Confidentially Connie

According to IMDB, "Confidentially Connie" lost a ton of money for MGM and I can understand why...the story was just plain strange. Not so much bad as weird and hard to imagine WHY they'd do a story like this! Apparently, some of the IMDB reviewers REALLY hated it. All I know is that it was a pleasant and weird time-passer.

The film begins back East. Joe Bedloe (Van Johnson) is a professor at a small college where they seem to pay their faculty very, very little...so little that his wife Connie (Janet Leigh) has to make a lot of cutbacks. One cutback is meat...something they've learned to do without. But when Joe's dad, Opie (Louis Calhern) visits, he's shocked...and worried because Connie is pregnant and he KNOWS women need lots and lots of meat when they are pregnant! So, he conspires with Connie and the local butcher to provide meat at half price. But when the other professors families learn that the Bedloes are getting a great deal on meat, Opie is forced to pay for EVERYONE'S discount meat...otherwise Joe will find out about his father's interfering. To me, however, I just thought Joe was a jerk and should have been grateful for the help.

Was there some sort of meat crisis of 1953?? I was very confused by the film and its notion that many folks couldn't afford meat back in the day. Regardless, the idea of Opie giving his daughter-in-law his meat is a strange notion in a film. Not bad...just odd overall...mostly because the cast did a nice job with the thin material they were given.

Van johnson, janet leigh. Gene AND kathleen lockhart! Joe and connie are expecting a baby. He's a teacher, not making so much, but that's okay with connie. But now that there's a baby on the way, she suddenly decides joe should go back and work on the family farm, for the money. Apparently, in those days, there was good money in farming! Will joe's dad help him get a promotion at the school, or will he sabotage joe's chances, just to get him to come work on the ranch? It's okay.... directed by ed buzzell. Had made two films with the marx brothers! And two with van johnson. An early-ish role for leigh, eight years before psycho.

The dated "Confidentially Connie" represents the era when people viewed meat as one of the healthiest foods, and also portrays a nuclear family (husband's the breadwinner, wife stays home and cooks). I think that the movie wants to see itself as a satire on the desire for success at any cost, but it comes across as a "Leave It to Beaver"-style story. True, the price war was funny, but now that we know that red meat causes heart disease and colon cancer (from which the carnivorous John Wayne probably would have died had he not smoked himself to death).

Basically, it's a hokey movie. And personally, having been to Texas but never Maine, I can say that I'd never trade Maine for Texas.

PS: Hayden Rorke, who played Simmonds, is best known as Dr. Bellows on "I Dream of Jeannie".

I don't care for the leads but I am a fan of each of the supporting cast. I figured they would at least have a few good scenes. Not at all.

It is the same tired whine about teachers wanting more money. The twist is Janet Leigh is obsessed with meat to the point of it being vulgar. Personally, I think she was sublimating.

I almost always watch a film to the end but I had to turn this one off halfway through.

This is a comedy that is hilariously nutso bad. Van Johnson is Joe Bedloe, a teacher in a small New England college. He's perfectly happy instilling a new generation of American students with an appreciation for the writing of William Shakespeare. His wife Connie, portrayed by Janet Leigh, is expecting their first child and they live in a cute little two-story house. But being a professional intellectual doesn't provide enough money to keep the family table filled with plates of meat. "Haven't seen a rib roast since 1948." The town butcher Emil Spangenberg, played by Walter Slezak, prescribes a dietary regimen for the mother-to-be: "Meat. So I'd have a strong, healthy baby." In this town of meat hungry carnivores, populated by meat junkies, the butcher's role is tantamount to the one provided today by dispensers of medical marijuana.

De-toxing from the red meat craving by going cold turkey is to be avoided at all costs. That's where Joe's father Opie Bedloe comes into the picture. He's of all things a prosperous Texas cattle baron! When he comes to visit the couple he is horrified to learn that his son is such a poor family provider. It's not that this husband can't provide his wife with jewels and furs and lavish vacations. His beef is that Professor Joe can't shower the woman with…beef!

Cultural satire when well done can be a great comedic look at society. When done in this movie it is a ham handed misfire, a plate of baloney adulterated by coy whimsy and artificial ingredients.

I give this a 2 in recognition of what I interpret as scriptwriter's Max Shulman's mockery of the American mindset of entitlement to all the consumer bounties of life. Hip, hip, hooray! It's the American Way!