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Overlooked: Tight Spot (1955) Featuring Ginger Rogers

This week’s selection is truly an inspired choice; inspired because I just finished watching it on TCM. Tight Spot is a 1955 noir-ish melodrama that stars Ginger Rogers, Brian Keith, Edward G. Robinson and Lorne Greene.

I decided that this is an interesting film to call to your attention because it is yet another one of those non-singing, non-dancing Ginger Rogers roles. In it, she plays a woman who faces the challenge of testifying against a crime kingpin (Lorne Greene) in a federal trial.

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Overall it is a solidly put together film; but not groundbreaking. As I previously mentioned, it is noir-ish in so much as there exists the genre’s easily identifiable seedy, criminal underbelly in the form of Greene’s Benjamin Constain and his cronies who try to “get” to Rogers’ Sherry Conley, but the dramatic tension (for my part  at least) drives the film into the realm of the melodramatic. The best line is reserved for the final line of the film. Won’t spoil it for you here – I simply suggest you take a moment to catch this one when you can.

 

*Be sure to also check out other overlooked/forgotten titles at my colleague Todd Mason’s blog, Sweet Freedom.

 

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Tuesday’s Overlooked: The Major and the Minor (1942)

Today’s pick, The Major and the Minor was only director Billy Wilder’s second Hollywood directorial credit and yet you can see in it some of the trademarks that he would constantly employ as a filmmaker – the combination of witty dialogue, farce and romantic entanglements.

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SYNOPSIS

A young woman tired of life in the big city decides to head back home to the Midwest. The problem is that the fare for the return trip has gone up so the last money she has is not enough for the train passage. Her solution is to disguise herself as a little girl, aged 12. Her presence draws the attention of military officer (Ray Milland), who agrees to chaperone the ‘minor’ safely to her mother in Iowa, under the condition that they first make a detour to a military academy where he works.

Yes, I know – it is TOTALLY unbelievable that Ginger Rogers could pass for a 12 year old, but that is the whole gag after all. In spite of this flight of fancy, I still enjoyed the film mainly because of the silliness of it all. It is also not hurt by the presence of notorious humorist Robert Benchley.

Besides I received a bit of a history lesson in that I learned all about the Maginot Line 😉

In the final analysis, this is yet another one of those classic Hollywood films that I cannot help but watch whenever I see it on my television screen.

Check out other titles on Todd Mason’s blog Sweet Freedom.

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Tuesday’s Overlooked Film: Bachelor Mother

This week I selected another film that takes place in or around the holiday season. Bachelor Mother (1939) starts Ginger Rogers and David Niven is a nice lighthearted romantic comedy and marks one of the first film post-Astaire outing for Rogers.

SYNOPSIS

In a case of mistaken identity, Polly Parrish (Rogers) first sees a stranger leaving a baby on the steps of an orphanage. Fearing for the safety of the abandoned baby, Polly picks it up as the orphanage door opens. Of course she is assumed to be the mother, which gets her her job back as a result of management’s sympathy to her “plight” as an unwed mother.

David Niven is his usual urbane self (with playboy tendencies) and Charles Coburn (as J.B. Merlin) has many scene-stealing moments as his father and owner of the department store at the center of the story.

Let me know if you have seen this film in the comments section below. Also be sure to check out Todd Mason’s blog Sweet Freedom for more overlooked titles.

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