Tag: Jack Carson

Carefree (1938)

Carefree (1938). 83 minutes. Directed by Mark Sandrich. Starring Fred Astaire (as Tony Flagg), Ginger Rogers (as Amanda Cooper), Ralph Bellamy (as Stephen Arden), Luella Gear (as Aunt Cora), Jack Carson (as Thomas Connors), Clarence Kolb (as Judge Joe Travers), Franklin Pangborn (as Roland Hunter), Walter Kingsford (as Dr. Powers), Kay Sutton (as Miss Adams), and Hattie McDaniel (as Hattie). Choreography by Hermes Pan. Music by Irving Berlin.

Carefree is the seventh and shortest musical starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, featuring only four songs—all composed by master songwriter Irving Berlin. The plot follows a psychiatrist’s intervention in a woman’s lukewarm love life at the behest of her concerned partner, and the movie could easily be experienced as a comedy about therapy rather than as a standard Astaire-Rogers musical. The material is sexually offbeat, with a topsy-turvy master/subservient element: by analyzing intimate dreams and performing borderline-erotic hypnosis intended to remove his patient’s inhibitions, Astaire as the doctor in question mans … Read the rest

Mildred Pierce (1945)

Mildred Pierce (1945). 111 minutes. Directed by Michael Curtiz. Starring Joan Crawford (as Mildred Pierce Beragon), Jack Carson (as Wally Fay), Zachary Scott (as Monte Beragon), Eve Arden (as Ida Corwin), Ann Blyth (as Veda Pierce Forrester), Butterfly McQueen (as Lottie), Bruce Bennett (as Bert Pierce), Lee Patrick (as Maggie Biederhof), Veda Ann Borg (as Miriam Ellis), Moroni Olsen (as Inspector Peterson), and Jo Ann Marlowe (as Kay Pierce). Music by Max Steiner.

Mildred Pierce is equal parts entrepreneurial narrative, film noir, and melodrama. In some regards, it is an earnestly liberal tale about a hard-working woman who divorces, establishes her own business, and becomes a restaurant mogul. But it is also a lurid and somewhat punishing soap opera about her downfall, which is intertwined with and inseparable from her devotion to her evil young daughter Veda. In the end, in order to get its point across, the movie relies on a fairly conservative understanding of rightful social order and … Read the rest