Yes, People May Talk-With Cary Grant’s People Will Talk In Mind

Yes, People May Talk-With Cary Grant’s People Will Talk In Mind 

 

 

 

DVD Review

By Bradley Fox

People Will Talk, starring Cary Grant, Jeanne Crain, Walter Slezak, directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1951

No question, and both parties would agree, did agree that one of the few things that held them together during their short finally acrimonious fling was their mutual love of  old film, films produced from their youth time of the 1950s and before. Those “both parties” being Sam Lowell and Melinda Loring, members in good standing of the Riverdale Class of 1964, who had been “reunited” if that was the right word as they prepared to commemorate their fiftieth anniversary class reunion (celebrate is too strong and positive a word for such an occasion fifty years out). We will get to the details of how that now acknowledged ill-fated fling got off the ground in a moment.

Since this is a review of sorts of one of the movies that they watched together on some weekend night when their stars were aligned a little mention of the way they were able to through the wonders of modern communication technology view the film is in order. Sam had been for the previous decade a member of Netflix and for a couple of years prior to their meeting again had been on a black and white film tear since Netflix had a wealth of such old time material either on DVD or through streaming. The night they watched the film, Cary Grant and Jeanne Crain’s People Will Talk, a title that had the virtue if it was a virtue of stating what their fellow classmates presumably did when they heard after the reunion that Sam and Melinda were an “item” to use the term of the high school times to signify a serious relationship, all Sam had to do was a little mumbo-jumbo with his remote and follow the prompts on the screen and there they were ready to enjoy the film at their leisure. (Sam did not remember whether they had the standard popcorn and soda that night that had gone with watching films at the now long closed Strand Theater over on Lyons Street off of Riverdale Square in their youth.)          

Strictly speaking a review (of sorts, remember) of this Cary Grant film does not require us to go into the details of the failed Sam Lowell-Melinda Loring romance but the way Sam explained one of the issues raised in the film and the way Zack James, a mutual friend of Sam and mine, who told it to me I thought it best to bring in a short summary for the curious, or the salacious as the case may be. The long and short of it was that Sam and Melinda had never gotten together in high school, period. Sam had been interested in the popular and pretty Melinda but had found out through his schoolboy grapevine that she was an “ice queen” meaning by the term that Sam and his corner boys who hung out at Tonio’s Pizza Parlor used at the time that she was, one, “spoken for” by Jack Jenkins the great halfback of the championship Riverdale High Warriors (she had been head cheerleader junior and senior year), two, was not interested in guys like Sam who had two million facts packed in their brains but with no real social skills, and three, she was definitely not interested in raggedy-assed guys (Sam’s expression) from the wrong side of the tracks, meaning guys with no dough to show her a good time. So that was that in 1964.    

Fast forward to 2013 at a time when Sam having reconciled, or having thought he had reconciled, with a lot of his anger at the hassle of growing up poor in Riverdale and having made his peace with his family from which he had been estranged for various periods over the years since high school, decided that that he would check out his 50^th anniversary class reunion with the idea of attending the event. Naturally, which is probably true of every high school class in the world since Adam and Eve maybe before somebody, someone who stayed around the town organizes these kind of events. That was the case here when Delores Riley put things together and given the wonders of modern technology he had signed up for the class reunion website she set up. Easy enough. Once on the site he noticed that Melinda Loring’s name (females listed under their maiden names and married names if such was the case in parentheses) was among those who had signed up.

Sam, having been three times divorced and “single” at that moment noticed that Melinda had been twice divorced and “single” as well so on a whim, no, more like a hope he decided to send her a private e-mail to see if she remembered him. They struck up an e-mail exchange that lasted until the reunion where they finally met up again, and they left the hall together that night. Here is the strange part, here is why they both thought that reunion night that the stars had been aligned. Sam had gotten treacherous misinformation though the grapevine (that damn Ducky Drake who he had relied on to find out if she was “spoken for” had his own interest in her and sabotaged him). Before Jack Jenkins scooped her up she had told him she was very interested in Sam, loved that in class he had those two million facts to impress the teacher (and her) with. That formed the basis for their trying to recapture those long ago lost moments.                   

