The Talk of the Town (1942)
Laura Flippin's latest blog post:
This Academy Award Best Picture nominee has been on my “to watch” list for a while, after spontaneously DVR’ing it one Friday night last winter when it looked interesting but I was too tired to watch. It may not be Cary Grant’s best film but it does highlight his ability to portray characters as dark and chilling as they come, amazing especially given his comedic talents as well. Jean Arthur also shines in a role that, for a change, was not her typical screwball comedy fare.
The plot is contrived – two unexpected guests, a wrongly convicted prison escapee and a haughty law professor vie for the affections of their hostess. Madcap misadventures and near-misses follow, as Grant (playing the escapee) attempts to woo Arthur but all the while concealing his true identity from the professor. But the overarching message – the importance of weighing evidence in a court of law rather than giving in to emotions and assumptions – was a critical one for the time, and for our day as well.
The film is also a reminder that neither Cary Grant nor Jean Arthur ever won an Academy Award or a Golden Globe for these or any other films, but Ronald Colman, the third member of the cast for Talk of the Town did – for his work in George Cukor’s A Double Life (1947). This was despite the fact that Grant and Arthur were the more famous actors, both at the time and since. But Colman was a magnificent stage and film actor as well, and he more than holds his own in Talk of the Town.
Another little known aspect of the film was that two potential endings were filmed and screened with audiences to determine whether Arthur would choose Grant or Colman. The answer may seem obvious now – Grant, playing the insouciant, unjustly accused, childhood sweetheart of Arthur. And . . . it was as well to the studio audiences who saw the alternative ending with Arthur and Colman besotted with each other. They didn’t buy it, and so Grant got the girl again in the end (in fact the same girl as he did in 1939’s Only Angels Have Wings).
from Laura Flippin http://ift.tt/1r9bzPs