L'extravagant Mr Cory

Coming out as it did right before Tony Curtis's breakthrough role as a serious actor in Sweet Smell Of Success was this overlooked drama Mister Cory where Curtis plays a man on the make just like Sidney Falco in Sweet Smell Of Success. The only difference is that Mister Cory is redeemed somewhat in the final fadeout. It would not surprise me that Burt Lancaster who produced as well as starred in Sweet Smell Of Success cast Curtis after seeing this.

In the title role of Mister Cory, Curtis plays a young hustler on the make who gets a job as a busboy in a posh resort on the Lake Michigan shore. He's got both a talent for gambling and womanizing and starts romancing Lake Shore Drive princess Martha Hyer who has rich and weak William Reynolds eating out of her hand. For a context to put her relationship with Curtis in, Hyer was taking notes from Norma Shearer in A Free Soul. Her younger sister is Kathryn Crosby who really likes Curtis, but his sites are set higher on Hyer.

But it's his gambling prowess that comes to the attention of Charles Bickford who takes Curtis on as a protégé and he becomes a regular Cincinnati Kid. Later they go into partnership with Russ Morgan in a posh gambling club and all the plot elements congeal right there.

Russ Morgan is indeed Russ Morgan the famous swing band leader and I was surprised at the good performance he turned in. He did not pick up an instrument or baton and I was surprised what a good acting performance he turned in in a role that had nothing to do with music.

Henry Daniell is also in the cast as the head of the resort where Curtis gets his job and he plays the usual Daniell part and eventually has to fire Tony. When it comes to opening his club he hires Daniell to run the non-gambling part of it. Later on during the climax of the film we learn that the cold and haughty Daniell that we all know has a criminal record of his own.

I'm sorry that this film is not out in any format. A must for fans of Tony Curtis.

Sorry, but you are not going to get a standard review. The real star of this movie for me was Huntington Lake, which is high in the Sierras above Fresno California. As a sailor, Huntington is famous for it's consistently windy conditions that you can set your watch by. Every day at 10am, the lake is glassy calm. By 11am however, it is really blowing. Quite a bit of the movie uses the lake as a stand in for its presumed location in Wisconsin. I have sailed a lot of races on that lake and it is funny to observe that, in the background of each scene, you can clearly see that, even back in 1957, the wind is always absolutely cranking. Very amusing were the scenes which cut back and forth between the lake, where the wind is howling creating the usual Huntington Lake chop, and the boat in which they are sitting, which is clearly in a glassy calm swimming pool. It is actually not bad for a film shot in the 1950's. In a fun plot reversal, Tony hires the guy who was so hard on him as a bellboy, to work for him when he ends up with his own resort. But, for anybody who has ever raced on Huntington Lake, this movie is a must see!!!

"Mister Cory" is a fast-moving and very engaging Cinemascope movie about a slick go-getter who cuts corners to get to the top. As played by Tony Curtis, Mister Cory - we never learn his Christian name - is charming and amusing, and the audience never dislikes him.

Mister Cory leaves his Chicago slum home and starts work as a busboy in a lake-side holiday resort for the very rich. Quickly he makes extra money by various games of chance. When he sees the elegant and beautiful Abigail Vollard (Martha Hyer) he decides he must have her, even though he is warned that she is a practised heart-breaker. Cory pretends to Abby that he is a rich guest at the resort, but his tactics come to nothing when a jealous colleague lets Abby know that Cory works in the kitchen. Cory leaves and becomes a small-time professional gambler. He teams up with Jeremiah Caldwell (Charles Bickford) who introduces him to big-league gambling. (N. B. "Mister Cory was made a few years before "The Hustler" which had the same premise.) They open up their own gambling house and invite Abby and her fiancé. Mister Cory and Abby re-start their liaison with dramatic consequences.

"Mister Cory" is an early Blake Edwards movie, and incorporates his usual fascination with the difference between appearance and reality. That difference is obvious with Cory but is much more real and important with Abby. This was one of the best parts Martha Hyer ever had, and she plays her role well, bringing out both the sexual hypocrisy and the smooth good manners of a well brought-up beauty from a privileged background. Hair stylist Joan St. Oegger and cinematographer Russell Metty made Martha Hyer very glamorous indeed, and the audience has no difficulty accepting that all men find Abby irresistible.

Other supporting players give good performances. Charles Bickford was always a strong screen presence and is so in "Mister Cory". Kathryn Grant is extremely likable as Abby's boisterous younger sister, and the remarkably handsome William Reynolds does well as Abby's rich and duped fiancé. Henry Daniell almost steals the movie playing the prim and snobbish resort manager.

The IMDb incorrectly credits the music to Henry Mancini. As Mancini himself carefully explained in his autobiography, it was the penny-pinching policy at Universal-International in the mid-fifties not to write new music for a movie, but instead to re-use music from previous Universal films. Mancini writes about "Mister Cory": "I didn't write the score for that picture, but as often happened when they needed music in a pop vein, I had been brought in for some source cues."

For some reason, "Mister Cory" is rarely screened today, even on television. An enhanced widescreen DVD would be very welcome.

UPDATE 2012: Mister Cory has now been released on DVD in Spain under the title "El Temible Mister Cory" Although in anamorphic widescreen, the picture quality is mediocre.

Unfortunately the DVD I just purchased from Amazon does NOT have this film as it was made to be in CinemaScope. It is on standard screen and loses so much of the intention the Director, Blake Edwards made it to be.

As for Tony Curtis he is very good in his role and I am looking forward to viewing the other 9 dvds I purchased in the same box set however I will wait to see how many more are in their original format. With today's big screen TVs I cannot understand while a movie has to be ruined by not allowing us to se it in its original format.

Finally found a copy of it - a $5 download. Hadn't seen it in years so was fun to finally see it last evening. All of the major "players" are fabulous - Tony's hair is to die for - but I particularly enjoyed Henry Daniell as Tony's boss - and then employee - in what must have been one of his last roles. Kathryn Grant Crosby was almost too good to be true - but fun (and you can definitely see the resemblance to her daughter Mary). The dress/coat ensemble she wore to the opening of Cory's club was fabulous - classic '50s evening wear. I just read that the locale of the Wisconsin beach was really California , which was sort of a disappointment. But just today I crossed "South Sangamon Street" while doing errands. Martha Hyer's beauty precedes her - fun little fact: my mother was president of the Pi Beta Phi house at NU when Martha - and Patricia Neal - pledged. Ms. Hyer was a brunette/redhead in those days, from sorority pics I've seen. My mother recalled that she was indeed a beauty!