Wonderland Burlesque's Let's All Go To The Movies: Truly Gifted, Part I

Wonderland Burlesque's Let's All Go To The Movies:

Truly Gifted, Part I

Yes, the gift-giving season is fast approaching, so what better time to explore films with the word right in the title?

For Part I of this themed post, we'll concentrate on films made for the big screen, ranging from 1917 to 1984. They include a number of genres and styles with just enough dirt, gossip and hearsay to keep things mighty interesting - including a couple of LGBTQ+ items.

Ah, yes... innuendo, rumor and tantalizing facts... the gifts that keep giving!

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Gift O' Gab

(1917)

(Born with a tongue so glib a young wannabe inventor sells his idea for a tunneling machine to a large manufacturing firm. When the idea fails, the company, so taken with the young man, hire him on as a salesman. This leads to a series of adventures during which he wins the heart and hand of former college girlfriend. Their wedding takes place in a hospital where the couple meet accidentally as patients.)

(This silent comedy starred Jack Gardner, Helen Ferguson and John Cossar. Ferguson began her career at the age of 12 as a stunt girl. She soon starred in a number of westerns, comedies and serials. However, her real impact on the industry began when she retired from acting in 1933 to pursue a career as a P.R. counselor; she handled big names like Henry Fonda, Barbara Stanwyck, Robert Taylor and Loretta Young. She was considered one of the most powerful 'suppress agents' in the history of Hollywood.)

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The Gift Girl

(1917)

(A child is orphaned when her parents are killed by wild animals during a trip to the Middle East. A wealthy man who happens on the scene rescues the little girl and raises her as his own.  She grows to become a beautiful woman and her adoptive father brokers an arranged marriage to a wealthy rug merchant. However, the young woman is not attracted to her future husband and refuses to marry him. She flees to Paris, where she finds herself penniless and alone. A wealthy nobleman takes pity on the girl and hires her on as domestic help and as a companion for his son. The son soon falls in love with her and wishes to marry, much to the chagrin of his father, who tells him their kind do not marry domestic help. However, love wins out in the end and the two marry.)

(Based on Harry R. Durant's play, Marcel's Birthday Party, this silent comedy stars Louise Lovely, Emory Johnson and Rupert Julian. Lovely was an Australian film actress of Swiss-Italian descent and is credited by film historians as the first Australian actress to have a successful career in Hollywood. She appeared in 50 American films and ten in Australia. Her first husband, actor Wilton Welch, was gay, though the two remained together for 16 years.)

 

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(A wealthy French playboy is irresistible to women, but is in love with none. Once he becomes instantly smitten with an American woman, he has great difficulty proving to her and her father that he truly loves her. She eventually comes to believe that his love is true, however, the father needs him to prove it; he demands the playboy stay away from his daughter and all other women for a period of six months! The girl's father also demands that he see a doctor and get a clean bill of health. The doc has bad news for our little lover - his heart is so weak, the excitement of a single kiss could prove fatal. When news travels, one by one, three of his girlfriends show up on his doorstep insisting that they be at his bedside in order to nurse him back to health. When all three converge on the bedroom at the same time and a jealous husband with a gun appears? Hilarity ensues.)

(Based on the play The Devil Was Sick by Jane Hintonis, this romantic musical comedy directed by Michael Curtiz was originally completed as a musical film; however, because audiences at that time disliked musicals - all the songs were cut for the American rollout. That said, the film, with musical numbers intact, was released in other countries. Sadly, the only known print of the film is the American version, minus the musical numbers.)

God's Gift to Women

(1931)

(Joan Blondell, one of my favorites, stars in the film, which also features silent screen great Louise Brooks playing one of the three girlfriends. Brooks, who had all of Europe at her feet thanks to a pair of films by Austria's G.W. Pabst - Diary Of A Lost Girl and Pandora's Box, enjoyed her own notoriety - she even had a one-night stand with Greta Garbo. However, the former flapper quickly grew tired of the landscape and returned to Hollywood, where she was immediately relegated to second tier roles - like the role she plays in God's Gift To Women. After turning down a role which helped make Jean Harlow a star, Brook's own career was pretty much over. In turn she lost all her money and her rich friends, eventually finding work as an escort in New York. Drinking heavily, she became a total recluse, almost dying in obscurity. Fortunately for her, in 1955, noted film historian Henri Langlois 'rediscovered' her work. He proclaimed: "There is no Garbo! There is no Dietrich! There is only Louise Brooks!" In a strange turn of events, she went on to become a renowned film historian whose writings, film work and iconic look continue to inspire others to this day.)

