cygnus58

"The Lady from Cheyenne" is loosely built around Wyoming's granting of the right to vote to women in 1869-- and if you want a history lesson, this movie isn't the place to look. It isn't accurate, and it isn't even plausible. But it is a pleasant, diverting and harmless film with an attractive comic performance from Loretta Young as a naive but earnest schoolteacher who fights for the cause of suffrage as a means of rescuing her town from corruption. Carole Lombard was the first choice for this role, and Young emulates her fast-paced, breathless delivery, but she captures the character's idealism better than Lombard would have, and she carries the film with her charm. The supporting cast is strong, the sets are convincing and Frank Lloyd, who specialized in period films, directs with a light touch and a properly brisk pace. Nobody's ever going to call it a masterpiece, but it's certainly a pleasant way to pass the time. By the way, the title is misleading; the heroine goes to Cheyenne, but she isn't from Cheyenne.

"Thirteen Hours by Air" is a fun little movie that's quick, surprising, and doesn't overstay its welcome. Mitchell Leisen, an underrated director, is usually associated with screwball comedy or romantic melodrama, and there's a little of each in this film, but it's a pleasant surprise to see that he can handle a brisk thriller as well. Like most movies featuring airplane trips, it includes a hodgepodge of characters involved in separate plots, but they blend together nicely, and the script includes a few neat twists that are bound to surprise anyone expecting the usual cliches. MacMurray and Bennett make an appealing team, ZaSu Pitts is, as usual, a joy, and the various airports are designed in an eye-catching art deco style. It's not a classic, but it's certainly a much better film than I expected, and it deserves to be rescued from whatever deep, dark closet it has been hidden in for too many years.

The title promises a little more than the movie can deliver, but "Turkish Delight" is harmless, light-hearted and fun. Rudolph Schildkraut is interesting casting as the misogynist New York rug dealer Abdul Hassan, who inherits the throne of a small, Middle Eastern principality; after he arrives, with his indispensable niece (Julia Faye), he discovers that he has been marked for oblivion by the murderous, scheming Sultana. May Robson is as stiff as a board in that role, but it works; one look at her and you know that it's useless to appeal to her better nature, because she doesn't have one. The acting is solid, and the titles are often clever, but the plot does tend to get lost towards the end of the movie when our heroes get caught in a crazy chase scene that looks as if it escaped from a Mack Sennett film. Finding this film will be difficult, and it isn't a masterpiece by any means, but if you do manage to catch it, it's a reasonably pleasant experience.