THE MT VOID
05/10/24 -- Vol. 42, No. 45, Whole Number 2327
Co-Editor: Mark Leeper,
mleeper@optonline.netCo-Editor: Evelyn Leeper,
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Topics:
Mini Reviews, Part 24 (I WAS A MALE WAR BRIDE,
KISSES FOR MY PRESIDENT, A SLIGHTLY PREGNANT MAN)
(film reviews by Mark R. Leeper
and Evelyn C. Leeper)
Rather, the Documentary (film review by Art Stadlin)
Ancestors and Descendants (letter of comment
by Paul Dormer)
This Week's Reading (RICHARD III: HIS LIFE & CHARACTER,
REVIEWED IN THE LIGHT OF RECENT RESEARCH)
(book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
===================================================================
TOPIC: Mini Reviews, Part 24 (film reviews by Mark R. Leeper and
Evelyn C. Leeper)
This is the twenty-fourth batch of mini-reviews, all relating to
men finding themselves in women's roles. (Note that the review of
KISSES FOR MY PRESIDENT is a reprint of Evelyn's review from
04/05/24.)
I WAS A MALE WAR BRIDE (1949): I WAS A MALE WAR BRIDE came out a
few years after the war, when the bombed-out European setting
could be used for a comedy. (In general, most wartime comedies
were set in the States, or well behind enemy lines, e.g., London.)
Cary Grant is inexplicably a French army officer, though he
retains his Mid-Atlantic accent. (The film is based on a true
story, although the "male war bride" in reality was a Belgian
resistance fighter.)
Most of the film has the typical boy-meets-girl, boy-hates-girl-
and-girl-hates-boy, and then boy-and-girl-realize-they-love-each-
other structure, with only the last part dealing with the
(supposedly) amusing aspects of having the bride be in the
American military and the groom be the non-citizen.
(Note: Catherine's line about Grant being "an octopus with hands"
got recycled in another Howard Hawks film (THE THING FROM ANOTHER
WORLD) as "Well, you had moments of kind of making like an
octopus. I never saw so so many hands in all my life".)
I am also reviewing here KISSES FOR MY PRESIDENT and A SLIGHTLY
PREGNANT MAN. Note that all three are basically about how
difficult it is for a man to be treated like a woman even when
people know he is a man, and how we are supposed to sympathize
with him. Contrast this with TOOTSIE, where a man is being
treated like a woman because people think he is a woman. In
TOOTSIE you sympathize with Hoffman, but also with all the women
who are treated the way he is. In I WAS A MALE WAR BRIDE, KISSES
FOR MY PRESIDENT, and A SLIGHTLY PREGNANT MAN, there is no
suggestion that there is anything wrong with treating women the
way they are treated in those films. [-ecl]
Released theatrically 26 August 1949.
Film Credits:
<
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0041498/reference/>
What others are saying:
<
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/i_was_a_male_war_bride>
KISSES FOR MY PRESIDENT (1964): I just watched KISSES FOR MY
PRESIDENT, and a painful experience it was too. It was the first
film with a female President of the United States, but it was
just
as patronizing as you might expect, and with an ending that meets
all one's expectations for a film like this made in 1960.
Everyone
seems totally clueless about having a "First Gentleman" instead of
a "First Lady": the bedroom assigned to him was more feminine that
anything outside of a farce, he is left to wander around the White
House rather than being taken around to familiarize himself with
it, and people still treat the President as if she's still a
housewife. From the post-Hillary, post-Chastain era, this looks
totally ludicrous. Actually, it probably looked fairly ludicrous
even then. Polly Bergen is at times at least somewhat
Presidential, though not consistently. Fred MacMurray is totally
at a loss as "First Gentleman", even though Bergen must have had a
long career in politics before she became President. And the
Secret Service seems not just inept, but positively derelict in
duty. (Yes, this was made before the Kennedy assassination, but
even so the Secret Service would not have let the First Gentleman
get in a car alone with a clearly unbalanced foreign dictator, or
visit an ex-girlfriend alone without explicit instructions from
him.) [-ecl]
Released theatrically 21 August 1964.
Film Credits:
<
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058266/reference>
What others are saying:
<
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/kisses_for_my_president>
A SLIGHTLY PREGNANT MAN (1973): A SLIGHTLY PREGNANT MAN stars
Marcello Mastroianni as the title character and Catherine Deneuve
as his wife in this marginally science fictional story. When
Mastroianni starts feeling sick and developing a pot belly, he
goes to the doctor, who explains that the reason is that
Mastroianni is pregnant. This is because of, the doctor says, all
the artificial foods we have been eating. The question of how
conception actually happened is not addressed, nor that of where
the fetus is developing, nor that of how delivery will happen, so
clearly there is a lot of fodder for the IMDb "Goofs" section.
What is addressed is the social aspect of all this, especially as
more men around the world report pregnancies. One of a group of
women discussing this says that her husband would get an abortion,
and another adds, "And there would be no jail [for him or the
doctor] either." A maternity fashion house starts a line of
"paternity" clothes, advertised just as patronizingly as their
maternity clothes are. A man who is given stereotypical gay
characteristics says he specifically wanted to meet Mastroianni,
and then asks if he feels that this is turning Mastroianni into a
female. Well, okay, this is a film of its time, and the attitudes
it reflects are those of its time. Just watch it in a double
feature with I WAS A MALE WAR BRIDE and get a double dose. [-ecl]
Released theatrically 20 September 1973 (France).
