Borderline movies
Those who are my age and older, can remember the Sunday afternoon matinees on WAUB-Channel 43 in Cleveland, and later, on WOIO-Channel 19, its sister station. Saturdays were the days for westerns, cheesy sci-fi classics with Godzilla, and creatures from a million swamps and lagoons. Sunday afternoons, though, featured the good stuff: the classics.
Usually on Sundays, we would come home from church, eat lunch (roast, of course) and April through October, a visit to my Grandma Muncy's home in Moreland. However, in the wintertime, Sunday was the one day my father didn't work, out of respect for my Grandpa Hauenstein's no-work-on-Sunday belief. He'd either be found sleeping in his chair, or puttering around in a shed. I, however, would be glued to the old movies.
Sunday afternoon was the day I fell in love with Cary Grant, Gene Kelly, Gregory Peck, and Martin and Lewis. It was the day for a Rock Hudson-Doris Day movie, with Tony Randall stealing every scene he was in, and setting the standard for the light romantic comedy. It was a musical, or something else light. Very seldom did the Sunday afternoon movies feature a hard drama or suspenseful film, at least the ones I'd see. Usually, I'd have to get up and leave, in the middle of Gene Kelly wooing some girl, in order to do barn chores, but knew Gene would get the girl, and dance off into the sunset.
By the time I was in my early teens, most of those stars were dead, retired, or relegated to television roles. To see Rock Hudson in his prime, he was Brad Pitt before Pitt was even a thought to his parents. Cary Grant was all that George Clooney would never be, on the screen and in real life. For the record, I do like Clooney, and think he is a throwback to Grant and Peck, but isn't an original. Jack Lemmon played the Everyman role with such precision and wit, that one tic of his face could make you laugh, or wince. Just to hear him say "Sugar!" to Marilyn Monroe in Some Like It Hot makes me laugh out loud. Doris Day had soft lighting and camerawork that gave her a sort of blurry, angelic glow. Jimmy Stewart had the righteous indignation and genuine personality rolled into one. I saw them in their prime, not as they were at the time those matinees rolled across Cleveland TV screens.
It's unfair, I think, in some ways, to say, "they don't make them like that anymore." However, I doubt there is any director who inspired loyalty and admiration behind the scenes like Hitchcock, or the genius of Billy Wilder or Robert Wise. I'm not a fan of the creepy Hitchcock stuff, but think North by Northwest, To Catch a Thief, and Vertigo might be his finest works. James Mason still creeps me out. There's a lot of great wit and amazing cinematography in those gems, from An American in Paris to April in Paris. Singin' in the Rain is another all-time favorite, and Donald O'Connor, like Randall, could steal every scene. Few actors today can pull that off, but not with such blatant mugging and yet so brilliantly executed.
We look back, as I do, with nostalgia to the silver screen and its idols. I love hearing my mom talk about going to the movies in the 1940s and '50s in Wooster, and seeing the old westerns and then meeting for ice cream. We didn't watch a lot of westerns in our house. I didn't have anything against John Wayne; he just didn't have the appeal of Grant, Peck or Lemmon, nor did westerns. His work in John Ford's The Quiet Man is a brilliant film, but watching Wayne drag Maureen O'Hara halfway across Ireland isn't as funny now as it was nearly 60 years ago, nor is the way Rock Hudson talked to Paula Prentiss in Man's Favorite Sport?, Cary Grant and Sophia Loren in Houseboat, or Louis Jordan romancing a seemingly too-young Leslie Caron in Gigi.
If anything, today, what I missed out on as a child, was the rich ethnic diversity we have that didn't make it to mainstream cinema. Sure, Sidney Poitier, Sammy Davis and Harry Belafonte made classics, but, save Rita Moreno, there were few Latino stars, and African-American women were sorely underrepresented. To think what wealth of diverse talent was missed in those films is sad, given the incredible direction and ground-breaking cinematic style they had.
I think for the most part, the appeal of those films to a young adolescent girl was that everything would be OK in the end. That time in my life was turbulent, and the "idea" world of the past seemed calming. In reality, those who lived through the 1930s, '40s and '50s know it wasn't as easy as it looked. Clark Gable, Claudette Colbert, Hope, Crosby and Lamour were escapes for hard times and tough changes in America back then. So few women, save Kathryn Hepburn, Kelly, Ingrid Bergman, Audrey Hepburn, Julie Andrews and Marilyn Monroe, could carry a film. This, I feel, was no fault of an actress, but it was the way scripts were written and what sold movie tickets.
My friends thought I was a bit weird to like the old movies. I'd go see the new ones with them on Friday or Saturday nights. To look back in nostalgia at those films, some were classics, while many, just like the ones my mom saw on Saturday afternoons in Wooster, were not. Watching To Catch a Thief, and marveling at the genius of Hitchcock, the excellent dialog, and the stunning scenery, it is kind of sad to think of how the world has changed. Grace Kelly died on those very same roads in Monaco not 30 years later, and her aging son has tried to recreate some of the glamour and magic of the past.
I put To Catch a Thief away the other night, and looked for a moment at my Rock Hudson/Doris Day collection, then walked away. For now, a little nostalgia goes a long way.