No Orchids for Miss Blandish (1948)& Other Jack LaRue Films
Posted: November 29th, 2010, 2:47 pm
I'm hoping that others will share their opinions of the somewhat odd Brit Noir, No Orchids for Miss Blandish (1948). If you saw this movie at the TCM Film Festival on the big screen or in one of the occasional showings elsewhere, could you please describe your own and other audience members' reactions to this film?
I only caught a few moments of No Orchids for Miss Blandish (1948) which was premiered on TCM last night, before realizing that something was wrong. I was unaware that it was supposed to be set in New York City, until I went back to the beginning of the movie to watch the intro with Robert Osborne. I was very amused and confused by the variety of accents on display and kept wondering why this didn't have the gritty authenticity of British noirs like They Made Me a Fugitive (1947) or The Long Memory (1953). Then everybody started slapping everyone else! It was almost like The Three Stooges made really nasty by too many steroids, and an absurd amount of violence, though I will reserve my thoughts on the movie overall until after I've had a chance to see the whole flick again. My favorite weird character: Ma Grisson, played by Lilli Molnar, seen in all her gaudy glory below:
I was quite amused when RO described the kidnapped and the abductor's relationship as a form of "The Stockholm Syndrome," but to each his own, I guess. I also love the idea that the book by James Hadley Chase was the most popular reading material of British soldiers during WWII. It must have been just the kind of lurid distraction that millions of healthy, lustful young men longed for just before they went out to be killed for king and country before many of them had a chance to know life.
Jack LaRue and Linden Travers in one of the few non-violent moments in this movie.
I do feel sorry for poor Jack LaRue, who sort of ruined his own career by choosing to play in the similarly themed and equally controversial The Story of Temple Drake (1932). I really liked him as Carlo, the suave roué putting the moves on Katharine Hepburn's aviatrix in Christopher Strong (1933). He had my sympathy in that movie and he almost did in last night's movie, until the slapping started. He was a very decent actor, with a certain soulfulness and lack of artifice that makes his many bit parts rather puzzling since he was capable of much more. He is one of those guys who you can never believe is holding up the scenery as someone's gunman or a baddie of some sort. At least in Orchids he had a chance to play a character with more shades of good and bad than he did in the earlier Faulkner-based film, in which he was completely depraved and evil--even if he was one of the most brutally honest characters in American movies of the studio era. Are there any other movies worth seeing that anyone else has seen in which Jack LaRue played a sympathetic central character?
Btw, to see some of the controversy on both sides of the Atlantic surrounding this movie, you might want to read this article from Life Magazine in 1948 called "London Can't Take It." Don't miss the pictures of the most vocal critics. Now I know where the figure of Miss Grundy came from in the Archie comics. Pop culture--ain't it wonderful?
I only caught a few moments of No Orchids for Miss Blandish (1948) which was premiered on TCM last night, before realizing that something was wrong. I was unaware that it was supposed to be set in New York City, until I went back to the beginning of the movie to watch the intro with Robert Osborne. I was very amused and confused by the variety of accents on display and kept wondering why this didn't have the gritty authenticity of British noirs like They Made Me a Fugitive (1947) or The Long Memory (1953). Then everybody started slapping everyone else! It was almost like The Three Stooges made really nasty by too many steroids, and an absurd amount of violence, though I will reserve my thoughts on the movie overall until after I've had a chance to see the whole flick again. My favorite weird character: Ma Grisson, played by Lilli Molnar, seen in all her gaudy glory below:
I was quite amused when RO described the kidnapped and the abductor's relationship as a form of "The Stockholm Syndrome," but to each his own, I guess. I also love the idea that the book by James Hadley Chase was the most popular reading material of British soldiers during WWII. It must have been just the kind of lurid distraction that millions of healthy, lustful young men longed for just before they went out to be killed for king and country before many of them had a chance to know life.
Jack LaRue and Linden Travers in one of the few non-violent moments in this movie.
I do feel sorry for poor Jack LaRue, who sort of ruined his own career by choosing to play in the similarly themed and equally controversial The Story of Temple Drake (1932). I really liked him as Carlo, the suave roué putting the moves on Katharine Hepburn's aviatrix in Christopher Strong (1933). He had my sympathy in that movie and he almost did in last night's movie, until the slapping started. He was a very decent actor, with a certain soulfulness and lack of artifice that makes his many bit parts rather puzzling since he was capable of much more. He is one of those guys who you can never believe is holding up the scenery as someone's gunman or a baddie of some sort. At least in Orchids he had a chance to play a character with more shades of good and bad than he did in the earlier Faulkner-based film, in which he was completely depraved and evil--even if he was one of the most brutally honest characters in American movies of the studio era. Are there any other movies worth seeing that anyone else has seen in which Jack LaRue played a sympathetic central character?
Btw, to see some of the controversy on both sides of the Atlantic surrounding this movie, you might want to read this article from Life Magazine in 1948 called "London Can't Take It." Don't miss the pictures of the most vocal critics. Now I know where the figure of Miss Grundy came from in the Archie comics. Pop culture--ain't it wonderful?