Katharine Plays Tennis (and Golf)

Women's athletic coach at Pacific Tech, Pat Pemberton (Katharine Hepburn) has a problem.  A gifted athlete, she freezes when she is around her fiance, Collier Weld (William Ching). She resigns her job when her presence at the college endangers funding from an irate donor (she wasn't respectful enough to his wife when they lost a golf game), and competes in a golf pro-am. There, she attracts the attention of Mike Conovan (Spencer Tracy), a sports promoter. He encourages her to go pro, with him as her manager. Our film this week is  Pat and Mike (1952).

In their seventh (of nine) film appearances together (TCM article), Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn are at the top of their game in this engaging and humorous film. When the two of them are together on screen, the fireworks are palpable. Their verbal sparring is part of what makes this film a classic.

The film was written specifically for Tracy and Hepburn by their friends, Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanin (they'd previously penned Adam's Rib for the couple), with George Cukor in the director's chair. The authors were particularly interested in highlighting Ms. Hepburn's athletic prowess with their screenplay, and Ms. Hepburn did all the sports scenes herself (Sports Cinema 100 Movies: The Best of Hollywood's Athletic Heroes, Losers, Myths and Misfits  by Randy Williams). Besides being excellent at golf and tennis, Ms. Hepburn swam on a regular basis, including dips in the ocean near her Fenwick, Connecticut home, even in winter (Women's World).

If there is one problematic aspect to the film, it's why someone as smart, sassy, and gifted as Pat would be involved with a dolt like Collier. William Ching is not all that attractive, and he is a bit of a stiff as an actor, so he brings nothing to the role that explains their relationship. On paper, Collier is a vile bully; he's verbally abusive and downright disgusting. He walks in late to his fiance's tennis match, making tons of distracting noise, openly laughing at her. He'd likely be thrown out of a real tennis match. We'd have like to have seen that happen. It was an absolute joy to see Pat throw her luggage out the window of the train and abandon her obnoxious fiance.

In the capable hands of Spencer Tracy, Mike starts as a conniver and learns the benefits of honest sports from his scrupulous charge. In their first scene together, Mike admires Mrs. Pemberton - "nicely packed, that kid. Not much meat on her, but what's there is cherce," he says. In the original script, the line was to read that Pat was "pretty well stacked." The film's producer Lawrence Weingarten objected - Ms. Hepburn, he said, was not "stacked."  So the line was rewritten to "choice." It was Mr. Tracy who put the New York spin of "cherce" into the performances (Spencer Tracy: A Biography by James Curtis). 

Chuck Connors (Police Captain) was a minor league baseball player - he'd been in the major leagues for 67 games (1 with the Brooklyn Dodgers; 66 with the Chicago Cubs), and was now working for the Los Angeles Angels (the Cubs minor league affiliate) - when he was approached by casting director (Memories and Dreams, 2018).  Realizing his days as a player were coming to a close, he tried his hand at acting - this was his first role, and he is just fine as the bemused policeman. Mr. Connors would continue in films (like Move Over, Darling (1963) and Old Yeller (1957). But it was television that made his career - his five years as Lucas McCain on The Rifleman would bring the actor fame and a career that continued until his death of pneumonia and lung cancer (he was a three-pack a day smoker until the mid-1970s) in 1992. 

Aldo Ray (Davie Hucko) had already done a few minor parts in films; the same year that Pat and Mike was released, he starred with Judy Holliday in The Marrying Kind. In his hands, Davie is child-like and trusting. His resentment of Pat blossoms into affection when she begins to look out for his career. He's a versatile actor, who doesn't always get noticed. If you've never seen him, Nightfall (1957), we strongly recommend you add it to your viewing list. 

Two other performances are worthy of note. Jim Backus (Charles Barry) has two small scenes as a tennis pro who encourages Pat to enter the golf pro-am.  Charles Buchinski (Hank Tasling) is a riot as a gangster who gets a pummeling from our lady athlete (she's boxed, by the way). Mr. Buchinski would later gain fame as Charles Bronson.

The New York Times review by Bosley Crowther was very positive, and in his introduction to the film, Ben Mankiewicz called it one of Tracy & Hepburn's "best." It did well at the box office, bringing in nearly $2.7 million.  Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanin received an Oscar nomination for Original Screenplay (AFI Catalog) - they lost to The Lavender Hill Mob.  

