Category: 1950s

Returning from the service, writer William Lundigan is surprised to discover that the new home his wife June Haver purchased in his absence is a run-down apartment building. Oddly included in the occasional Marilyn Monroe boxset, the acturess only appears in the film sporadically as Lundigan’s war buddy who rents an apartment in the building. The housing shortages after World War II makes for interesting conflict and the building itself plays an important character in this light-hearted tale, keeping everyone on their toes. That being said, the tenants all make more compelling protagonists than the too-cute married couple, especially swindler of lonely old ladies Frank Fay.

During the murder investigation of the titular character, a pregnant, mixed race woman who was passing herself as white, a number of suspects come to the forefront, including her white fiancé Paul Massie and his disapproving family. After seeing him in They Gotta Have Us and The Message, I had been looking at the filmography of Earl Cameron, who plays the woman’s darker skinned brother, and was intrigued by its exploration of race relations that weren’t American-centric. Cameron is strong in a rather small role, but the film remains interesting as a way to see racism that is very different but also quite the same as the American variety. The character of Sapphire is only seen as a corpse or in pictures but she lives and breaths in the reactions of her death by everyone who knew her.   

A meteor lands on earth containing an amoebous alien substance that consumes humans whole, growing larger and more aggressive with each meal. The only witnesses to this creature are a group of teenagers who struggle to convince their town of the danger. I adore these 1950s sci-fi horror films and this one is definitely a classic. Who cares if the ‘teenagers’, including Steve McQueen in one of his earliest roles, are in their late 20s and that the snail-paced villain, at least in its earliest stages, is hard to find scary? It’s got a bopping intro song and a scarily prescient final lesson. I only wish that there was even more scenes with the Blob.   

Two American showgirls, Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell, are best friends with different tastes in men; Marilyn wants them rich while Jane just cares that they’re attractive. The two head to France on a cruise, unknowingly followed by a detective Monroe’s suspicious future father-in-law has hired to spy on her. The story is clichéd and uninteresting, the men are almost universally immature jerks, and the continuity is so off that I had to rewind multiple times to see if I had missed something. What it does have going for it is a refusal to condemn the women for their romantic choices, particularly within the constraints of the era in which they lived. Russell gets a chance to shine by frolicking with the entire American Olympic team who are clad only in flesh colored short shorts while Monroe has her iconic ‘Diamonds Are a Girls Best Friend’ number.