The Man Who Came to Dinner (1942)

This film is a feast for movie-goers.

The Man Who Came to Dinner serves up a great script from twin brothers Julius Epstein and Philip Epstein (Casablanca, Arsenic and Old Lace) based on a smash Broadway show of the same name.

Director William Keighley (The Fighting 69th, The Adventures of Robin Hood) assembles a delicious cast with Monty Woolley carving out a standout performance as self-centred, caustic author and critic Sheridan Whiteside.

After a fall, the man praised as "the first man of American letters" takes over the house of industrialist Ernest Stanley (Grant Mitchell) and his wife (Billie Burke) and relegates the couple upstairs. Whiteside starts scheming when he learns his secretary Maggie Cutler (Bette Davis) has fallen for a reporter, Bert Jefferson (Richard Travis), from the midwestern town where he was supposed to speak. "I'll pull you out of this stardust," he vows. But Cutler is ready to settle down.

He recruits bombshell actress Lorraine Sheldon (Ann Sheridan) to take the train from sunny Palm Beach to spend Christmas pulling Jefferson away from Cutler. Sheridan's right-hand woman turns to Beverly Carlton (Reginald Gardner) to pull Sheldon off the hunt.

Meanwhile, the Stanleys home is filling up with Christmas gifts from Whiteside's admirers. They include an octopus and four penguins. Whiteside doles out life advice to the couple's two children (Elisabeth Fraser, Russell Arms) that quickly has them packing their bags and leaving home with great enthusiasm.

Woolley is a joy to watch in this film. His barbs and disdainful reproaches towards just about every single person he meets are very funny. George Barbier, making one of his last screen appearances before his death in 1945, shines as Dr. Bradley, a family physician who's terribly keen to have Whiteside read his memoirs about being a small-town doctor.

Jimmy Durante's appearance as Banjo, an old friend of Whiteside's, is a bit much. He's over the top in a film that does quite well handling all kinds of craziness in a low-key way.

Movie fans often hear the phrase, "They don't make 'em like they used to." Darn right. The Man Who Came to Dinner is perfect proof.

RATING: 8/10

FUN FACTS: Billie Burke appeared as Glinda in The Wizard of Oz.

Reginald Gardiner's last credit was as a butler in an episode of The Monkees.

The Man Who Came to Dinner was a career highlight for both Richard Travis (Missile of the Moon, Mesa of Lost Women) and Richard Arms. The latter actor died in 2012 at age 92.

Jimmy Durante narrated the 1970 Christmas special, Frosty the Snowman. He sang the title tune too.

Mary Wickes, along with Monty Woolley, appeared in the show's Broadway production. Contemporary audiences saw her in Sister Act and its sequel in the early 1990s.

Dodge City (1939)

Errol Flynn in a western?

The Hollywood legend is remembered more for his adventures on sea (Captain Blood, The Sea Hawk) than his work with a six-shooter.

But here he is in his first of about a half-dozen westerns.

Dodge City is a keeper complete with everything a fan of the genre would expect - a bumbling sidekick, a fine romance, plenty of action and some good laughs.

The American Civil War is over and the western United States is beginning to be developed. Wade Hatton (Flynn) and his buddies Rusty Hart (Alan Hale) and Tex Baird (Guinn 'Big Boy' Williams) have finished work on a rail line leading to Dodge City, Kansas.

Col. Dodge (Henry O'Neill) appeals to Haddon to stay in the town named in his honour. Hatton declines, opting instead to head further west. His departure doesn't happen before he helps with the arrest of Jeff Surrett (Bruce Cabot). He has hunted buffalo illegally and murdered Indians. Surrett vows revenge.

Hatton opts to return to Dodge City six years later. A young lady who's made the move to the now booming community, Abbie Irving (Olivia de Havilland), has caught his eye. He also gets fed up with the on-going violence in Dodge after youngster Harry Cole (Bobs Watson) gets caught up in a gunfight. The unruly community ("The town that knew no ethics, but cash and killing.") and is ruled by Surrett and his enforcers, especially Yancey (Victor Jory), has a new sheriff with Hatton.

He moves quickly to bring order to the community. Restrictions are put on weapons. Hours of gambling are curtailed. Taxes are introduced. A clash with his old friend Surrett is inevitable. He's now a cattle kingpin earning a $100,000 annually (wonder what that coin is worth now?). The clean-up job is so efficient Tex wants to leave. "I just don't fit in a sissy town like this."

