THE IMPATIENT YEARS (1944)

Opening in a divorce court Jean Arthur and Lee Bowman was a divorce...right now!  The judge is willing to grant them their wish, but when Jean's father Charles Coburn tells the judge (via flashback) what really happened and then devises his own plan to make them work for their divorce the judge agrees.  See, during the flashback we learn that Jean and Lee met a year and a half ago while he was on a four day furlough in San Francisco.  It was love at first sight so they immediately got a marriage license, but then they had to wait two days to get married.  They do and on their wedding night they had an out of this world fuckfest.  So much so that she got pregnant.  Now nearly a year and a half later Lee comes home on a 30-day furlough only to find that the woman he married is a total square!  Plus she lives with her father and some sniveling boarder who's secretly in love with Jean.  The initial meeting works out horribly, so they wanna call it quits and get a divorce, but the plan Coburn sells the judge is to force them to go back to San Francisco and retrace their steps for that entire four days.  I'm sure you can guess how it ends.

From what I've read the idea for this movie was to reunite the three stars of the previous years hit THE MORE THE MERRIER: Jean Arthur, Joel McCrea and Charles Coburn.  Now that would make a lot of sense, since TMTM is a delightful wartime romantic comedy that's still great even now. Arthur and Coburn both signed up, but McCrea didn't.  I don't know why, but if I had to wager a bet he probably got a whiff of that lame script and went running for the hills.

I love Jean Arthur and Charles Coburn, but you've got to have a script that works and chemistry between the two leads.  This one has neither.  With McCrea there would have been chemistry, but that still leaves the weak story.  The idea of a couple getting to know each other in a home environment after they've already been married and had a child is full of possibilities, but unfortunately everything in this possibility comes off as lazy, too convenient and forced.  Also the side story about the boarder a complete waste of time because first off it's never built up properly (the dude is a total wiener and Arthur isn't interested in him at all) and secondly it's never resolved!  One moment he's there, then boom movies over.

Lame story, zero chemistry between Lee and Jean, poor attempts at humor, interesting supporting cast with lots of familiar faces (including Luke Skywalker's Uncle Owen), slow pace.  The film had its moments (I got a good giggle out of the military guy at the dance club), but there's so much better stuff out there I wouldn't really worry about it.

IN NAME ONLY (1939)

One day while out walking near his country home Cary Grant runs into the beautiful Carole Lombard fishing.  As they talk you can tell there's a spark between them, but Grant has a terrible secret: he's married to a horrible, evil, gold digging, ice queen, devilish, manipulating, superbitch!  Lombard finds out about the superbitch soon enough and Grant demands a divorce, but SC does all kinds of underhanded things to stretch it out in hopes that the stress will doom Grant and Lombard's relationship.

IN NAME ONLY starts out slow, but once the emotional roller coaster gets going it's a wild ride.  Being such an old film I'm sure most modern audiences would find the whole thing dated, but I was happily surprised at how mature and non-sappy the film was for the time.  Good pace, brave performance by Kay Francis at playing somebody so unlikeable, good writing strong performances by the entire cast (I was especially intrigued to see two such talented slapstick performers trying out their dramatic chops).  For a 1930's melodrama IN NAME ONLY is a good one and worth checking out.

THE STORY OF MANKIND (1957)

In 1957 humans invent the "Super H-Bomb" sixty years ahead of time, so now the "High Tribunal of Outer Space" must convene to decide whether humans are worth keeping around or should we just be allowed to blow ourselves up.  Taking the side of the humans in this pathetic court room drama is poor Ronald Colman as The Spirit of Man.  On the other side is dapper Vincent Price (probably the only actor to get out of this disaster unscathed) as The Devil a.k.a. "Mr. Scratch".  Both sides present evidence for their case.  The Spirit of Man spouts off moralistic soliloquies about Joan of Arc, Moses, Shakespeare, early Christians, Alexander Graham Bell, Sir Isaac Newton and reads from the Bible (vomit!) while The Devil makes a much more convincing argument by showing Nero, Hitler, Cleopatra, Khufu, Attila the Hun and talking about stuff like genocide, slavery and the Salem Witch Trials.  Good thing he didn't mention SLIMED or we'd all be dead right now.  Anyway, as expected, the High Tribunal of Outer Space's final decision is a total cop out complete with a "Is This The End?" flashing across the screen in giant red letters.

As much of a train wreck as all that sounds it's actually more dull than anything else.  The historical events are all short with background sets that look like they were just slapped together with stuff found laying around the studio, there's a bunch of mysterious stock footage (the burning train came from 1939's DODGE CITY) and the actors all look pretty embarrassed.

Worth a watch for the curiosity value, but I'd be much more interested in reading about how this misguided turd ever got green-lit in the first place?  Also, what was the budget and did it make any money at all?  What did audiences and critics back in 1957 think?  In the book "The Fifty Worst Films of All Time" where they quote Newsweek as saying "...some of the weirdest casting ever committed".  A 44-year-old Hedy Lamarr as 19-year-old Joan of Arc or Harpo Marx as Sir Isaac Newton...yeah, I can see what they are talking about.

"The Great Clock of Outer Space"