Maisie Was a Lady, the fourth film in the MAISIE franchise, is the best made of the nine MAISIE films. (I take a stab at describing the MAISIE series here.) Cinematically, it’s the most polished. Its script is the tightest (the MAISIE dream-team of Mary McCall, Jr. and Betty Reinhardt was joined by Capra-BFF MylesContinue reading “Maisie Was A Lady (1941)”
Category Archives: Ann Sothern
Gold Rush Maisie (1940)
Gold Rush Maisie was the third film in the ten-film MAISIE series, and the first that was not based on stories by Wilson Collison. (I take a stab at describing the MAISIE enterprise here.) That freedom allowed scriptwriter Mary McCall, Jr. and the series’s star Ann Sothern to imagine their picara heroine’s trajectory their ownContinue reading “Gold Rush Maisie (1940)”
Congo Maisie (1940)
Congo Maisie was the second of the popular MAISIE series starring Ann Sothern as the eponymous showgirl-picara. (I try to capture the gist of the whole ten-film “Maisie” enterprise here.) It was also the last of the films to be based on the novels by Wilson Collison, who had earlier written the play on whichContinue reading “Congo Maisie (1940)”
Maisie (1939)
Maisie was the first of MGM’s immensely popular series of ten films spanning the war years, starring Ann Sothern as Maisie Ravier, a showgirl picara wandering from situation to situation, setting to setting, job to job, and genre to genre. Beautiful, sexy, honest, endowed with an Irish-inflected proletarian p.o.v., an acute observer with a bitingContinue reading “Maisie (1939)”
The Maisie Films
Between 1940 and 1947, MGM made ten films in which Ann Sothern starred as Maisie, one of the most unusual recurring female characters Hollywood conceived in the 1940s. The MAISIE films were an immensely popular series. Conceived as B-films by MGM, they are pre-eminent examples of how some B-films and series transcended their programmer status.Continue reading “The Maisie Films”
Folies Bergère de Paris (1935)
Folies Bergère de Paris has become one of my favorite musical comedies of the period. It was Maurice Chevalier’s last American film before the end of World War II, and it’s one of his best. At the moment, I’d place it up there with Love Me Tonight. I’ve always taken Chevalier in small doses. HisContinue reading “Folies Bergère de Paris (1935)”
Hooray for Love (1935)
I’m crazy fond of Hooray for Love. It has a limited — very limited — legendary status because of a spectacular number performed by Bill Robinson, Fats Waller, Jeni LeGon, and an ensemble of some of the best Black Broadway performers of the time. It’s truly a phenomenal piece. (I’ll embed a video of itContinue reading “Hooray for Love (1935)”