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Gift of Gab

1934

(An all-star black & white romantic comedy released by Universal Pictures starring Edmund Lowe as a man who can sell anyone anything. Costars include Ruth Etting, Ethel Waters, Victor Moore, and Gloria Stuart, with appearances by Alice White, Binnie Barnes, Sterling Holloway, Paul Lukas  Boris Karloff and Béla Lugosi. Originally the Three Stooges were to appear, but they'd had just inked a deal with Columbia Pictures, so three look-alike actors, billed as 'Three Stooges', replaced them.)

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It's a Gift

(1934)

(A grocer battles a shrewish wife, an incompetent assistant, and assorted annoying children, customers, and salesmen.)

(A comedy, starring W.C. Fields, one of five films he made in 1934.)

(The film reprises a number routines perfected during Fields years on the stage. The film features Baby LeRoy and is one of three films the two would do together. Born Ronald LeRoy Overacker, Baby LeRoy who, at the age of 16 months, was the youngest person ever signed to a contract by a major studio. LeRoy's career came to an abrupt halt in 1940 while filming The Biscuit Eater. After falling into a lake twice, he lost his voice due to a head cold and the director chose to recast him rather than hold up production. LeRoy never appeared in another film.)

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Gift Horse

(1952)

AKA: Glory At Sea

(Battleship HMS Ballantrae and her crew are sent on a suicide mission to destroy a French dry dock under Nazi Germany's control.) 

 (Released in the United States as Glory At Sea, this British black & white World War II drama stars Trevor Howard, Richard Attenborough, James Donald, and Sonny Tufts. The film under-performed in the US, as was typical of all British war dramas released at the time.)

(Howard was a favorite on both sides of the Atlantic. In the states, where he was frequently cast as the villain, he was nominated for an Academy Award for his work in the 1960 film, Sons And Lovers.)

(Attenborough enjoyed a lengthy career as both and actor and film director. As a director, he won two Academy Awards for the film Gandhi. His life was marred by tragedy when one of his daughters and a granddaughter were killed in a tsunami in Thailand in 2004.) 

(During the early years of his career, Tufts was a favorite at Paramount Pictures, where he starred in four films with Veronica Lake, two with Olivia de Havilland, two with Paulette Goddard, two with Betty Hutton. He also appeared opposite Anne Blyth, and Joan Caulfield. Things looked good for Tufts, but he had a couple of bad habits: 1/ he had a tendency to drink to excess, leading to several arrests and 2/ he had a thing for biting ladies on their inner thighs - a fetish that would lead to several lawsuits filed by his victims. His career tanked and never recovered from the scandals. He died of pneumonia at the age of 58.) 

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The Gift of Love

(1958)

"No woman can give more than the gift of love!"

(A brilliant scientist developing guided missiles marries his doctor's receptionist. Five years later, she is diagnosed with a heart condition that she chooses to keep secret from her husband. Faced with a bleak future, to ensure that her husband is not left alone, she convinces him to adopt. They choose a troubled-child, a girl, who has been rejected by other families many times. She and the scientist hit it off, though he remains baffled by her fantasy world and is angered when she erases a chalk board, destroying hours and hours of his work. When his wife dies, he decides to return the child to the orphanage. When a savage storm breaks out and the child is lost, the scientist goes to help search for her and, finding her, he comes to realize how much she means to him and the two are a family once more.)

(A remake of 1946's Sentimental Journey which starred John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara, and was based on a short story published in Good Housekeeping. This Jean Negulesco CinemaScope drama romance stars Lauren Bacall and Robert Stack.)

