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Jazz Age harmonies, out of Brewster's Millions and Meet Me in St. Louis. The elderly multimillionaire (Charles Coburn) built his fortune on heartbreak, he's cured from his sickbed by cigars and stew and a spell with the family of the woman who got away. "Sometimes I think that old coot is as batty as a baseball game." Potential heirs, the middle-class couple (Lynn Bari and Larry Gates) and their brood, the experiment involves moving in disguised as a traveling painter. ("Surrealism," he dubs the tangle of splotches on his canvas, no need for a frame, "hanging's too good for it.") The test is one hundred grand anonymously gifted, suddenly "our proper position in society" is to be observed: Cozy home gives way to sterile mansion, French poodles replace the faithful mongrel, the daughter (Piper Laurie) must marry the snobbish playboy (Skip Homeier) instead of the plebeian soda jerk (Rock Hudson). A conte moral, a hooch toast. "My bootlegger says it's real bathtub gin!" "He must've been taking a bath when he made it." Douglas Sirk's warm and biting Americana, with peppy and wistful songs. (James Dean's brief appearance in straw boater and bow tie is a bonus.) Rejuvenation of the tycoon, sliding "tutti-frutti delights" across the counter, awakening of the social-climber, heading for the Crash. Cocteau's painted mustache on the marble statue (Les Enfants Terribles) pops up but Mom is too busy tangoing with Fritz Feld to notice, the artificial blues from a tinsel Christmas tree fill the screen. Love, a capitalist story, as it were, cf. All That Heaven Allows. "At least when you've got money, you can afford to buy your own kind of misery!" With Gigi Perreau, William Reynolds, Paul McVey, Gloria Holden, Frank Ferguson, and Paul Harvey.
--- Fernando F. Croce |