La grande dame et le mauvais garçon

My angel Peggy Ann Garner was, is and always will be the greatest actress who ever lived. Her immortal performance in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn will live forever, but her performance in Nob Hill ranks right along side Tree. Peggy Ann's cute little Irish accent will never be forgotten. Even George Raft knew how great Peggy Ann was when he co-starred with her in Nob Hill. This movie is very hard to find today- It is never shown on television but it can be found on Ebay if you are lucky. I love Peggy Ann Garner and she will always be my little angel! Peggy Ann is not with us anymore having died on Tuesday, October 16,1984 but she will always live in my heart through her great performances.

GOD BLESS YOU,SWEETHEART!

Except for a contract obligation, I don't know why Joan Bennett would have taken her part in Nob Hill. Perhaps she thought she had signed on as the female lead, or perhaps they changed the screenplay after she had agreed to participate. Joan isn't given anything to do except be very forward for the time period (aka slutty) and snobbish. Vivien Blaine is the heroine of the story from page one. She is the one who loves George Raft unconditionally even when the entire town turns against him, she takes Peggy Ann under her wing, and she warns George that the people he thinks are his friends are really trying to use him for political gain. If you don't like Vivien, you will not like this movie.

Peggy Ann Garner is very cute, with as many endearing expressions as the screenplay calls for. She's an Irish orphan who comes to San Francisco with a note around her neck hoping to meet her uncle. She loves everything about America, the beautiful clothes, scenery, and houses; it isn't long before George's heart melts. He wants to give her everything, even a plot of land on Nob Hill. But with deep class distinction, it might not be possible.

I liked seeing George in a different, sweeter role that was different from his usual gangster persona. The costumes, filmed in Technicolor, are beautiful, and the heart of the story is a timeless one. But I'm much more of a Joan Bennett fan than a Vivien Blaine fan, so I knew I'd be disappointed.

Nob Hill (1945) was one of three films released in 1945 that featured Peggy Ann Garner, one of the best - if not the best - child actors ever to grace the screen.

George Raft shares the spotlight with Garner but deservedly gets top billing. He was a big name at the time and the story centers around his character a bit more than Garner's. Also featured are two very pretty women: Vivian Blaine and Joan Bennett. Too bad Blaine didn't appear in many films. She would have been well-known.

The biggest "too bad," however, is that this movie has never been available on VHS or DVD. It should get the DVD treatment if for no other reason that the gorgeous Technicolor. This is one of the prettiest classic films ever, believe me!

If you enjoyed Miss Garner in her famous role as "Francie" in "A Tree Grows In Brooklyn," you'll like her here, too. She's even more likable and sweeter in this film, start-to-finish, and does a pretty fair job with an Irish accent.

Actually, everybody in this sugary-sweet film is likable, even tough--guy Raft. Blaine supplies the song-and-dance routines and handles them well. There are almost a handful of them so some consider this a musical. I thought it was more of a drama. The story has a good mix of drama, romance, music and comedy. Since it's a Raft film, there are even a few punches thrown.

The color and the nice feel-good people and storyline are what make this film worth watching......and owning, if someone would please put this on DVD!