Of course we know, since I have already mentioned it, as Sam said to Zach, “you can’t go home again,” and their short fling got hung up on the tender mercies that Melinda wanted to get married and Sam, not opposed to living together, had had with three failed marriages enough of court settlements (although he was a lawyer), alimony, child support and the killer college tuitions. But while their flame glowed they had those good times watching movies (among other things best left to the imagination) which brings us back full circle to the review of the movie, this one in particular since it touched Melinda personally.

In the movie Cary Grant played a doctor whose unorthodox treatment ideas caused a stir among his colleagues, one ass professor in particular. Doctor Noah, Cary Grant’s role, was what today would be called a holistic medical man but then something of a quack (not an uncommon designation today for that matter) for his unorthodox methods and his dark past out in the boondocks where he had practiced before coming to the big time university. Jean Crain played Deborah a young woman auditing some medical studies classes who turned out to be pregnant, very pregnant as we used to say back then when we heard about girls getting “knocked up.” The problem for Deborah in 1951, maybe anytime although the mores have changed considerably since then, was that she was not married, and could not be married to the father since he had died in the service (remember Korea). The whole thing looked pretty desperate since she could not tell her ailing single parent father for it would kill him. But Cary came like a white knight to the rescue. Through a series of machinations he wound up marrying her. Moreover he sailed through that academic investigation about his prior practices out in the boondocks with flying if improbable colors.

After viewing a film Sam and Melinda, if the film warranted it not all did, if it touched something would discuss their respective takes on what they had just seen. Sam asked Melinda if she had any thoughts on the film adding that he thought there was a certain weirdness to the film especially around Noah’s “bodyguard-servant” who carried over some secret from that dark past. Melinda hesitated and then said she couldn’t believe not having seen a Cary Grant movie for a long time how surprised she was at how smoothly he spoke and how he carried himself with such grace. Sam agreed. Then Melinda told Sam how she had had a schoolgirl crush on Cary Grant ever since she saw him with Katherine Hepburn in The Philadelphia Story and gave a little blush that Sam thought was endearing.

Melinda then got very quiet for a moment but Sam could tell that she had something on her mind, although he assumed it was not related to anything in the film since he thought they had basically worn that subject out. The she blurred out, “Good thing Deborah had Noah to bail her out, to marry her and not leave her in the lurch, no leave her to have to go to “Aunt Emma’s.” Sam let out a slight chuckle at that remark since he knew exactly what she meant. The film, both had agreed, had taken on something that was a social taboo in their neighborhoods back in Riverdale in the 1950s and 1960s-the plight of the unwed mother, particularly in their case high school unwed mothers. That “Aunt Emma” tag meant that in Sam’s term, some girl probably out of ignorance (the guy too) didn’t know how curb their hormones, more importantly didn’t know about “protection” either because they had learned, erroneously many times, about sex and what it was about on the street since parents then wouldn’t tell their kids “squat” about sex or the churches raised fire and brimstone about even talking about the matter leaving everybody clueless. So every once in a while, more often than you would have thought, you would find out about some girl whose family was still in town but what had not been seen around for a while, several months. Upon inquiry the usual answer was that the girl had gone to see an aunt. Hence the common expression, “she’s gone to see Aunt Emma.” That night thought Melinda broke down and cried a little as she explained to Sam that her own younger sister, Lorna, had had to go see “Aunt Emma,” had had to give up her baby too which she never really got over despite a fairly happy marriage and kids later. Sam consoled Melinda a bit as was common when they were in the sunnier days of their relationship before it all turned sour. As for me this is one time when the movie only gets a so-so rating, maybe three stars, but as far as being socially relevant it rates five stars, no question.