Dodge City, directed by Michael Curtiz (Casablanca, White Christmas) boasts some very fine Technicolor shots of the American west. There's an amazing barroom brawl between old Civil War enemies. Hart has taken a temperance pledge before coming to Dodge City. Watch for the very funny scene when he's tempted to go into Surrett's saloon, opts instead to attend a temperance meeting next door and struggles with his decision.

Flynn looks great and presents Hatton as a soft-talking enforcer who won't put up with any guff in his town. Jory is impressive as Surrett's henchman. Cabot does well too as the chief villian who tries to lure Hatton into an arrangement that can make both men happy. de Havilland is radiant and feisty as Irving, a woman who's reluctant to embrace Hatton's wooing attempts.

Dodge City is a great western with a fine cast. Watch it.

RATING: 9/10

FUN FACTS: Bruce Cabot was in the cast of the original King Kong.

Alan Hale's son, Alan Hale, Jr., was the Skipper in Gilligan's Island.

Angels with Dirty Faces (1938)

It's worth the wait to see one of the most famous screen shots of James Cagney near this film's finale.



His character, Rocky Sullivan (Cagney), faces the death penalty for killing two crime associates followed by a handful of police officers in a last-ditch effort to escape justice.



Watch, and savour, the iconic shot of a defiant Sullivan walking in the shadows towards the electric chair. This is great stuff.



Angels with Dirty Faces is a good, but not great, film. There's no big surprises in this film's plot, but what a cast.

Sullivan and childhood pal Jerry Connolly (Pat O'Brien) followed very different career paths. The pair grew up poor. Both stole, but Connolly only put his hands on things he needed to survive. Sullivan was a little more enterprising.



When an attempted theft of pens from a rail car goes bad, it's Sullivan who ends up in a juvenile detention centre. Connolly escaped police. The stint is the first of several arrests for Sullivan as he gradually gets involved in more serious crimes.



Connolly took a very different career path and became a priest. He's rector of a Catholic parish in his old neighbourhood. Father Jerry and Rocky get re-acquainted when the convict gets released from prison. He rents a room from the girl he pestered as a youngster, Laury Ferguson (Ann Sheridan), now a fine-looking lady. Sullian is interested. Ferguson, not so much.



Sullivan is eager to see his crooked lawyer, James Frazier (Humphrey Bogart), who's holding on to $100,000 of his cash. Hey, this is the Great Depression and that's serious scratch. Frazier, now managing a ritzy nightclub under boss Mac Keefer (George Bancroft), is less-than-pleased to see Sullivan is still alive. He's keen to put Sullivan away for good.



Father Jerry is doing his best to encourage a gang of street toughs to live honest lives and steer clear of crime's allure. But that job is hard to do when Sullivan shows up sporting fine threads and a pocketful of bills. Father Jerry encourages his old friend to be a mentor to the kids. Sullivan is persuaded, somewhat. When Keefer figures out a way to get Sullivan in trouble, it's Rocky who turns to the kids to keep his cash stash safe.



Rocky is back in the big money. Laury, who lost her husband to crime, starts to warm to imagining a life with him. Father Jerry is determined not to be wooed by Sullivan's generous offers of cash help to build a new recreation centre for youth. What good will it do, he reasons, when that site is surrounded by people profiting from crime? Instead, he vows to bring Sullivan and his crowd down.



It's tough to see legendary tough guy Bogart as a cowardly lawyer who mops his brow and begs for his life when he's in danger. But, as film historian Dana Polan notes in a commentary accompanying this 1938 film from Michael Curtiz, he was still being groomed for stardom by Warner Brothers. Casablana, Key Largo and The Treasure of the Sierre Madre would follow.



Cagney is the best thing in this film. He's tough. He's funny. There's still some good in a guy who turned to crime many years before.



RATING: 7.5/10



FUN FACTS: Curtiz would go on to direct Bogart in Casablanca.



Cagney and O'Brien reunited more than 40 years later for Ragtime.

George Bancroft was Curley in John Ford's Stagecoach.

Billy Halop, leader of the Dead End Kids in Angels with Dirty Faces, played recurring character Bert Munson in television's All in the Family.

Frankie Burke made his film debut playing a young Rocky Sullivan. He appeared in 18 films between 1938 and 1941. He died in 1983 at age 67.