(Child actress Evelyn Rudie became an overnight sensation after playing the title character in Eloise on an episode of Playhouse 90, based on the popular children's book. At the age of six, she was nominated for an Emmy Award. Later in life, she concentrated on education, directing and the stage.)

(A trio of future television stars fill out the supporting cast: Lorne Greene from Bonanza and Battlestar Galactica, Edward Platt from Get Smart, and Joseph Kearns, better known as Mr. Wilson on Dennis The Menace.)

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A Gift For Heidi

(1958)

(On the outskirts of a small village in the Alps. lives Heidi and her uncle. Their neighbor, a craftsman by trade, gives Heidi three carved wooden figures, whose names are Caspar, Melchior and Balthazar. They gradually help teach Heidi about faith, charity and hope. As she learns, she has many adventures including: signing up her friend for a singing competition without telling him, befriending a lonely man from the big city, and - with the help of the U.S. Army - rescues newlyweds trapped in an avalanche!)

(Sandra Descher, who plays Heidi, is best remembered as the traumatized little girl in the film, Them. In total, she appeared in 16 movies. Her idol was Lorretta Young and the youngster got the role of a lifetime playing opposite her idol when cast in television's The Loretta Young Show. In 1967, she retired from acting in order to help manage her parent's string of department stores.)

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Gift

(1966)

AKA: Venom

(A hedonistic young man, confident and cheeky, spouts radical ideas he believes will change the world for the better. One day, he spies a young blonde girl, studying on her family's private beach and is compelled to introduce himself. She introduces him to her conservative parent's who are both in the midst of a mid-life crisis. Casting decorum aside, the young man crashes the girl's graduation party and, much to her father's chagrin, gifts her a book of erotic literature, while hinting that pornography is the new religion. His ploy works and the girl is smitten. The two hang out at his apartment watching and making pornographic films. In the hopes that she will tire of her new boyfriend, he is invited to stay at the family's villa, and the daughter shares a film she and the young man made with her mother. Outraged, the mother demands the father throw the young man out and lock up their daughter at once.)

(A controversial Danish drama starring Søren Strømberg and Sisse Reingaard.) 

(The film had received an official Film Fund grant by the government. When the finished product turned out to contain anti-consumerism and anti-porn messages mixed with explicit content, it sparked an intense debate for and against censorship among the members of the  censorship board.) 

(The board's compromise - to superimpose a faded 'X' over the explicit sections backfired spectacularly. By doing so, they brought an enormous amount of media attention to the film by transforming an anti-pornographic film into pornography - all of which unintentionally helped the film draw a huge audience.)

(The film is believed to have successfully  undermined the last arguments for maintaining censorship in Denmark, which was abolished altogether in 1969.)

(Exported to US as the latest daring Scandinavian film, under the title Venom, US Customs simply cut off the 'X' parts prior to the New York premiere in January 1968.)

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The Under-Gifted

(1980)

AKA: Les Sous-doués

(A French teen comedy/farce which tells the story of a group of classmates at a private French high school who deliberately flunk their exams in order to remain carefree students.)

(The cast contains two future award winners. Daniel Auteuil would go on to win two César Awards for Best Actor in 1987 and 1999, as well as a Best Actor Award at the Cannes Film Festival in 1996. And Tonie Marshall's 1999 film, Venus Beauty Institute, won the 2000 César Award for Best Film, Best Director and Best Writing-Original or Adaptation, thus becoming the first female director to receive this distinction.)

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The Devil's Gift

(1984)

(After an elderly woman uses a Ouija board to communicate with a dead spirit, an evil demon inhabits a cymbal-bashing monkey doll and takes over the mind of a suburban housewife in order to carry out its evil plans, destroying the family and their home in the process.)

(Accusations of plagiarism plagued the film, due to plot similarities shared with a Stephen King short story, The Monkey - which was first published as a booklet included in an issue of the porn magazine, Gallery in 1980, before it was then revised, edited and appeared as part of King's short story collection Skeleton Crew in 1985.)

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And that's all for today.

Tune in next week. 

Same time, same channel!

The Gift - Annie Lennox