it’s her role as Kathy Seldon in SINGIN’ IN THE RAIN that made her a star. This joyful ode to the transition from silent movies to sound isn’t just my favorite musical, it’s one of my favorite films ever! Debbie shines as the ingénue forced to lip-synch for catty star Lina Lamont (the wonderful Jean Hagen), and more than holds her own in the dancing and clowning departments with Gene Kelly and Donald O’Connor. Like CASABLANCA and CITIZEN KANE, SINGIN’…
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Dance Scenes I Love: “Good Morning” from Singin’ In The Rain
RIP, Debbie Reynolds.
Naughty Or Nice: SUSAN SLEPT HERE (RKO 1954)
Looking for something a little offbeat in a Christmas movie? Try SUSAN SLEPT HERE, a film that could never get made today, as it concerns the romance between a 17 year old girl and a 35 year old man. I know some of you out there are already screaming “EEEEWWW!!!”, but indulge me while I describe the madcap moments leading to said romance.
For starters, the movie is narrated by Oscar. Not Oscar Levant, but THE Oscar, the fabled Academy Awards statuette. This particular Oscar was won by Mark Christopher, screenwriter of fluffy Hollywood comedies yearning to pen a dramatic yarn and prove his mettle as a writer. Into his life comes teenage Susan Landis, a juvenile delinquent dumped on his doorstep by two cops who don’t want to lock her up til after the holidays. They figure Mark can watch her and get a good story idea in the process before she…
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Through the Shattered Lens 