"Mr. Oxley's been complaining about my punctuation, so I'm careful to get here before nine."

The screwball comedy genre was at its peak in the 1930s. The master of the screwball comedy was Cary Grant. His proper English accent and refined manners went perfectly with scripts that were absurd. By the time 1952 rolled around though, Grant was known equally for his comedic abilities and his dramatic acting skills. Monkey Business (1952), not to be confused with the Marx Brothers movie of the same name released in 1931, is a return for Grant to the genre that made him famous.

Howard Hawks was brought on to direct the picture. Like Grant, Hawks was capable of directing both great comedies and outstanding dramas. Hawks had the distinction at this time as being one of the few Hollywood directors who was not typecast, such as John Ford and westerns. Hawks made westerns, film noir, screwball comedies and just about anything else.

Playing opposite Cary Grant was the great musical actor, Ginger Rogers. The two are great as Barnaby and Edwina Fulton. Our story revolves around the couple. Barnaby is a scientist who is working on a drug that will make people young. The idea of becoming young through a drug or potion seems to be a popular one even today.

Barnaby believes he has found the correct formula. His absent mindedness prevents him from remembering just what it was though. Luckily for him chance, and a screenwriter, helped him out as a monkey in the lab decided to mix some chemicals together and then pour them into the water cooler. This concoction is just what Barnaby was looking for. He takes a sip from the tainted cooler and immediately acts young again.

He no longer needs his glasses. He runs out and buys a sports car. He takes his bosses secretary, Lois Laurel, played by Marilyn Monroe, on a joy ride. The two go swimming and roller skating together and Barnaby even gets a young man’s haircut. All this thrills Barnaby and Lois. It frightens his boss, Mr. Oxley. It disgusts his wife Edwina, who becomes very jealous of the relationship Barnaby and Lois have.

Of course since the formula was not discovered by Barnaby, but actually present in the water cooler, anyone has access to the formula. Edwina is the next to become young after Barnaby regains his age and poor eyesight. She becomes a young troublemaker who wants to relive her honeymoon night with Barnaby. Of course the couple spent their honeymoon down in La Jolla. Barnaby does not want to make the long drive down, but Edwina insists and the couple speeds down the coast.

When they arrive at the hotel, Edwina finds out there is a ballroom where swing dancing is going on. Of course she wants to do this and the aged Barnaby can not keep up with the teenage acting Edwina. This allows the audience to see Ginger Rogers dance though, which is something everyone expects when they see a movie with Ginger Rogers in it.

After some troubles that night, in which Edwina calls her mother and old boyfriend and wants to divorce Barnaby, the effects of the potion wear off. Edwina and Barnaby make up, but the damage Edwina did to their relationship that night still has to be resolved as her mother and former boyfriend along with the press are at their house when they arrive around midday.

From here the formula for the potion is torn up by Barnaby, as he feels the public is not ready for such a drug. Of course we know the reason why everyone is behaving so oddly is because of the water cooler. This is lost on Barnaby and Edwina. They both turn younger and it is up to Mr. Oxley to try and find out what the formula was from the young Barnaby so that he can make his own transformation as well as a ton of money by marketing the product.

The movie ends, as most screwball comedies do, with a huge climatic scene filled with zaniness. Then everyone lives happily ever after once the problem, in this case the tainted water, is discovered and rectified. The water is poured out and the cooler cleaned so nothing like this would happen again.

Although the stars of the movie were Cary Grant and Ginger Rogers, Fox made sure Marilyn Monroe appeared in as many advertisements as possible. At this point she was a hot commodity with fans and a huge moneymaker, no matter how much studio executives doubted she had talent. It would still be a couple more pictures before the studio would decide to let her star in a color picture, but the rise to stardom for her was certainly moving faster than it was even a year prior to this point.

The same old story

Couples who think they are married, but really aren’t, is a storyline popular among Hollywood farces. Classic Hollywood has dealt with this subject many times. Even a director like Alfred Hitchcock made a movie using this storyline with Mr. and Mrs. Smith (1941), not to be confused with the Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt movie.

