Word: westley
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...Helen Westley, with the magnificent eyes and nose of an owl, is Cap'n Andy's shrewish wife Parthy. Their daughter Magnolia, whose story is the sad old one of the girl married to a wastrel and abandoned, is Irene Dunne who, in black face and kinky wig, sings Gallivantin' Aroun'. Allan Jones, despite a good voice, makes Magnolia's Gaylord Ravenal into a handsome nonentity. Familiar to many a Show Boater will be Hattie McDaniel, an amiable and enormous Negro who helps Robeson with a rollicking song called Ah Still Suits...
...Roberta," the other feature, pleasingly combines fashions, an orchestra, singing, and dancing. The cast includes Fred Astaire, Irenc Dunne, Ginger Rogers. Randolph Scott, Claire Dodd, and Helen Westley, Irene Dunne, as the Russian princess, sings "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes;" Ginger Rogers, a Terre Haute Lyda Robert, sings "I'II Be hard to Handle," but Jerome Kern fans will miss "The Touch of Your Hand." Randy Scott, out of the Westerns, makes a fine all-American Newfoundland dog, and Claire Dorr gives another good characterization of all that is base in woman kind. A Mr. Astaire does some excellent dance...
Anne Shirley gives a capable, but decidedly not inspired, performance, while Helen Westley as the Puritannical and tyrannical stepmother, violently overacts her part. Fortunately the Hollywood moguls have seen fit to give O.P. Heggie the role of the sympathetic man of the family, whose mission is to comfort and console the luck-less pair. It is O.P. Heggie's acting which raises the film asinity to the level of mediocrity...
...quarter of a century ago, whose heroine Mark Twain called "the dearest and most moving and delightful child of fiction since the immortal Alice." An orphan from the orphanage, Anne Shirley finds herself unwanted when she turns up at the farm of Matthew (0. P. Heggie) and Marilla (Helen Westley), who had expected to adopt a boy. Her ready smile and winning impudence soon earn her the affection of her foster-parents and all goes well until she falls in love with Gilbert (Tom Brown) whose mother, as a girl, had jilted Matthew. It is a characteristic of the lavender...
...acting of all the characters with the exception of Tom Brown as Gilbert Blythe (porhaps it is Blithe, Blith, or Blyth) leaves only a little to be desired. O. P. Heggie as the sympathetic man of the family, creates a genuinely whimsical expression rivalled only by Will Rogers. Holen Westley as the Puritanical and sometimes tyrannical stepmother, Merilla (Murilla?, Merella?, Murella?) can compare favorably with the most tyrannical of the tyrannical. Only Tom Brown is left to jar a gently amusing and quietly entertaining movie. Tom Brown is as Tom Brown has always been--terribly serious, terribly earnest, gaping, apparently...