I’m pretty sure I saw 1951’s Captain Horatio Hornblower on television when I was a kid but hadn’t seen it since.  It’s a pretty entertaining film, though some aspects haven’t aged well.  Luckily, the story and performances of the leads keep your interest, even when something not culturally appropriate today hits the screen.  The film takes elements from three of the Hornblower novels by C.S. Forester- The Happy Return, Ship of the Line, and Flying Colours, giving the movie a bit of an episodic feel.  We begin with Gregory Peck’s Hornblower and his crew having traveled to the western coast of Central America to arm a local despot who has agreed to align his kingdom with the English against the Spanish, who the English are at war with.  Things go a little sideways when Hornblower is informed, a little too late, that the English are now teaming up with Spain against France, ruled by Napoleon.  At that time, he is also forced to bring a woman aboard who has been evacuated from Panama who turns out to be the fiancé of another big wig in his majesty’s navy.  After returning to England Hornblower and his crew are sent to join the fight with France.  After a great battle Hornblower and his crew are captured.  He and a couple of his compatriots are sent to Paris for trial.  They escape and wind up posing as Dutch officers to find their way home again.

      I’ve known about the movie A Guy Named Joe since, at least, 1989 when Steven Spielberg’s updated remake “Always” was released. I’ve been wanting to see the original film since then but never really got around to it. I finally did and enjoyed myself. Starring Spencer Tracy, Irene Dunne, and Van Johnson, A Guy Named Joe tells the story of an Army Air Corp pilot in World War II who dies on a mission and then put to work in the afterlife as a sort of guardian angel/flight instructor to young pilots in training. Only the young man he is paired with begins a relationship with the dead pilot’s girl.

     So, here’s a holiday set film I had not even heard of…1952’s The Holly and the Ivy.  A London Film Production, directed by George More O’Ferrall and starring Ralph Richardson and a young Denholm Elliott.  The Holly and the Ivy was first produced as a play by Wynyard Browne in 1950 and mostly unfolds over about a 24-hour period as an English clergyman’s family arrives home for the holiday and secrets and resentments all come to light.  The film certainly feels like a play.  There are a few scenes at the beginning introducing some of the family members as they set out for the Reverand’s home in the English countryside that I believe were written for the movie.  Once the action moves to the homestead it feels like very much like a stage play.

     Buzz Aldrin was the second man to step foot on the moon. K2 is the second tallest mountain in the world. Many may know that already, but even more people know that Neil Armstrong was the first man to step foot on the moon and that Everest is the tallest mountain. I’d hazard to guess that the majority of Americans, if asked, know that Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was the first animated feature film. How many would know the second animated feature film? Not many. Well, I’m here to tell you, or remind you, that it was Paramount Pictures and Producer Max Fleischer’s (already well known for the Betty Boop and Popeye animated shorts) Gulliver’s Travels in 1939. Two years after Snow White premiered.

     1935’s The Raven was one of, I believe, four movies Universal made starring Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff in the mid-30’s.  Excluding any of the Universal Monster films.  The title “The Raven” is a bit of a stretch as the only connection between Edgar Allan Poe’s poem and the movie’s story is the use of the poem a couple of times and Lugosi’s character being a fan of Poe’s who owns a stuffed raven.  This is a Universal horror film that really wants to be good, but has a few issues getting over the finish line.  None of those issues being the performance of Lugosi.  He is just how you want him to be, only kind of crazy.

     A businessman is murdered in his locked home office.  After a few months, the police, having found no leads, abandon the case.  The victim’s daughter decides to seek out famous sleuth Charlie Chan to solve the case.  This is the basic plot of Charlie Chan in The Chinese Cat starring Sydney Toler as the Chinese detective.  This time out he’s helped by his #3 son, Tommy, and Cabbie Birmingham Brown. 

     The Grapes of Wrath is one of those films I know I saw in my youth but most of the details had long since been wiped from my mind. Other than the iconic moments you might see in retrospective documentaries on classic films. So this was basically like seeing it for the first time for me. Directed by John Ford and starring Henry Fonda it tells the story of the Joad family. Sharecroppers who, due to the one/two punch of the great depression and the Dust Bowl, are forced off their homestead. They load up their 1926 Hudson truck with all their earthly belongings and family and head to California with the promised availability of good work for good pay. Much of the film is the road trip but when they reach California, of course, all is not as was promised on a printed handbill they clutch in their desperate hands.

     1938’s The Adventures of Robin Hood starring Errol Flynn is my favorite movie of all time and I’ve seen a lot of Robin Hood films over the years. None have lived up to that 1938 classic. Those made in the past 30 years have been downright terrible. I’ve known about the silent Douglas Fairbanks version for a long time but never had the chance to see it. I now seen it (at least a version of it) and found it to be half of a very entertaining movie. It takes an hour for “The Earl of Huntingdon” to take up the moniker of Robin Hood, who steals from the rich and gives to the poor.

     A Face in the Crowd is another of those movies that I heard was great most of my life but I just never got around to actually seeing for myself. I’m glad to say that I rectified that situation and sat down to finally see it for myself. It lived up to it’s reputation. This film is great.

     1951’s The Harlem Globetrotters film is one of those pieces that happen to have a collision of two pop-culture icons before they really hit.  This film, obviously, features the Globetrotters, who had existed since the mid 1920’s, but were a little over a decade from their height of popularity.  It also features the beautiful triple-threat performer Dorothy Dandridge, three years before she emerged in the popular culture with her star making role as the title character in Carmen Jones.  It brings to mind an episode of the one season Burt Reynolds’ starring cop show- Dan August I saw not long ago from 1971, which featured both Harrison Ford and Billie Dee Williams as guest stars.  Before either one had become famous and a decade before appearing together in The Empire Strikes Back.

     Michael Curtiz is one of my favorite directors and considered one of the best directors of the golden age of Hollywood. This is the guy who directed two of my favorite films of all time-- The Adventures of Robin Hood and Casablanca, pretty much universally considered one of the best films of all time. Watching Passage to Marseille I got the feeling that Warner Brothers was looking to recreate the magic of Casablanca by putting together much of the cast and crew of that film for this one. In addition to Curtiz, Owen Marks as Editor, Music by Max Steiner, Art Direction by Carl Jules Weyl, along with Humphrey Bogart, Claude Rains, Sydney Greenstreet, and Peter Lorre in the cast, all worked on Casablanca. Curtiz did make two films between Casablanca and Passage to Marseille both pretty much propaganda films, one of which presented Russian Communism in a good light. Keep in mind this was the height of World War II and the Russians were our allies. Aaaaanyway. Passage to Marseille tells the story of five escaped prisoners from a penal colony in French Guina who go on to become part of the “Free French Air Squadron”.

     It’s not often I come across a movie with a Christmas connection that I had not even heard of. Especially one released in the 1940’s, but I came across Christmas Eve by chance on a streaming service and decided to check it out. The cast boasts George Raft, Randolph Scott, and Joan Blondell, how did I miss this?? The answer is that it’s not very good so it didn’t get the TV play that other more “classic’ films did.