Fox decided to make a movie along similar lines about a decade later with the aptly named We’re Not Married (1952). The twist here is that there is more than one couple that isn’t married. So instead of focusing on the decision one couple will make, to remain married or go their separate ways, we get to see five such couples. A short movie like this does not allow time for deep character development though.

Bumbling justice of the piece Melvin Bush ends up learning that he did not have the authority to marry five couples when he believed he was justice of the piece. He in fact had not been approved and only discovers this mistake two years later. So he has to send out letters to the five couples in order to tell them they aren’t married.

Ginger Rogers appears as Mrs. Steve Gladwyn. The Gladwyns were the first couple the justice married and they have ended up despising each other, despite appearing in the opening scenes as a happy couple. They eventually decide to remain married in order to keep their lucrative radio show, in which they give advice to other couples, on the air.

Marilyn Monroe is a beauty contest winner. She earns the title of Mrs. Mississippi. When she learns that she isn’t married, she faces the probability that her crown will be lost. This doesn’t deter her though as she decides to compete in the Miss Mississippi pageant, which is much more prestigious. Her “husband” and baby look on in delight, as do hundreds of other males, when she wins the Miss Mississippi crown.

The best comedy of the movie occurs when the “husband” Jeff Norris overhears someone admiring his “wife’s” looks. He asks the man if he likes what he sees. The man replies yes. Then Mr. Norris explains that the woman the man so likes is his wife. The admirer is embarrassed, but Mr. Norris says it is alright. He has to get used to it. This is something Joe DiMaggio never got used to when he married Marilyn Monroe.

The Melrose couple is composed of Louis Calhern and Zsa Zsa Gabor. Calhern is a wealthy businessman who has Gabor as his trophy wife. Gabor decides that she will divorce Calhern to get half his estate. Calhern hates this idea, but when the letter comes stating that the two aren’t married, he goes along with the plot. He gets the last laugh and Gabor ends up fainting when she finds out they were never legally married.

The movie spends most of the time on Monroe and Rogers, as they were the two Fox players in the movie. The other two couples are not developed well enough and don’t contain the name power like Louis Calhern and Zsa Zsa Gabor do.

Nunnally Johnson, who was good friends with Groucho Marx, wrote and produced the movie. Unfortunately, there are no Groucho Marx moments here. The pacing is stilted and the characters are not completely developed. This wouldn’t be the last time Johnson and Monroe would work together. They teamed up again on How to Marry a Millionaire (1953). Johnson wrote and produced the movie, but could not stand working with the new star Monroe. As for this teaming up, the movie has some bright spots, but not enough to warrant more than one viewing.

"Home is where you come when you run out of places."

For the third time in her career, Marilyn Monroe would play a bit part in a movie from a major director. Clash By Night (1952), was less successful than The Asphalt Jungle (1950) and All About Eve (1950). It was not because it lacked star power though. The failings of this movie come in its story.

Clash By Night began as a Broadway play written by Clifford Odets and starring Tallulah Bankhead. The play was a flop on Broadway, but that didn’t stop Hollywood producers from grabbing it. In the play there was a murder and the action was set on Stanton Island. In the movie there is no murder and the location has changed to California.

The movie and play both revolve around a love triangle. There is Mae Doyle, who has gone off to find her fortune and fame only to return back to her brother’s house with nothing. Her brother Joe works on a fishing boat owned by Jerry D’Amato. Jerry has the hots for Mae and because feels like she can’t do any better, she decides to marry Jerry. Things go alright for the married couple. Jerry feels like he has everything in the world. Mae is content with her life, but not happy.

Happiness comes into Mae’s life in the form of Jerry’s best friend Earl. The two begin sneaking behind Jerry’s back. In the play Earl was murdered when Jerry found out about the relationship. In the movie Mae is forgiven for her wrongdoing by Jerry and the two live reasonably happily ever after.

As mentioned above, the star power present in Clash By Night is the biggest reason to watch the movie. Barbara Stanwyck plays the role of Mae. She is her usual tough and scrappy self. It was not a stretch for her to play the part.

Marilyn Monroe appears briefly as Joe’s girlfriend, a cannery worker who contrasts the personality of Mae perfectly. Marilyn’s character has similar aspirations as the young Mae did, but instead of leaving town for the big city, she remains to marry Joe.

