The Girl from Jones Beach is a 1949 comedy starring Reagan, alongside Virginia Mayo and Eddie Bracken. Written by I.A.L. Diamond, before he teamed up with Billy Wilder, it's about the search to discover the identity of a certain swimsuit model. Yes, high-minded stuff.
Critics of the day thought the script was weakish, but they liked Virginia Mayo in a bathing suit. They really liked that. A lot. That's pretty much all they could talk about. Reagan is in the movie, but the critics apparently weren't moved to applaud his acting. Maybe he should have tried a swimsuit.
The movie runs well shy of an hour and a half, but the story still seems stretched as thin as Boardwalk taffy.
Have a Long Island wine with The Girl from Jones Beach. Del Vino Vineyards is in Northport. They offer a rosé which blends Syrah, Merlot, and Cabernet Franc. That's a blend I don't think I've ever heard of in a pink wine. Sounds interesting for $20.
The 1964 version of Hemingway's short story, The Killers was done first in 1946. It was done again in the '50s, a Russian production, which is probably on permanent loan to Putin these days.
The noirish film has Reagan appearing with an incredible array of acting talent: like Lee Marvin, John Cassavetes, Angie Dickinson, Clu Gulager, Claude Akins, and Norman Fell. It was Reagan's final acting job before entering politics, that is, if you don't count politics as acting.
There's a lot of killing going on here. Most of it is pretty senseless. Hell, all of it is senseless. Why all the killing? For money, of course. And love. Nah, it's all about the money. The movie was supposed to have been one of the early made-for-TV movies, but NBC thought America would go nuts with all the violence, so they scrapped their plans to air it. Too bad. America went nuts anyway and started slurping up the violence with a big soup spoon. The movie was just a bit ahead of its time.
Let Hemingway guide us to a wine for one of his short stories. He liked the wines of Valpolicella greatly. He even wrote about them. One of his characters says Valpolicella has a "softness that soothes and a warmth that grows." You don't have to twist my arm to have an Amarone. It's a bit of a splurge, maybe $50 for a good one.
Dark Victory, the 1939 weeper, stars Bette Davis, George Brent, Humphrey Bogart, and Geraldine Fitzgerald. Reagan's smallish part is almost lost in the melodrama.
A wealthy heiress has a good news/bad news visit with a doctor. The bad news: she has a brain tumor. The good news: they can operate. More bad news: it didn't work. More good news: she's in love with her doc. More bad news: she'll die soon, but go blind first. Since she was able to keep getting out of bed every morning, we assume she must have had terrific health insurance.
After all that illness and dashing of high hopes, we could use a glass of wine. Melodramatic Wines has a Cabernet Sauvignon/Petite Sirah blend called Melodramatic Darkness. You had me at "melodramatic." $12 at your supermarkets and finer gas stations.
No comments:
Post a Comment