There's Sometimes a Buggy

This week's Paramount 1944 films take the studio's talent of this period in unexpected directions: Mitchell Leisen's Lady in the Dark makes a Technicolor extravaganza of the fantasy sequences in this psychoanalytical tale of a woman's (Ginger Rogers') ambivalence about glamour, based on a hit Broadway musical; and Alan Ladd and Raymond Chandler (as star and screenwriter) bring a hardboiled note to a soapy plot about a socialite (Loretta Young) seeking a cure for her deafness in And Now Tomorrow, a woman's picture/noir hybrid with more interest in class issues than that genre usually shows. Bouncing off of Martin Scorsese, we discuss the "psychological disturbance" in relationships between men and women in Hollywood musicals and just what Lady in the Dark has to say about the possibility of an equal relationship between a woman and a man.

Time Codes:

0h 00m 45s: LADY IN THE DARK [dir. Mitchell Leisen]

0h 31m 58s: AND NOW TOMORROW [dir. Irving Pichel]

0h 52m 35s: Letter from Listener Gregory

Studio Film Capsules provided by The Paramount Story by John Douglas Eames

Additional studio information from: The Hollywood Story by Joel W. Finler

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* Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s

* Intro Song: "Sunday" by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive)

* Read Elise's latest film piece on Preston Sturges, Unfaithfully Yours, and the Narrative role of comedic scapegoating.

* Check out Dave's new Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist's 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project!

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In this Acteurist Oeuvre-view episode, Dorothy McGuire's string of interesting wife roles gets tangled up by two of the most sexist films Elise has ever seen in her life, Delbert Mann's The Dark at the Top of the Stairs (based on the play by William Inge) and Disney's The Swiss Family Robinson. The Dark at the Top of the Stairs nevertheless gives us a lot to discuss in terms of psychiatric concepts and ideas about gender roles in 1950s America, as well as providing McGuire with one of the better acting opportunities of this part of her career. Also, we decide that Swiss Family Robinson should be cancelled.

Time Codes:

0h 00m 45s: THE DARK AT THE TOP OF THE STAIRS (1960) [dir. Delbert Mann]

0h 38m 29s: SWISS FAMILY ROBINSON (1960) [dir. Ken Annakin]

0h 51m 15s: THE DARK AT THE TOP OF THE STAIRS (1960) [dir. Delbert Mann] – final thoughts

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* Listen to our guest episode on The Criterion Project – a discussion of Late Spring

* Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s

* Intro Song: "Sunday" by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive)

* Read Elise's piece on Gangs of New York – "Making America Strange Again"

* Check out Dave's Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist's 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project!

Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy

Write to us at [email protected]

We now have a Discord server - just drop us a line if you'd like to join!

Universal 1943 is a strange one, starting with The Strange Death of Adolf Hitler, starring Ludwig Donath as a reluctant Nazi collaborator who's forced to impersonate Hitler, and continuing with Robert Siodmak's Son of Dracula, with Lon Chaney Jr. as a hapless Dracula who falls victim to femme fatale Louise Allbritton. We discuss WWII AU scenarios, the Twilight Zone scenario of being a soul trapped in Hitler's body, and the comedy team of Frank Craven and J. Edward Bromberg as a down-to-earth doctor and sub-Van Helsing forced to confront supernatural shenanigans and, worse, a wayward woman with a plan.

Time Codes:

0h 00m 45s: THE STRANGE DEATH OF ADOLF HITLER [dir. James P. Hogan]

0h 29m 59s: SON OF DRACULA [dir. Robert Siodmak]

Studio Film Capsules provided by The Universal Story by Clive Hirschhorn

Additional studio information from: The Hollywood Story by Joel W. Finler

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* Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s

* Intro Song: "Sunday" by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive)

* Read Elise's latest film piece on Preston Sturges, Unfaithfully Yours, and the Narrative role of comedic scapegoating.

* Check out Dave's new Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist's 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project!

Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy

Write to us at [email protected]

We now have a Discord server - just drop us a line if you'd like to join!

July's special subject is a sampler of noirs by 1950s noir auteur Phil Karlson: Kansas City Confidential (1952), 99 River Street (1953), 5 Against the House (1955), and The Phenix City Story (1955). We discuss one-time Fox musicals leading man John Payne's transformation into the ideal shlubby, haunted noir protagonist, Karlson's take on the hysterical male trope, his use of violence, his delineation of the ideal woman, the progressive and reactionary tendencies in his movies, and the lies and authenticity of his arguable masterpiece, The Phenix City Story. And much more, of course!

Read Gareth Hedges' thesis!