Of course when publicity cameras came around to take shots of the cast, there was a lot of attention paid to Marilyn. This did not sit well with Paul Douglas who plays Jerry. Not only is he getting screwed over in the movie, but in the publicity as well. He was not happy that some unknown bit player who appeared on screen for a few minutes was getting all the attention from the cameras.

Rounding out the love triangle is Robert Ryan who plays Earl. He became Marilyn’s only real ally on the set. Paul Douglas did not like her, even before the publicity incident. Barbara Stanwyck was basically indifferent to the young actress. And director Fritz Lang could not stand her.

Lang was a tremendously successful filmmaker in Germany. His movies Metropolis (1927) and M (1931) were critically acclaimed. The odd thing is that Lang’s films were praised by the Nazis. Hitler was a huge fan of Metropolis. His wife was even a big supporter of the party. But in the face of fascism, Lang decided to make the move to America. He arrived in Hollywood and turned out some decent movies, such as Fury (1936) and The Big Heat (1953).

He was an extremely controlling person. He was notorious for being hard on actors. This did not sit well with the shy Marilyn Monroe. She was scared of him. Her acting coach Natasha Lytess would give Marilyn pointers after every take. Lang did not like this as he felt his authority was being undermined. It was not a pleasant experience for Marilyn once Lang got Lytess thrown off the set.

Today Lang is not as well known as he probably should be. He was a pioneer in the silent cinema and his first sound picture dealt with the murder of children. But like Sergei Eisenstein something happened when he left his home country that prevented him from continuing to be a great filmmaker. That being said, he still deserves a place with the elite directors of cinema.

Back from overseas.

At this point in her career, Marilyn Monroe was typecast as either a dumb-blonde secretary or girlfriend or her own woman in a B-comedy. The first example of the later is Love Nest (1951).

Love Nest is not that bad of a movie for being a B-comedy. It breaks no new ground, but it is good entertainment. The story revolves around the Scott couple, Jim and Connie. Connie, played by June Haver, has bought an apartment building in New York. This is a huge surprise to Jim, played by William Lundigan, when he arrives home from the army. He expected a nice quiet apartment. Instead he has become landlord for an apartment building that needs a lot of fixing up.

The comedy comes as the couple tries to improve their love nest and as Jim is continually interrupted from his writing by problems that occur in the apartment building.

As with any apartment building, single tenants become interested in each other. This is the case for Eadie Gaynor, played by Leatrice Joy. Eadie falls for Charley Patterson, played by Frank Fay. Charley is an older gentleman, while Eadie is Connie’s best friend. It appears that the love next is expanding to include two happy couples. Here are where complications are thrown in.

First with Connie and Jim. Jim tells Connie that his friend, Bobby, from the army has written him and wants to stay in their apartment building. Connie says alright, as she wouldn’t want to look like she discriminates against veterans. Connie is shocked when “Bobby” shows up and is actually Marilyn Monroe, who plays Roberta Stevens, known to friends as Bobbie.

Connie doesn’t like what her husband has done to her and is jealous of Roberta. But she can not worry too much about this problem as it is discovered that Charley is not a rich old man, but rather a con artist. Connie fears for her best friend Eadie, as the two are planning on getting married. Jim can’t believe that the nice old man is really a criminal.

Charley admits that he is a criminal, although he pledged that he would not revert to his old ways once he married Eadie, as he believes he has finally found true love. Eadie feel bad for Charley, as do Jim and Connie, but things work out for the couple. Connie has the apartment building running well and Jim gets an opportunity to be a writer. Charley offers to tell Jim his life story for a biography. The book ends up being a best seller and the couple ends up happily ever after.

The acting is hit or miss here. That probably has something to do with the characters though. Charley and Roberta are the most interesting characters and Frank Fay and Marilyn Monroe give the best performances. Leatrice Joy is also good, but June Haver and William Lundigan are nothing special. Their characters might be the focus of the story, but the story is about two common people trying to make things work. So the actors don’t have to be of the Shakespearian quality to make this work.

Will you love me in December?

