Independent Exhibitors Film Bulletin (1957)

"My Man Godfrey" Still a show of huge and happy fun. Certain to delight all audiences, especially sophisticates. June Allyson. David Niven carry off iany lead roles. That celebrated comedy of a crazy Park Avenue clan and a peerless butler has been revamped by Universal-International in CinemaScope and Color, and the result is good news indeed. Still called "My Man Godfrey", but now starring June Allyson and David Niven in the roles Carole Lombard and William Powell made memorable, the film should find all exhibitors extending the welcome mat to patrons in search of some pure and palpable fun. It is a show of huge and happy fun. For producer Ross Hunter and director Henry Koster have wisely wrought few changes in all the daffy charm and the pleasantly potted characters of the original Morrie Ryskind-Eric Hatch screenplay. If the performances of the current cast are somewhat less glittering than the 1936 exhibit and the Gregory La Cava touch is missing, "Godfrey" in its new garbs is, nevertheless, as bright and buoyant a piece of merchandise as anything offered this season. It is good entertainment for all classes, but sophisticated audiences especially should revel in its humor, as common sense becomes the comic whippingboy and the balloon of respectability is continually burst by the madcap momentum. And madcap it is, from the first shot of Miss Allyson as an irrepressible heiress shooting into view with her whizzing sports car to the last as she races to a pier to catch her beloved, but deportee, butler. The romance began when Miss Allyson discovers a bearded and bedraggled Niven roosting beneath the Brooklyn Bridge, whom she at once takes home to win herself first prize in a scavenger hunt. Miss Allyson's home is a euphemism for assorted zanies: an addle-pated mother, a stunning snob of a sister (Martha Hyer) and a harassed and henpecked father. At any rate, into this haut mondt zoo Niven is soon ensconced as the new butler and called Godfrey. As it turns out Godfrey is an Austrian of royal but impoverished pedigree who immigrated to America illegally. However, he is perfection in everything and survives all sorts of wacky adventures, not to mention arranging a bank loan for Miss Allyson's bankrupt father. When Godfrey is finally deported Miss Allyson sails away with him into a visa-less but no doubt funfest future. Universal International. 92 minutes. June Allyson, David Niven Martha Hyer Produced by Ross Hunter. Directed by Henry Koster. "The Joker Is Wild" SutiKCU &€tfiH$ OOO Engrossing biography of Joe E. Lewis with Sinatra in fine fettle as famed nite club comic. Should gross well in big cities; questionable for small town market. That old "from tears to laughter" roulade sounds through a complex, overlong, but colorful Joe E. Lewis account in Paramount's "The Joker Is Wild". Starring the redoubtable Frank Sinatra in the role of the beloved nite club clown and filled with the humor and heartbreak of show business, of the public triumphs and personal torments of an entertainer whose life has become a Lambs Club legend, "The Joker Is Wild" seems set for good returns, especially in the metropolitan areas where interest should be buoyant. As another in a long line of film dossiers, this is a notable entry principally due to screenplav wright Oscar Saul and director Charles Vidor, who have adapted the Art Cohn best seller with an eye and ear always to capturing the human angles of Lewis' life. The facts of his career have not been changed and his footlight psyche with a penchant for gambling, booze, night life, etc. has been done with uncompromising candor. Although producer Samuel Briskin has bedecked his Vista Vision production with the standardly sleazy to sumptuous night club settings, glorified them with those lissome and leggy artistes known euphemistically as chorus girls and thrown in some vintage Chicago gangland shots, the viewer leaves the theatre with the Lewis-Sinatra characterization paramount in his mind. And this is as it should be, for Frankie is giving one of his most accomplished renderings and Joe E.'s life is among the most touching, and at the same time richly comic, ones that present day show business knows. Lewis (Sinatra) is first seen as an upcoming pop singer at a Chicago speak whose future is unexpectedly and tragically blighted by some gangland hi-jinks. When Joe E. attempts to leave the speak for a better engagement elsewhere, the owner's toughs take him to task, butcher him so mercilessly his voice is shot. He disappears from sight, on the skids most of the time. Old pal Eddie Albert arranges his comeback and Joe regains his fame, this time as comedian. He meets and falls in love with society beauty Jeanne Crain but feels their totally different backgrounds create impasse. During WWII he marries young dancer-singer Mitzi Gaynor, but after three years the pact breaks and Joe is left a lonely entertainer. Paramount. 123 minutes. Frank Sinatra, Mitii Gaynor, Jeanne Crain. Produced by Samuel Briskin. Directed by Charles Vidor. "The Unholy Wife" Sutineu "Rati*? O O Diana Dors, Rod Steiger make lurid melodrama fair b.o. Lush Diana Dors is the star of RKO's "The Unholy Wife", so exhibitors can look forward to a fair response to this saga of a lusty but lethal blonde who almost perpetrates the perfect crime at the expense of her bumpkin husband. The robust Miss Dors is, however, the only ideal item about producerdirector John Farrow's product, a Technicolored bit of goods that seethes and simmers in some luridly melodramatic wrappings. Resembling one of those James M. Cain concoctions in which the deadly and dangerous females spin black widow plots around the unwary males, Jonatham Latimer's screenplay has all the dusty appeal of a resurrected antique. The sizzling star compensates somewhat for the absent dramatic fireworks, and her libidinous encounters with Rod Steiger and Tom Tyron set off not a few celluloid bonfires, all of which should make it marketable merchandise for metropolitan ballyhoo situations. Miss Dors is the bawdy but bored wife of wealthy Napa Valley vineyard owner Steiger, until she meets sullen cowhand Tyron and the sensual stratagems begin. Soon her blonde protoplasm percolates with thoughts of her husband's death, which subsequency arrange to have him shot as a prowler. When Miss Dors finds she has shot Steiger's best friend and not her husband, she respins her plot and Steiger agrees to take the blame for the killing after Miss Dors admits her parole jumping past. The prowler killing is then parlayed through some revealing "plants" by her into cold-blooded murder and Steiger is convicted, unknowingly trapped by the woman he loves. Miss Dors' web spins tighter and tighter, but in the end it snaps and she receives retribution. RKO Radio (Universal International!. 94 minutes. Diana Dors, Rod Steiger. Tern Tyron. Produced and directed by John Farrow. Page 10 Film BULLETIN September 2, 1957