The Film Junkie

What a deliciously funny fish out of water comedy!  Barbara Stanwyck and Gary Cooper team up as an unlikely pair of lovers: she a band singer on the run from the law due to her boyfriend’s role in a few murders; he an English professor who employs her in his research on slang.

Stanwyck’s aptly named Sugarpuss O’Shea moves into the house where eight professors, including Cooper, are conducting research for an encyclopedia.  She brings a ball of, ahem, fire into their dull and routine lives with her personality and ‘hep’ slang.

The great thing about this movie is that it is still damned funny.  Stanwyck is genuinely hilarious and slang is put to brilliant use throughout the film.  Cooper is the sweet simple guy he usually plays, but it is great to see him in tweed and full on curmudgeonly.  The scene where Sugarpuss shows him what “yum yum” means (kissing for us squares) you can see the epiphany occuring behind his eyes. 

These two have great chemistry but much of the fun of the film is watching the other seven professors cope with a woman for the first time in their lives.  It is the ultimate clash between book and street smarts and, refreshingly, there is no great victory for either side in the end, instead each learns from one another and they become the better for it.

A 40’s comedy that truly holds up over the years.

Grade: A

In 1936 Frank Capra directed Gary Cooper as an average fellow who gets a big break, falls for a scheming reporter and uses his new fame to help the common man, five years later they employ much the same formula in this story.  However unlike ‘Mr. Deeds Goes To Town’, ‘Meet John Doe’ is the story of a man who wins false fame and is forced to become the voice of the people. 

The morality of this film is a much trickier bag than ‘Deeds’, John Doe just wants to be a baseball player once again, he is a simple man, yes, but he gains the views of the idealistic Ann (Barbara Stanwyck) possibly more out of love for her than his own political motivations.

Yes, it is still a Capra film and thus the good old boy wins out over the political bigwigs, but this is more the story of a heroic woman who must masquerade as a man to get her voice heard.  Ann writes the John Doe letter as a protest to losing her job and is thus forced to create Doe due to the character’s popularity.  One could view this film as a pre-feminist (post-suffrage, of course) commentary on society’s inability to listen to a woman’s voice in the political arena.  Sure, Ann falls for John, but it is her words and her passion that win his heart and spark the nation to join in a sense of community.

Stanwyck is complex and brilliant as the conflicted Ann who is trying to provide for her family, have a voice as a journalist and love the man she has created.  Cooper is dopey and sweet as John, the man trying to please everyone but himself.  He has the most beautiful eyes in the history of black and white cinema, and his lanky frame allows him to stand apart from the many leading men of his era.  They work well together, not because they go toe-to-toe like Cary Grant and Irene Dunne, but because he allows her to be the stronger persona.  A very modern take on love.

This is a great Capra film that should be recognized alongside his other classics ‘Mr. Smith Goes To Washington’ (1939) and ‘It Happened One Night’ (1934).

Grade: A