Like any aspiring star in the studio system, Marilyn Monroe had to make her fair share of B-movies with a small role for her and a stock story. One such movie is As Young as You Feel (1951).

The movie is about a man who has reached the age of mandatory retirement at his big company. The company is so big that it is called the Acme Company, this originally is what made the studio system great. Anyway, the man wants to remain on the job as he has nothing to do in retirement and his family can’t stand having him around. So he decides to dress up as the president of the company and do a routine inspection of his branch’s plant in order to change the company policy.

Here is where the story has a bit of social value. It is an indictment of the big businesses in the capitalist system. No one at the branch knows what the president of the company looks like, so they believe the imposter. The head of the branch has a secretary who is played by Marilyn Monroe. She tries to calm her boss, but he is frantic and flustered when he meets the “president” of the company.

Things go well for our formerly retired hero as he tours the plant and makes sure the policy is rewritten. Things begin to go wrong though when he is asked to speak at a local business meeting and accepts. Newspapermen are there and snap the imposter’s picture. They run an article praising the “president” of the Acme Company for his great speech. Well, the real president of the company sees this and wants to know what is going on.

In the end, the man is exposed as an imposter, but gets to remain on the job even after the age of retirement because he likes it and has done a good job. Everything ends happily.

At least on the screen that is. In Marilyn Monroe’s personal life, some troubles occurred during the making of the movie. Her long time friend and agent Johnny Hyde took ill and died. Hyde was an agent at William and Morris and he got her the part in All About Eve (1950) and a nice seven-year contract with 20^th Century-Fox. He even offered to marry her and leave all his money to her, but she didn’t accept as she didn’t truly love him. She did, however, make all the funeral arrangements.

One bright spot in Monroe’s personal life came while she was shooting a scene one day. Elia Kazan and Arthur Miller walked onto the set. Kazan wanted Miller to see Monroe. Why Elia Kazan would care a thing about an unknown bit-player is anybody's guess, but Miller was quite impressed by Marilyn Monroe. She felt the same about him. This first impression each got of the other lasted a long time and when both were available, they married.

"Why do they always look like unhappy rabbits?"

Few movies have been accepted better by the Motion Picture Arts and Sciences than All About Eve (1950), which received 14 Academy Award nominations. Only Titanic (1997) has received that amount. The movie won six Oscars, including best picture. It is similar to Titanic in that way. It is dissimilar because the audience doesn’t know what will happen in the end, unlike the ship that is destined for an iceberg.

Ironically, for a movie about two competing Broadway actresses, Bette Davis and Anne Baxter competed against each other for the Best Actress Oscar. Neither won. In fact in a year in which Sunset Blvd. also was released, and Gloria Swanson was nominated for her performance, no actress who played an actress in a movie won the award. It went to Judy Holliday for Born Yesterday. It is believed by some that Baxter and Davis split the votes, and had they not then one of them would have won the award.

On the surface it appears that All About Eve is a heartwarming story about a young actress, Eve Harrington, played by Baxter, who comes of age to become the star of Broadway. But in the realm of the theater, and Hollywood, appearances aren’t everything. There is a nasty underbelly to the theatre world and it is captured perfectly here by Joseph L. Mankiewicz who wrote and directed the picture.

Margo Channing, played by Bette Davis, is an aging Broadway star. She knows it, the critics know it, the producers know and her friends know it. The fans might know it, but they are always the last to figure these things out – or so the belief is in Hollywood and Broadway.

One night after giving a stellar performance, Margo retreats to her dressing room where she meets an adoring fan named Eve. Eve tells Margo a sob story about how she is an actress from Milwaukee who saw Margo one night in San Francisco and was so impressed with her performance that she has followed the actress around ever since. The ushers at the theater can vouch for Eve because they have seen her attend every one of Margo’s performances.

Margo is flattered and Eve is brought on as her secretary. Soon Eve becomes Margo’s understudy. Margo gets a kick out of this because she adores the attention. She also gets an opportunity to be young again through Eve. But soon understudy becomes actress and actress will become competitor for Margo. This Margo doesn’t like. But there isn’t much she can do about it.

