STAMBOUL QUEST: the puppy and the pulchritudinous

1934's STAMBOUL QUEST is not one of MGM's finest productions but it does have two things going for it, and one of them is the deliciously beautiful Myrna Loy.
Made immediately after she had completed the first 'Thin Man' movie and therefore before she had become etched into the public's consciousness as the witty, sophisticated, stylish and distinctly up-market Nora Charles, she plays a character who is brazenly sexual and not above showing a generous amount of skin if it'll advance her cause.

Set in Germany and Turkey in 1915 she plays legendary German counter espionage spy Fraulein Doktor. Recalled to Berlin she's handed her most important assignment - to uncover proof that the Turkish commander of the Dardanelles is passing vital military information to the British. Success could alter the whole course of the war, but her mission is complicated by an ardent American suitor who just won't take no for an answer.
A pre-Warner Brothers leading man George Brent plays the American lothario and does so to the detriment of the picture. He's everything that Loy isn't and not in a good way. Brent's medical student Douglas Beall is an over-excited puppy yapping at the heels of the alluring Fraulein, desperate to get her attention and show him some affection. About the only thing he doesn't do is pee on the carpet. It's very easy to understand what he sees in her but it's much more difficult to comprehend what a woman of her experience finds appealing in him. He doesn't even have the pencil mustache that was to become a Brent trademark at Warner! He's impetuous and immature, professing that he loves her within two hours of meeting her, and proposing marriage a couple of hours later. The Fraulein seduces men for a living and makes it a rule never to fall in love so what is it about Beall that makes her change her mind?
Both as characters and actors Loy and Brent are in different classes. Myrna is poised, self assured, confident and measured while George is all over the shop. Perhaps he was trying too hard because he knew he was too old for the part - he's thirty five attempting to pass for twenty. No wonder the Fraulein's boss, the wonderful Lionel Atwill, finds it hard to believe his most effective asset is losing her edge. Atwill by the way, is the second thing this film has going for it. He was one of that select group of character actors who enhanced any film they appeared in regardless of the script and direction, and both elements are founding wanting here.
Convoluted, clunky and implausible even by 1930s Hollywood standards STAMBOUL QUEST is still worth watching solely for the pleasure of spending 80 minutes in the company of the ravishing Miss Loy.

EVERY GIRL SHOULD BE MARRIED: but should every man be stalked?

There's two ways of reading this movie.
1. It's an incredibly cute rom-com about an incredible cute young lady called Anabel (Betsy Drake) who uses her feminine wiles to land the man of her dreams;
or
2. It's a disturbing tale of an obsessed young woman named Anabel who relentlessly hunts down her prey, stalking the poor man for weeks and bamboozling him into marriage.

In both instances the heroine is painted in a less than flattering light. In the former she's a love-sick simpleton whose only goal in life is to land a husband, while in the latter she's become unhinged under the weight of society's pressure to conform. She's been brainwashed into believing a woman isn't whole without her husband and has become manic in her efforts to find one.
In 1948, when EVERY GIRL SHOULD BE MARRIED was originally released it's unlikely there would have been many who would have agreed with the latter interpretation. The film's lighthearted title reflected a popularly held sentiment, particularly among the millions of men who'd recently returned from the war and were eager to reclaim the jobs that had been taken over by women during their absence. 
60 years ago Anabel's behaviour may have been viewed as rather over-enthusiastic but, after all, she is only acting on her biological urges. The pretty little thing is to be admired for demonstrating some initiative in landing her man who obviously doesn't know what's good for him..  
The poor sap who doesn't stand a chance is Dr Madison W. Brown, a noted baby doctor who's too busy enjoying his bachelor lifestyle to realise it's not what he wants. As played by Cary Grant, Dr Brown is something of a mystery. Resolutely single and initially impervious to Anabel's dubious charms he only starts to succumb when she begins displaying the kind of behaviour which is more normally grounds for the issuance of a restraining order. 
What's particularly frightening is that when she finally reels him in he admits he was onto her all along, and still he wants to marry her. On the basis of no evidence whatsoever he appears to believe that once the ring is on her finger all this obsessive behaviour will simply vanish and he'll have a perfectly contented little wife to come home to everyday. While Dr Brown's imagining Myrna Loy in "The Best Years of Our Lives" I'm thinking the reality's likely to be someone closer to Alex Forrest in "Fatal Attraction."
Some may accuse of me of reading too much into a frivolous piece of Hollywood fluff - and it's not even a particularly good piece of fluff - but mainstream Hollywood was all about maintaining the status quo in the 30s and 40s and made much use of fluff such as this to explore and resolve social issues in a way that disguised their true intent.
In what may have been a case of life or imitating art, or may just have been pure coincidence, Grant and Drake were married a year to the day after the film's release. And they didn't live happily ever after.   

LONELYHEARTS: more hot air than the Hindenburg

What a cast! - Montgomery Clift, Myrna Loy and Robert Ryan - and what a drag! LONELYHEARTS (1958) is so overloaded with grandiloquent, mind-numbingly boring dialogue that it's a real struggle to stay awake for more than twenty minutes at a stretch.
This who-cares? tale of Adam White, an ambitious young journalist whose youthfully innocent (Adam = first man, White = pure, get it?) aspirations are shattered by the cynical reality of his first bigtime newspaper job is a totally yawnfest. It pained me to see three such talented actors drowning in a sea of overly wordy metaphors, allusions and similes. They talk like characters in a really badly written stage play with pretensions to serious "adult" drama (sample; "Has anyone ever tried to figure out how many tears you cry in a lifetime?")
The worst offender is Ryan's verbally vicious newspaper editor. Not once does he actually say what he means, preferring instead to blather on like a man who's swallowed not only a dictionary but also "The Dummy's Guide to Philosophy." No wonder his wife (Loy) has become an alcoholic.
Clift is miscast as the reluctant "Miss Lonelyheart" agony-aunt/uncle columnist. He's wide-eyed enough (possibly the result of the plastic surgery on his face after a bad car smash 18 months earlier) but too old for the part, and his constant twitching is distracting. Presumably Clift's intent is to convey his character's discomfort in his own skin but it comes across like some kind of musclar control disorder.
Windy and pretentious in the extreme,  screenwriter and producer Dore Schary may have believed he was creating high art but the result is totally arse.