A pair of barn-burners with two strong female leads in undercooked roles:
KEEPER OF THE FLAME (1942) (B-minus) - Celebrated war correspondent Steve O'Malley (Spencer Tracy) returns stateside during the middle of the war to pursue a biography of a beloved national hero who died in a car crash, and that means finding access to his widow, Christine Forrest (Katharine Hepburn). Yes, it's Hepburn and Tracy, but there is no flame between them.
Competing with his fellow news hounds and verbally sparring with the locals, O'Malley lands his prey and soon has access to the great man's archives, though you can tell off the bat that something's not adding up here. Ol' Steve surely will dig up the truth. Tracy is likeable but Hepburn is cold and melodramatic, a little out of touch with the loose cast around her. The supporting cast includes a wonderful turn by Audrie Christie as Jane Harding, a journalistic colleague of O'Malley's who is sharp and sassy and the life of the party here. She and Percy Kilbride as a wisecracking cabdriver leaven this with some sideways screwball comedy amid the gloom and glory.
This one from George Cuckor ("Gaslight," "The Philadelphia Story"), which landed in theaters a year after Pearl Harbor, lays the patriotism on awfully thick. And it's one of those old-fashioned creaky scripts in which a character uses most of the final 10 minutes to reveal everything in one long monologue just to wrap it all up.
Spotted: A trio of familiar faces: Forrest Tucker (TV's "F Troop") as the widow's surly cousin; future blacklist victim Howard Da Silva as the widow's grumpy gatekeeper; and Pa Kettle himself, Percy Kilbride, as the cranky cabbie full of practical advice and putdowns.
THE FURIES (1950) (C+) - Barbara Stanwyck is constantly forced to be lady-like as a frustrated heiress in this western about a vain rancher who is just begging for a comeuppance. This has just too much bellowing by Walter Huston as T.C. Jeffords, the father of Stanwyck's Vance Jeffords, who is appalled by her father jeopardizing his empire by passing out IOUs all over the New Mexico territory and beyond, not to mention the gold-digging bride he brings home one day.
Vance is sympathetic to the Mexican homesteaders who camp out on the vast property, and she has a more business affinity than romantic interest in rival Rip Darrow (Wendell Corey), who not only asserts a claim to part of the property but is too much of a cad for her to take seriously. This would-be epic from Anthony Mann meanders too much in the first half and struggles in the second half to make the intrigue jell. It doesn't help that Mann's reins on Stanwyck (the Parker Posey of her time) are way too tight. The movie finally does come through with a pretty clever payoff -- and some redemption for Vance -- but it takes nearly two hours to get there. And if you're not a regular fan of westerns, that can be an awfully dusty trail to wander down.
Spotted: Prolific TV character actor Frank Ferguson ("Lassie," "My Friend Flicka") in the familiar role of a doctor.
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