Eve has met all of Margo’s theater friends. There is the critic Addison De Witt, played brilliantly by George Sanders. Sanders was an odd man who won an Oscar for his role as the theater critic, a role in which he was perfectly cast as his personality and De Witt’s match well.

Hugh Marlowe plays Lloyd Richards, a successful Broadway playwright. Richards’ wife, Karen, played by Celeste Holm, is Eve’s biggest supporter in the beginning. She encourages the actress to continue on. Like Margo, things backfire on Karen as she finds herself competing with the young actress for her husband’s attention.

Margo and her friends are stuck having to watch the monster Eve take over Broadway and become a huge star. They seem powerless to stop her, all that is except De Witt. He is similar to Eve. He does some checking in Eve’s past and finds out that she really isn’t an actress from Milwaukee, but just some conniving woman who had to leave Milwaukee because of a scandal involving her boss, a married man.

De Witt is as conniving as Eve and does not blow her cover. He sits back and watches Eve get all the rewards that come with being a Broadway star. The movie ends with Eve getting an award and then being confronted by an adoring fan, who happens to be an aspiring actress. The whole cycle begins again.

Marilyn Monroe made an impression of Joseph Mankiewicz with her performance in The Asphalt Jungle. He cast her as De Witt’s girlfriend, another aspiring actress. Her style to getting jobs is different from that of Eve’s. Miss Caswell is unsure of herself. Eve is not. This is the reason why Eve is the star and Miss Caswell is not. Marilyn Monroe at this point was unsure of herself and this might be a reason why it would be three more years before she became a star, although all the star qualities she possessed were present for the short time she was on screen.

"One way or another, we all work for our vice."

The perfect crime is a topic many stories and movies have dealt with. The perfect crime doesn’t necessarily have to be perfect at all. Things can go wrong with the plan, but as long as the criminals get away with their crime then the crime can be considered perfect. Robbery is a popular subject in fiction because it allows for the perfect crime, but also allows the author to create a moral story if the crime happens to go wrong.

The Asphalt Jungle (1950) is one of those movies that deals with the perfect crime. Like Ocean’s Eleven and Seven Thieves (1960), this movie brings a group of the top criminals in the area together for a job.

Since this is a pretty typical story, with the brains of the operation bringing various personalities together in hopes of scoring a big load, there is not much to describe about the movie. Other than the brains of the operation has just come out of prison, wants one last big job before retirement and uses his connections to find someone who will finance the operation. With finances in place the brains brings together the people he needs for his plan. The robbery is then executed. In The Asphalt Jungle the criminals get the money. It isn’t until they have the movie that things go wrong. The noise from the nitroglycerin blast to open the safe is so loud that alarms from other buildings in the area start ringing, bringing the cops. One of the officers wounds one of the robbers. With the criminal in custody it is only a matter of time before the bunch is found and brought to justice.

John Huston brought this story to the screen. The Asphalt Jungle was originally a novel written by W.R. Burnett. Burnett was one of Huston’s favorite writers. The two first worked together on High Sierra (1941), when Huston was just a screenwriter.

The movie was nominated for four Academy Awards, including best picture. It is still a good watch, but there have been similar movies that have come out in the past 50 years, so the subject matter doesn’t seem so fresh today.

The movie is best remembered today as being Marilyn Monroe’s first big break into Hollywood. She had been an actress for over a year and had appeared in a couple movies before The Asphalt Jungle. But this movie would establish her in Hollywood.

She plays the “niece” of the lawyer who puts up the financing for the crime job. She does not appear on screen for very long, but she does make an impression. When the police come to the lawyer’s house they find him with his mistress Monroe. Marilyn is in fits over what is going to happen to her “uncle.”

This role would lead to similar roles throughout her career as the elegant, dumb blonde. Of course this was the case with most actors who made it as stars in Hollywood. Boris Karloff was always typecast in horror roles, as was Bela Lugosi. Humphrey Bogart in gangster roles and John Wayne in westerns.

It should be noted that John Huston directed Marilyn Monroe in what many consider her first major role, in The Asphalt Jungle, and in her final role, as Roslyln in The Misfits (1961). Both came a long way between the two pictures.