We agree wholeheartedly that this is a film well worth viewing - it's not often you get to see a film about a female athlete that makes you want to pick up a tennis racket (or golf club) -  and suggest this one for a day when you need a good laugh.  We'll leave you with this trailer:

T 

Barbara Loves a Moonlighter

Almost immediately, The Moonlighter  (1953) defines its title - a moonlighter is a cattle rustler who works by moonight - a skill, no doubt, since it is hard to rope what you can't see.  Wes Anderson (Fred MacMurray) has been arrested for said offense, and the local townfolk are looking forward to a hanging.  Ranch owner Alex Prince (Morris Ankrum) and his strawboss (Jack Elam) decide to take the law into their own hands; they break into the jail, and hang the man in cell three.  Only, unbeknownst to them, it's the wrong man.  The resulting celebration gives Wes and his cellmates the opportunity to beat it out of town.  Wes spends a few months revenging himself on the murderers, then returns to his home town - to his mother (Myra Marsh), brother Tom (William Ching), and to Rela (Barbara Stanwyck), the love of his life, who is now engaged to brother Tom.  Needless to say, Wes is not a happy man.  So, when his friend Cole Gardner (Ward Bond) shows up, he decides the life of crime really is the one for him.

It's great to see Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray back together again.  This was the third of their four films together (we've already discussed Remember the Night (1940),  Double Indemnity (1944), and There's Always Tomorrow (1956)).  Their chemistry together remains excellent, and Mr. MacMurray was vocal in his affection for his co-star. This TCM article quotes Mr. MacMurray: "I was lucky enough to make four pictures with Barbara. In the first I turned her in, in the second I killed her, in the third I left her for another woman, and in the fourth I pushed her over a waterfall. The one thing all these pictures had in common was that I fell in love with Barbara Stanwyck -- and I did, too!" But this film doesn't really do that chemistry a whole lot of justice.

First off, we don't even see Ms. Stanwyck until nearly half-way into the film.  Secondly, the film doesn't feel like a full unit - it feels like a bunch of little plots all loosely linked together.  The beginning, wherein Wes is almost lynched, seems to be a short piece that has nothing to do with the later plot of Wes robbing a bank.  Plus, much of it makes no sense - why does the upstanding Tom decide to become a thief (especially when he knows Rela despises Tom for his larcenous ways)? Why does Wes resort to bank robbery, when he is so good with cattle (well, we think he is.  We never really see him stealing any cattle.  We do see him roping a few men, and he is quite good at that)? And WHY do three bank robbers make absolutely no attempt to hide who they are from their victims?  It's bank robbery by the Keystone Kops!

There is another major problem with this film, and I shudder to say it - the leads are ALL too old for the parts.  MacMurray is 45; Stanwyck is 46, and William Ching is 40.  The male characters act like teenagers - totally unable to cope with real life, and rebelling like mad.  It's bad enough that one man in his 40s is so immature, but TWO?  While Stanwyck is the right age for both MacMurray and Ching (and I applaud director Roy Rowland and producer Joseph Bernhart for selecting a mature woman to act alongside these two actors), Rela is just too smart and too mature to get involved with these total losers.  There was discussion at one point of having Jennifer Jones and Alan Ladd or Kirk Douglas star (AFI Catalog).  Though somewhat younger, they still would have been wrong.

For some reason, though filmed in black and white, the film was shot in 3-D (naturally, we saw a 2-D television version).  And though it clocks in at 77 minutes, it has an intermission!  In this New York Times review, the reviewer is just as confused as the utility of the 3-D process in the film: it "merely pulls a few cliffs, trees and modest panoramas into clearer focus".  They could have done as much with without making the audience wear funny glasses.

So, while we wish we could recommend this one, we really can't.  For Stanwyck fans, give it a go (because she is great. She is always great. Ultimately any Stanwyck film is worth seeing at least once), but put it low on the list. Next week, we'll revisit a Stanwyck pre-code film that we originally discussed several years ago.

We'll leave you with a short clip of Mr. MacMurray in danger: