However, I was different. I wasn’t looking for The Magnificent Seven or The Magnificent Ambersons, nor Casablanca or Citizen Kane. I wanted what TCM showed in the mornings, those movies no one really pays attention to today, save for hardcore movie buffs like me. Who wants Judy Garland in Listen, Darling with Freddie Bartholomew and Mary Astor when one could have Judy Garland in The Wizard of Oz or Easter Parade? I did. I also wanted to see Lizzie, starring Eleanor Parker, which was the B-movie version of the more famous The Three Faces of Eve, starring Joanne Woodward. I wanted the smaller movies of the ‘30s, ‘40s, and ‘50s because there was more room to maneuver, less expectations, and therefore a chance to find a hidden treasure and hold it tightly as my own. I found it. It’s mine, all mine.
Of course, though, there’s the greater risk of finding a lot more clunkers than would be found with the bigger-budget movies back then, the ones Louis B. Mayer at MGM, Adolph Zukor at Paramount, and Darryl Zanuck at 20th Century Fox felt could bring their respective studios greater profit and plenty of prestige. Nevertheless, the lower-budget ones, the less prestigious ones, were still needed to fill screens, to also make them profit, however smaller.
Now we’re at the time when many of the studios have their own manufacture-on-demand DVD programs, in which I feel safe from the bias toward Blu-ray, understanding its value in certain titles like the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation, but otherwise not understanding and not subscribing to its hype. I’ve spent years building my DVD collection. I will not switch, no matter what titles I might lose on. Besides, most of them either aren’t my favorites anyway, or they’re also available on DVD, though far more limited, and I’ll see them that way.
20th Century Fox is the newest player in manufacture-on-demand DVDs, through its Cinema Archives name, digging up their archives and presenting them to consumers who may very well be like me, looking for the smaller movies, the potential hidden treasures, or the ones that they remember fondly from childhood and want them for that reason.
One of their inaugural releases is Mr. Belvedere Rings the Bell, which is exactly the kind of movie I would have looked forward to seeing back in 10th grade had I found it. It stars Clifton Webb, who had a fine career at Fox, as famous author Lynn Belvedere, the very Belvedere you might know from the ‘80s sitcom, but Webb was the original. This was the third in the series, following Sitting Pretty and Mr. Belvedere Goes to College, and it follows what the other previous two films always observed: Belvedere’s countless experiences in life and vast intelligence that drive him to always do something different, and always do it well.
Here, while on a lecture tour for his latest book, he decides that he wants to check himself into an old-age home, much to the eventual frustration and worry of Emmett, his advance man on the tour (Zero Mostel, early in his career). In his book, Belvedere says that you can be young if you think young, and he wants to prove what he says. So, taking the name of Oliver Erwenter, and a birth certificate that says he’s 77 years old, to cover up the fact that he’s 50, he takes up residence at the Church of John old-age home, run by a church, and it isn’t long before he’s charming the many residents, fascinating them with so many stories of his life, which are undoubtedly true, and changing the ways of the home, drawing the mild ire of the staid Reverend Charles Watson (Hugh Marlowe) and the support of Miss Harriet Tripp (Joanne Dru), who oversees the residents’ well-being. Some of the residents are only distinguishable by voice and some by their appearance, but that’s all one gets from them. Sure they change, but it’s only enough to serve the thin, labored plot plot, which is carried not only by Webb doing what he’s always done well, but also looking at the sets, the tables, the chairs, the dormitory, the dining room, because what else there is to do when Hugh Marlowe and Joanne Dru provide so little entertainment? Fox not only made these kinds of movies to make a little more money on the side, but they could make them for cheap with such actors as Marlowe and Dru, who have absolutely no interesting presence, save for being watchable onscreen, having the looks of Hollywood actors, but not the skills. Watching them, it’s easy to see why Henry Fonda, Gary Cooper, and Katharine Hepburn were so popular. Some have it, some don’t.
Zero Mostel is not quite Zero Mostel yet in this, merely working hard for the money. Those famous features of his weren’t quite developed yet, but they were getting there. Playing stressed and frustrated and funny, he was just getting warmed up. He’s the only life in a movie that’s purportedly about feeling young and enjoying life, but only creaks along, trying to prolong its own life, but to no avail. There’s nothing here as joyful as the residents feel in their changing lives, thanks to Belvedere.
20th Century Fox has a worthy, potentially profitable venture in its Cinema Archives program. No extras were included for Mr. Belvedere Rings the Bell, but it’s understandable since that kind of history has long passed. As boring as it is many times over, at least it’s been given the chance to live again. I can’t wait to see what else Cinema Archives unearths, but I ask this with all the passion I have for it: Can Neil Simon’s I Ought to Be in Pictures please, please, PLEASE be released soon? Simon is one of my heroes, and I particularly love this one because of the crackling dialogue between Walter Matthau and Dinah Manoff as a screenwriter father and his dreaming-of-Hollywood daughter. It’s never been on DVD, and now is the time for it to live again, much like Mr. Belvedere is.
