Wonderful adaptation, filled with Cocteau-like movie-magic. Introduced at Emory by Rushdie, who calls it “The Dream” for short, and isn’t a huge fan of James Cagney’s performance.<\/p>\n
Katy and I already watched the McNutty version<\/a> from 60-some years later, so I’m familiar with the story. Dark-haired Olivia de Havilland (her film debut, later in Gone With The Wind<\/a><\/em>) is coveted by both Dick Powell (star of Christmas in July<\/a><\/em> and The Tall Target<\/a><\/em>) and Ross Alexander (short career: suicide), while blonde Jean Muir (star of The White Cockatoo<\/em>) covets Ross. The lovers (particularly Olivia) give it their all, making their segments more welcome than Cagney’s. I noted that Kevin Kline brought “a touch of sadness to his mostly ridiculous comic-relief role,” but Cagney instead brings an entire can of ham. When he’s not wearing a donkey mask, Cagney works with slate-faced Joe Brown (the guy in love with Jack Lemmon at the end of Some Like It Hot<\/a><\/em>) on their play to be performed for The Duke (Ian Hunter of Hitchcock’s The Ring<\/em>) and his Amazon conquest\/bride (Verree Teasdale of The Milky Way<\/em>).<\/p>\n Interference comes from fairy queen Anita Louise (of Judge Priest<\/a><\/em>, bringing less personality than Michelle Pfeiffer did) and sparkly-costumed elf king Victor Jory (Power of the Press<\/a><\/em>) with his loyal minion, a cackling pre-Andy Hardy<\/em> Mickey Rooney. The Queen has mini-minions Moth and Pease-Blossom (both sadly unaccounted-for), Cobweb (appeared in a pile of 1950’s westerns, costarring with Gregory Peck in The Gunfighter<\/em>) and Mustard Seed (Billy Barty, had already been in fifty movies as Mickey Rooney’s brother, would live to appear in such acclaimed 1980’s dwarf-filled fantasy films as Legend<\/em>, Willow<\/em>, Masters of the Universe<\/em> and UHF<\/em>).<\/p>\n Lost best picture to Mutiny on the Bounty<\/em>, but cinematographer Hal Mohr was history’s only write-in oscar winner. He later shot Underworld USA<\/a><\/em>, Rancho Notorious<\/a><\/em> and a Tashlin feature. Banned in Germany for being based on the Jew-music of Mendelssohn. Reinhardt had staged the play ten or more times, left nazi germany and staged Midsummer<\/em> in Hollywood, then hired to make the film alongside cinema vet Dieterle (The Devil & Daniel Webster<\/em>).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Wonderful adaptation, filled with Cocteau-like movie-magic. Introduced at Emory by Rushdie, who calls it “The Dream” for short, and isn’t a huge fan of James Cagney’s performance. Katy and I already watched the McNutty version from 60-some years later, so I’m familiar with the story. Dark-haired Olivia de Havilland (her film debut, later in Gone […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[343,1341,95,1519,281,1518,524,1517],"class_list":["post-7420","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie","tag-1930s","tag-dick-powell","tag-emory","tag-james-cagney","tag-mickey-rooney","tag-olivia-de-havilland","tag-shakespeare","tag-william-dieterle"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7420","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7420"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7420\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9636,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7420\/revisions\/9636"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7420"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7420"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7420"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}