This Technicolor semi-musical seems an odd assignment for Henry Hathaway, but perhaps it's his direction that keeps the tough side of San Francisco tough even with showgirls, rich dames and little girls traipsing around. Hathaway was one of the few directors who understood - from experience on earlier great films with him - how effective a broken George Raft could be, and when that moment comes in this film it is quietly Raft's best scene. Raft plays Tony Angelo, owner of a popular saloon in turn-of-the-century San Francisco, a saloon that is more of a three-ring circus with shows, boxing matches and drinking going on simultaneously. He's got an undefined romance with his star showgirl Sally Templeton (young Vivian Blaine) and his political opinions carry a lot of weight in that rough part of town. In walks little Irish girl Katie (Peggy Ann Garner) expecting to meet her uncle, only to find he has died. Tony, who was his boss, agrees to take her in for a couple of months until the next boat leaves for Ireland. She introduces him to Miss Carruthers (Joan Bennett), who lives on Nob Hill. Her brother Lash Carruthers is running for office, and brother and sister both realize working up a relationship with Tony could bring in much-needed votes from the lower part of town. Though knowing full well that those down below don't mix with those on the hill, Tony is drawn into the propaganda of her sweet talk. In this sense, he is as naive as Katie as to their true intentions, and he alienates his fellow bar owners with his new political stand. Only after the election does he get a reality check. Strange to say, but parallels can be drawn between Tony and Shakespeare's Proteus in "The Two Gentlemen of Verona." One look at a beautiful new girl and he seems to completely forget about his true love down the hill. And when he is ultimately rejected he becomes disturbingly aggressive. Blaine, who has all the musical numbers, is a lovely entertainer but one would not guess from this role what marvelous comic chops she had. That would really come to the fore years later in "Guys and Dolls," which also featured B.S. Pulley, who plays a barman in "Nob Hill." (Another link to that film is the fact that the production design was fashioned after the Raft trademark gangster style, coin-flipping and all -- too bad he wasn't in it.) Garner was one of the true great child actors, always earnest and natural even when putting on an Irish accent. She's the heart of the story, always thinking the best of the grownups around her. Bennett (who starred with Raft 10 years earlier in the screwball comedy "She Couldn't Take It") has a rather thankless part, an admittedly split personality who does not seem to know what she really wants. There is nothing particularly special about this film. But to see this particular mix of actors has historical interest, and it would be nice to see it available on DVD.

Nob Hill is a significant milestone in the career of George Raft. This film marks the last time he would be starring in a A film product. From now on his films would be B films in which he would star or they would be A products like Some Like It Hot where he was in the supporting cast. Not a milestone I'm sure Raft counted with any kind of relish.

In the George Raft biography by James Parrish, Raft's co-star Joan Bennett wrote the forward and this film marked the fourth and last time she was in a film with him. Raft was not happy making this film and did walk off the set for a short time. He felt that 20th Century Fox was building up Vivian Blaine and Peggy Ann Garner at the expense of him and Joan Bennett. She was inclined to be more philosophical than he about the vagaries of the film business. As we know he did come back and finish the movie.

Raft plays the owner of one of the more upscale clubs on the Barbary Coast at the turn of the last century and Vivian Blaine is his chief attraction. One day into his life comes young Peggy Ann Garner who is fresh from Ireland because her uncle sent for her, her uncle being a bartender at Raft's joint. But in the meantime he's passed on.

Nevertheless Garner's one Irish charmer and Raft decides he'll take care of her as does Blaine.

Raft has ambitions however to get beyond the Barbary Coast and crash the genteel society on Nob Hill which Blaine calls Snob Hill. Fueling those ambitions is Joan Bennett with her brother Edgar Barrier running for District Attorney.

His romantic and political entanglements get kind of mixed and his fellow entertainment barons on the Barbary Coast aren't happy with Raft's new friends. How Raft resolves all these personal and political problems is the basis for Nob Hill.

If Raft was worried about who was being showcased, he was right. Peggy Ann Garner steals this film right out from under her adult co-stars. Maybe if Vivian Blaine had gotten some memorable songs from the team of Jimmy McHugh and Harold Adamson she might have been better served by the film as well.

I've a feeling this film might very well have been intended for Betty Grable to co-star with Raft. She and Raft were an item back in the day before she married Harry James, maybe Darryl Zanuck thought he could have gotten some box office mileage. In any event Grable didn't do Nob Hill, not that her career would have been helped or hurt had she been in the cast.

Joan Bennett's forward says that at all times George Raft was a classy gentleman and a terrific dancer. She recalled that many times she and husband Walter Wanger were out on the town and if Raft was in the same club, she inevitably got to dance with him.

Nob Hill is a decent enough film that doesn't quite measure up to some of the other nostalgic type films that 20th Century Fox was putting out then that usually starred Betty Grable or Alice Faye. Still it's not bad and a must for fans of the winsome Peggy Ann Garner.