Film Credits:
<
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070960/reference>
What others are saying:
<
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/a_slightly_pregnant_man>
===================================================================
TOPIC: Rather, the Documentary (film review by Art Stadlin)
Last night we watched RATHER, the Dan Rather documentary now
playing on Netflix. It was better than I expected and definitely
worth watching for anyone who harbors an interest in the history
of TV journalism or TV history in general.
Where to start... I suppose this documentary on the life of Dan
Rather might also double as his eulogy, with "Courage" engraved on
his tombstone. Of course he's still going strong, even at 92.
Snippets from his daughter, grandson, and several other notables
in the industry all sing his praises. A patriotic man... A man
with deep religious faith... A proud 4th-generation Texan...
His critics, mostly on the right-wing of politics, branded Dan as
a liberal. And in those days, when Americans got their nightly TV
news from only three sources, the TV press garnered significant
influence. Dan's in-your-face style, unafraid to ask the
difficult questions, was not well received by those in power who
had lots to hide. This documentary covers it all, the lows and
misses as well as his journalistic triumphs.
In the category of documentaries, this was a good one. Fast
paced, lots of actual photos and video all the way back to Dan's
start as a sportscaster on a Texas radio station. As Dan tells
it, sportscasting taught him how to ad-lib, to fill the dead air.
He would need that skill later as he covered so many live events,
like the drama in Dallas involving the assignation of JFK.
From Dan's reporting in the war zones, to his seat in the CBS
anchor chair, to his on-air role at 60-Minutes, he pushed to get
the facts and bring the truth forward, without regard to whose
feathers were ruffled. Honest and hard-hitting journalism was his
passion. And then things went off the rails with the reporting of
Presidential candidate G.W. Bush's military service. As that
unfolded, Dan himself became the news. And he parted ways with
CBS, after an on-air apology for getting the story wrong.
But that wasn't the end of Dan Rather's career. Today he leads a
team that writes an on-line newsletter on Substack, named Steady -
a word his Dad would say often to Dan while he was bedridden as a
child. Dan got better and enlisted for military service in Korea.
But he got kicked out when they discovered his rheumatic fever.
He found a way to serve through journalism. And the rest is
history.
<
https://www.netflix.com/title/81772239>
<
https://steady.substack.com>
[-as]
===================================================================
TOPIC: TERRAFORMERS (letter of comment by Richie Bielak)
In response to Joe Karpierz's review of TERRAFORMERS in the
05/03/24 issue of the MT VOID, Richie Bielak writes:
Thanks for the review of TERRAFORMERS. I recently added this
book to my input queue. I was intrigued by its author, when I
listened to her podcast "Our Opinions Are Correct"--the episode
on the Turing test). Now I will move the book closer to the front
on my queue. [-rb]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Ancestors and Descendants (letter of comment by Paul Dormer)
In response to Evelyn's comments on word use and mis-use in the
05/03/24 issue of the MT VOID, Paul Dormer writes:
I remember, some years ago, seeing a description of a forthcoming
TV programme. It was about someone setting up a company to
provide office lunches. The person was described as an ancestor
of the Earl of Sandwich. [-pd]
===================================================================
TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about TO PROVE A VILLAIN edited by
Taylor Littleton (MacMillan, ISBN 978-0-023-71360-6), which
included an excerpt from Clements R. Markham titled "Richard III:
A Doubtful Verdict Reviewed". This is an excerpt from Markham's
RICHARD III: HIS LIFE & CHARACTER, REVIEWED IN THE LIGHT OF RECENT
RESEARCH (1906) (CreateSpace, ISBN 978-1-508-60166-1), but it
turns out that the entire work is available relatively cheaply, as
well as from Project Gutenberg, from the Internet Archive, and
through Hoopla (at least from my library).
Reading the full text, I am even more convinced that Josephine Tey
used it as her major source for THE DAUGHTER OF TIME. It is not
just the historical facts. Tey has basically the same
reminiscence of the green and wooded England before everything got
divided and fenced in. Tey takes that Richard's mother was the
"Rose of Raby" (as mentioned in Markham) and creates an entire
historical novel in THE DAUGHTER OF TIME called "The Rose of
Raby". She has the same minor details, such as Richard paying for
cross-Channel transport with his fur-lined coat, or about Caxton
bringing printing to England. Markham calls John Morton "one of
the greatest pluralists on record"; Tey refers to him as "the
greatest pluralist on record". And so on.
Obviously Markham has more than Tey could cover, including the
background of the War of the Roses, detailed descriptions of the
various battles, and so on. But much of it will be very familiar
to anyone who has read THE DAUGHTER OF TIME.
In fairness, Tey does mention Markham. When Grant asks Carradine
when the rehabilitation of Richard III began, Carradine says it
was in Tudor times and then, "A man Buck wrote a vindication in
the seventeenth century. And Horace Walpole in the eighteenth.
And someone called Markham in the nineteenth." But this is not
much credit for such a major source.
At any rate, it you're looking for a well-researched non-fiction
source on the Richard III controversy, I would recommend Markham.
[Oh, and Josephine Tey claims that Henry VII was the first king to
have an armed bodyguard. This is apparently not true; other
sources say that Richard II started having a bodyguard toward the
end of his reign.]
[-ecl]
===================================================================
Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.
--Bertrand Russell
MT VOID, 05/10/24 -- Vol. 42, No. 45, Whole Number 2327
Re: MT VOID, 05/10/24 -- Vol. 42, No. 45, Whole Number 2327