Cinematic Memory and the Southern Imaginary: Crisis in the Deep South and The Phenix City Story

Time Codes:

0h 00m 45s: Brief introduction to Phil Karlson

0h 05m 45s: KANSAS CITY CONFIDENTIAL (1952) [dir. Phil Karlson]

0h 27m 44s: 99 RIVER STREET (1953) [dir. Phil Karlson]

0h 56m 42s: FIVE AGAINST THE HOUSE (1955) [dir. Phil Karlson]

1h 19m 14s: THE PHENIX CITY STORY (1955) [dir. Phil Karlson]

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* Listen to our guest episode on The Criterion Project – a discussion of Late Spring

* Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s

* Intro Song: "Sunday" by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive)

* Read Elise's piece on Gangs of New York – "Making America Strange Again"

* Check out Dave's Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist's 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project!

Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy

Write to us at [email protected]

We now have a Discord server - just drop us a line if you'd like to join!

This week's Dorothy McGuire episode continues the trend of unusual wife and mother roles with two family melodramas from 1959, Henry King's tale of an economically and psychologically troubled viticulture dynasty, This Earth Is Mine, and Delmer Daves' frank, sex-positive look at sexual mores among the respectable middle classes during the late 1950s, A Summer Place, which had contemporary reviewers reaching for the smelling salts. Whether playing a sympathetic adulteress who has to deal with her teenage son's inconvenient libido in addition to her own or a love-thwarted wife who wants to appropriate the family patriarch role, McGuire is a far cry from the typical housewife of 50s TV.

Time Codes:

0h 00m 45s: THIS EARTH IS MINE (1959) [dir. Henry King]

0h 34m 03s: A SUMMER PLACE (1959) [dir. Delmer Daves]

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* Listen to our guest episode on The Criterion Project – a discussion of Late Spring

* Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s

* Intro Song: "Sunday" by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive)

* Read Elise's piece on Gangs of New York – "Making America Strange Again"

* Check out Dave's Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist's 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project!

Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy

Write to us at [email protected]

We now have a Discord server - just drop us a line if you'd like to join!

For our RKO 1943 episode, we look at two films that exemplify the nascent RKO noir style: Richard Wallace's The Fallen Sparrow, starring John Garfield as a traumatized Spanish Civil War veteran hunted by Nazis and the Val Lewton production The Seventh Victim, starring Kim Hunter as a sheltered young woman who wants to find out about the sorrows of the world and does not want to be told to drink her milk. Featuring cinematography by Nicholas Musuraca and scores by Roy Webb, these films embrace opacity and ooze paranoia while presenting portraits of sophisticated New York milieus harbouring evil in their midst. And, keeping to the noir theme, in Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto we discuss a 30th anniversary screening of Brian De Palma's Carlito's Way, starring Al Pacino as a gangster who carries his doom around inside him.

Time Codes:

0h 00m 45s: THE FALLEN SPARROW [(dir. Richard Wallace]

0h 29m 14s: THE SEVENTH VICTIM [dir. Mark Robson]

1h 09m 06s: FEAR & MOVIEGOING IN TORONTO – Brian De Palma's Carlito's Way (1993) at The Revue Cinema

Studio Film Capsules provided by The RKO Story by Richard B. Jewell & Vernon Harbin

Additional studio information from: The Hollywood Story by Joel W. Finler

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* Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s

* Intro Song: "Sunday" by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive)

* Read Elise's latest film piece on Preston Sturges, Unfaithfully Yours, and the Narrative role of comedic scapegoating.

* Check out Dave's new Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist's 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project!

Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy

Write to us at [email protected]

We now have a Discord server - just drop us a line if you'd like to join!

Our Dorothy McGuire episode this week is guaranteed to give you mood whiplash. We begin with Disney classic and Boomer phenomenon Old Yeller (1957), the most hellish depiction of the war of all against all in nature we've seen since King Kong, with a moving central performance by Tommy Kirk as a boy ungracefully slouching toward manhood with the indispensable assistance of a good dog and a seraphic mother (McGuire). After imbibing its gnostic wisdom, we turn to the very different problems facing The Remarkable Mr. Pennypacker (1959), a comedy about an early 20th century progressive businessman who adopts bigamy as part of his forward-thinking program but forgets to tell his wife (McGuire). McGuire's wife and mother roles continue to give her a wide range of things to play, while drawing on her cool efficiency in a crisis - whether that's a dog who's been torn up by hogs or a husband with a secret second family.

Time Codes:

0h 00m 45s: OLD YELLER (1957) [dir. Robert Stephenson]

0h 38m 06s: THE REMARKABLE MR. PENNYPACKER (1959) [dir. Harry Levin]

0h 55m 34s: Listener Letter from Andrew

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* Listen to our guest episode on The Criterion Project – a discussion of Late Spring

* Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s

* Intro Song: "Sunday" by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive)

* Read Elise's piece on Gangs of New York – "Making America Strange Again"

* Check out Dave's Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist's 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project!

Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy

Write to us at [email protected]

We now have a Discord server - just drop us a line if you'd like to join!

In this extra-special 20th Century Fox 1943 episode, we stare agog at a couple of dazzling musicals: Stormy Weather, whose all-Black cast is headlined by Bill Robinson and Lena Horne and boasts an embarrassment of geniuses; and Busby Berkeley's The Gang's All Here, a Technicolor psychedelic extravaganza that's the pinnacle of Fox's signature variety-style musical. We try to sketch out some of the complex representational issues attending Stormy Weather, and our reasons for thinking that the movie itself has an awareness of them and is attempting to be progressive and sophisticated in certain ways. Turning to The Gang's All Here, we focus on its exhibition of sometimes jarring self-reflexivity and the way it perfects the typical romantic and comedic storylines of this era of Fox musical. But if all of that sounds too dryly academic, don't be afraid - we want to play!

Time Codes:

0h 00m 45s: STORMY WEATHER [dir. Andrew L. Stone]

0h 51m 53s: THE GANG'S ALL HERE [dir. Busby Berkeley]

Studio Film Capsules provided by The Films of 20th Century-Fox by Tony Thomas and Aubrey Solomon

Additional studio information from: The Hollywood Story by Joel W. Finler

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* Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s

* Intro Song: "Sunday" by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive)

* Read Elise's latest film piece on Preston Sturges, Unfaithfully Yours, and the Narrative role of comedic scapegoating.

* Check out Dave's new Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist's 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project!

Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy

Write to us at [email protected]

We now have a Discord server - just drop us a line if you'd like to join!

Our June Special Subject samples the surviving silent cinema of Dave's favorite director (now revealed!), King Vidor. We tease Vidor's auteur preoccupations out of these four early films—The Sky Pilot (1921), Peg o' My Heart (1922), Wild Oranges (1924), and La Bohème (1926)—and find a common focus on the successful, frustrated, or warped self-realization of his heroines. We explore the way Vidor articulates this theme through sometimes eccentric versions of a variety of genres: Western, comedy, Gothic melodrama, woman's picture. And if that doesn't tempt you, there are graphic and brutal fist fights, random storks, demonic dogs, milk-loving dogs, dangerous stunts, and Lillian Gish going that extra 10 miles for her art long before De Niro and Day-Lewis. (10 miles, dragged along the cobblestones, in fact.)

Time Codes:

0h 0m 45s: King Vidor, Transcendentalist

0h 13m 05s: THE SKY PILOT (1921) [dir. King Vidor]

0h 34m 38s: PEG O' MY HEART (1922) [dir. King Vidor]

0h 44m 03s: WILD ORANGES (1924) [dir. King Vidor]

1h 01m 29s: LA BOHEME (1926) [dir. King Vidor]

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* Listen to our guest episode on The Criterion Project – a discussion of Late Spring

* Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s

* Intro Song: "Sunday" by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive)

* Read Elise's piece on Gangs of New York – "Making America Strange Again"

* Check out Dave's Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist's 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project!

Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy

Write to us at [email protected]

We now have a Discord server - just drop us a line if you'd like to join!

We continue last week's theme of Hollywood's attitude toward the Soviet Union as our Dorothy McGuire Acteurist Oeuvre-view episode takes us beyond not only the Popular Front era but just a shade beyond the heyday of McCarthyism. We also find that we spoke too soon about McGuire entering her mom-roles era, as in this episode's movies she embodies an unmarried professional woman with a liberal attitude toward sex and a shady political past in Trial (1955, directed by Mark Robson, based on the novel by Don Mankiewicz), as well as a Quaker minister (and wife and mother) whose family's pacifist views are put to the test in William Wyler's Friendly Persuasion (1956). McGuire brings her particular mixture of the soothing and the astringent to not very committed Communism and very committed pacifism, proving that her range encompasses both the ultra-worldly and the otherworldly.

Time Codes:

0h 0m 45s: TRIAL (1955) [dir. Mark Robson]

0h 30m 25s: FRIENDLY PERSUASION (1956) [dir. Wiliam Wyler]

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* Listen to our guest episode on The Criterion Project – a discussion of Late Spring

* Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s

* Intro Song: "Sunday" by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive)

* Read Elise's piece on Gangs of New York – "Making America Strange Again"

* Check out Dave's Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist's 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project!

Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy

Write to us at [email protected]

We now have a Discord server - just drop us a line if you'd like to join!