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Tag Archives: Richard V. Heermance

It Happened on Fifth Avenue (April 19, 1947)

Roy Del Ruth’s It Happened on Fifth Avenue has a small but loyal following. Some people will even tell you that it’s better than It’s a Wonderful Life (1946). They are wrong. It’s a Wonderful Life is the far superior film. But It Happened on Fifth Avenue is still a great picture; warm, human, funny, and perfect for the holiday season.

In a plot inspired by the severe housing shortage that followed World War II, Don DeFore plays an ex-serviceman named Jim Bullock (not to be confused with Jim J. Bullock) who’s thrown out of his rented room under protest. (He’s carried out handcuffed to his bed, wearing only his underwear and his hat.) Dejected, Bullock stews while sitting all alone on a bench in Central Park. He’s approached by Aloysius T. McKeever (Victor Moore), who — with his tuxedo, top hat, and little dog — looks like a gonzo version of Rich Uncle Pennybags (a.k.a. “Mr. Monopoly”). McKeever and his little dog live in one of the stateliest mansions on Fifth Avenue, but they enter through the back, because it’s boarded up while its real owner, multimillionaire Michael J. “Mike” O’Connor, winters in West Virginia.

McKeever lives lightly off O’Connor’s wealth. The only thing he steals is food from the pantry, and he acts as a responsible caretaker. The only downside is that he has to turn off all the lights and make himself scarce every night when security guards sweep the mansion, but it’s a small price to pay.

Bullock settles into McKeever’s way of life quickly, and respects McKeever’s rules, but Bullock can’t help inviting old friends who need housing to join him in the mansion. Eventually, the O’Connors themselves wind up living with McKeever and his big group of friends. The first is the O’Connors’ daughter, Trudy (Gale Storm), who hides the fact that she’s an O’Connor because she likes McKeever’s way of life. Then her father (Charles Ruggles) and her mother (Ann Harding) reluctantly get into the act after their daughter begs them to pass themselves off as destitute people in need of housing.

The O’Connors have been estranged for some time, but their bizarre new living arrangement helps them fall in love with each other again. When Mike O’Connor comes home after a long, hard day of shoveling snow for dimes, he can’t resist the smell of his wife’s slumgullion wafting from the kitchen. It takes him back to better days.

It Happened on Fifth Avenue is a cute movie. Its message is the same as the message of It’s a Wonderful Life, that no man is poor who has friends, and it also ends with a Christmas miracle. It does it in a more contrived and comedic way than It’s a Wonderful Life, but it’s still a sweet, funny, and very enjoyable movie.

South of Monterey (June 15, 1946)

William Nigh’s South of Monterey is another dreary Cisco Kid programmer from Monogram Pictures. Gilbert Roland, in his second appearance as the character, cuts a dashing figure and is always fun to watch, but overall this one is a real snoozer.

I wasn’t exactly knocked out of my seat by Roland’s first turn as the character in The Gay Cavalier (1946), and his second outing is more of the same, with a by-the-numbers story and an anticlimactic finale. As before, Roland is fun to watch as a smooth Lothario and laid-back hero. It’s everything else about this picture that’s the problem.

This time around, Cisco, his sidekick Baby (Frank Yaconelli), and his merry band of Mexican outlaws have a rival, called “The Silver Bandit.” It should come as no surprise to veterans of Saturday afternoon matinees that Cisco and his crew will be blamed for the nefarious exploits of The Silver Bandit.

South of Monterey combines the two hoariest concepts in these types of films; the evil landowner bleeding the poor farmers dry and the young woman in danger of being forced to marry a man she doesn’t love.

The main villain of the piece is the local tax collector, Bennet (Harry Woods), who repossesses peasants’ land based on non-payment of sky-high taxes and then resells them for a profit. The young woman in danger of being forced into a loveless marriage is Carmelita (Iris Flores), the sister of local commandante of police Auturo (Martin Garralaga). Carmelita is engaged to a fiery young activist named Carlos Mandreno (George J. Lewis), but her brother is angling to have Carlos thrown in jail and his sister married off to his friend Bennet.

The film tries hard to achieve an exciting, south of the border flavor, and occasionally succeeds. Roland doesn’t play Cisco as a Boy Scout — he’s a tequila-drinking, womanizing, cigarette-smoking rapscallion. Also, there are four songs in the film sung in Spanish, one of which leads Cisco to pay Carmelita one of his typically over-the-top compliments, “Your voice has the sweetness of a meadowlark, and the softness of mission bells at twilight.”

South of Monterey isn’t a terrible programmer, it’s just a fairly typical Monogram cheapie. The main reason for me that it was a step down from The Gay Cavalier was the climactic fight, which was a fistfight. Yawn.

As he ably demonstrated in Captain Kidd (1945) and The Gay Cavalier, Roland was a hell of a sword fighter, so it’s a shame to see him swinging haymakers and smashing furniture when his blade was no doubt screaming out for blood. I know I was.