The Girl from Manhattan

The first reviewer has done a fine job of summarizing the film. What remains to be said, however, is that the film is a stinker. The script is particularly awful. It was designed to appeal to small town folks, apparently, and focuses upon homey matters such as the loss of a boarding house by a wicked businessman. Lamour and Montgomery are so wholesome and giggly you want to wretch. Christians are, as usual, cast as bigoted and gossipy. But how about Charles Laughton as a bishop. (What church? Methodist?) Hugh Herbert is completely wasted. The jokes are extremely lame. And 34-year-old Dorothy as a top high fashion model in New York is, well, ridiculous. George Montgomery should have stuck with Westerns, although he does his very best with his lame lines. A company on e-Bay is selling this film right now, which is how I came to see it. Money totally wasted.

I haven't seen the film since 1948 and the only thing I remember is the "mink coat/synthetic mink coat" dialog between Dorothy and Charles Laughton: The Bishop, eying the coat, asks..."has it suddenly turned cold out"? Carol, wearing the mink, explains that she drove in with her convertible top down but realizes instantly that the suspicious, curmudgeonly old Bishop KNOWS how beautiful New York models GET mink coats, offers that it isn't real mink, but synthetic and given to her for modeling it. Carol departs; The Bishop picks up the telephone and dials a number. "Fred... this is the Bishop..... Is there such a thing as synthetic mink"? (scoffingly--Fred you're going to think I'm daft for even asking a question to which I already know the answer) We don't hear the reply but Laughton's reflective face, voice and manner make the movie for me. Sure it is a knock-off on the popularity of "Going my way" but when has Hollywood ever failed to cash in on a good thing and Laughton, here, is as memorable as Orson Welles working in other peoples' less than stellar films. I will suggest to TCM that they run the film so I can see it again.

The Girl from Manhattan (1948)

I feel like an ogre saying this is a goodie-goodie movie, and that is just a bore. It isn't bad deep down, not in any one way, and it moves along reasonably, the acting fine if unexciting, the filming solid if routine. But none of it is exceptional, even the leading role played by the title character, the super model of 1947 (in the movie): Dorothy Lamour. Charles Laughton as the bishop is impeccable but he's purely secondary.

What holds it back most is just the story, about some people who are misfits and yet lovable in their quirks, and who are facing eviction from their old boarding house. The local church, of all things, wants the land where they live and a local real estate bad guy is orchestrating the eviction. All of this has shades of two Frank Capra movies, "It's a Wonderful Life" (with the community pulling together to save a good, selfless man and his house) and the rather zany "You Can't Take It with You" (with a nutty family all living together being nutty and oblivious to the real world). But the writing here is neither impassioned enough, nor funny enough, nor just plain original and warm enough to rise above. It trods along dutifully.

The main character beside Lamour is a man who seems to have the poise and good looks to take command of his leading role but he is just lifeless on screen, and that's George Montgomery. I don't think even Jimmy Stewart (who was in both the Capra movies, by coincidence) could have lifted up this whole affair, but you can picture a much more moving and convincing and entertaining movie with him in Montgomery's place.

Of course, we know whose side we are on. The story of these good people being threatened by greed makes you root for them against the church meanies (shades of "The Bishop's Wife" also appears in this aspect). But I had to keep consciously trying to get involved, which isn't how a movie should work. I wanted to like it. Even the dramatic turning point toward the end is dull as old bread, in the writing and the delivery. The director, Alfred E. Green, is known for quantity over quality, and is really a 1930s director, which might say something about his approach in filming as well as subject matter. Though he helped Bette Davis launch her career in 1935, by 1948 he was at the end of his career in films. It's nothing much, enjoyable if you are open to something sweet and plain.

Back in 1987 Charles Laughton's biographer Simon Callow cited this sub-Capra fluff as the Laughton film absolutely nobody had ever seen. Talking Pictures has once again come to the rescue and one can now see exactly why it resides in such obscurity.

Although named for Dorothy Lamour's character the real star is George Montgomery as a virile former sportsman turned clergyman, whom Laughton sagely advises to "Try for that touchdown" when Montgomery comes to the aid of little man Ernest Truex threatened with foreclosure.

Ironically the villain of the piece is in cahoots with a bigger, flashier church; a lesson today's evangelicals could learn from.

The edges of this movie are tolerable. You have some fine, easily recognized actors doing some amusing bits, including Charles Laughton, Hugh Herbert, and George Chandler. The characters in the boarding house, eccentric misfits, are sweet and amusing.

The problem is the center of the movie. Why would anybody put Dorothy Lamour, one of the sexiest and most beautiful women in the world in 1948, in a movie where her leading man is a priest? Lamour is stripped of all sexiness and there's not a hint of desire in any of her scenes with George Montgomery (Rev. Tom Walker). The only emotions that she's allowed to display next to the priest is some nostalgia for their youthful friendship and a bit of anger that he doesn't help her to save her uncle's boarding house.

What should have been the center of the movie, Lamour seducing the new priest from his vows, gets sublimated into the priest trying to decide if he can be as good a priest as his dead father.

The movie is simply annoying most of the time. The sets, costumes, direction and editing are on the level of a bad, cheap, 1950's television episode. I kept checking how much time was left every five minutes.

George Montgomery, Dorothy Lamour and Charles Laughton fans might want to sit through it for the sake of cinematic completeness. Everyone else will have a difficult time making it to the end.