The River of No Return is certainly not a great movie. It is a good movie, an entertaining movie, a fairly well-written movie with a good cast and Marilyn Monroe looks great in the movie. This movie was also ahead of its time at least when it comes to women’s fashion. This movie takes place in the late 19th Century or early 20th Century and yet Marilyn is wearing tight Lee denim jeans in boots for about half of the movie. In an era where that was almost never seen from women. Back then women wore long dresses for the most part and nothing that showed a lot of their physical body.
Marilyn looked great in this movie, her usual hot sexy baby-face adorable sweet self. And this movie was very real to me in the sense that it wasn’t about angels and devils. Robert Mitchum plays a single father in the movie who helps out a couple on the water having trouble with their boat. The man in this couple is a criminal or crook on the run. His wife is Marilyn a sweetheart, but not someone without faults. But Mitchum is simply trying to help these people out and the guy screws them and takes his lone horse away from Mitchum and his son and his girlfriend stays behind with the man and his son. And now they are together trying to survive on the River of No Return with outlaws shooting at them.
Frank Sinatra was overpaid to be able to work with Kim Novak. The pleasure was all his to be able to work with a hot sexy baby like Kim that he got to work with and see everyday. Who was also a pretty good actress and I’m sure Kim liked Frank as well. Not putting down Frank’s ability as an actor, because I think he was a hell of an actor, but just seeing a working with Kim everyday would be enough incentive to work with her.
If you’ve seen the movie Pal Joey and are familiar with that, which I saw again last week, this movie is fairly similar to Pal Joey. Except Frank is already sort of a made man in the entertainment business in the sense that he’s already successful. In The Man With The Golden Arm, Frank plays an up incoming musician who hasn’t made it yet, who has a checkered past including doing time. And has to do other things to pay his bills including gambling.
Frank also plays a drug addict in this movie, when in Pal Joey he was sober basically the entire movie. But in both movies he meets Kim Novak who is an entertainer herself working at local clubs and they get involved in both movies. Except in Golden Arm, Kim saves Frank from his addiction and helps him get cleaned and then they get involved. This time the women saves the man in the movie.
Advise and Consent was a movie about the presidential nomination process in the U.S. Senate and what presidential appointments are put through by senators both in the opposition, but also from senators who are at least inclined to vote for the nominee. Whether the nominee comes from their party or not. In this movie the party in power also has a majority of the Senate. But if you are familiar with American politics back in the 1960s, the parties back then weren’t always united ideologically. Which is one of the reasons why Henry Fonda who played the nominee for Secretary of State faced such a tough time.
This movie came out in 1962 and was based on current times and back then the Democratic Party controlled Congress as well as the White House, but had what was called a Southern Caucus made up of right-wing senators who didn’t vote with their Leadership on everything to put it mildly and would even vote with Senate Republicans to block legislation as well as presidential nominations from their own Leadership and this movie portrays that with Charles Laughton playing this Southern senator who was a right-winger and against his own President’s nomination for Secretary of State. Charles Laughton playing a character that reminds me of former Sen. Dick Russell of Georgia who was the Leader of the Southern Caucus in the 1960s.
Back in the early 1960s of course there wasn’t any cable TV or C-SPAN and Congress didn’t allow for broadcast media to broadcast what was going on in the House or Senate so a lot of Americans weren’t aware of even what the House and Senate looked like inside so this movie sort of opened that up for a lot of Americans. But Advise and Consent wasn’t just about the Senate nominating process as far as the Senate debating nominations there was a lot of inside Washington aspects of this movie of course, with the President played by Franchot Tote calling the Leader of the Senate played by Walter Pidgeon and then the Leader calling the Senate Minority Leader. To get and idea of how many Senate Republicans would vote for the nomination.
But there was also a look at what happened in Washington on the party scene, where members of Congress in both parties would get together, there was a playboy senator in the movie played by Peter Lawford who reminds me of Senator Jack Kennedy. There was a somewhat bored and lonely Vice President with not enough work to do, so he would spend his time actually presiding over the Senate played by Lew Ayers. Back then Vice President’s weren’t very powerful or important, of course that changed a long time ago where today they are basically the Chief Counsel of the Administration.
Advise and Consent was one of the first looks that Americans got to see in how the U.S. Senate operates and how they deal with the White House and how each caucus deals with each other and how the majority party deals with its own members and how the Senate Leader finds ways to get enough votes for the President’s nominations, as well as how Washington works. And is a very good movie, especially if you’re a political junky like myself, but an entertaining movie especially if you like dramas with great writing, cast and clever humor like myself as well.
Source:Jesse Dollemore talking about Crazy Marge (as Tim Miller from The Bullwark calls Marjorie T. Greene) Source:The New Democrat “Jesse talks about a heated exchange from a House Oversight Committee hearing late last night in which Marjorie Taylor Greene started insulting Democratic Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett’s appearance. Instead of cowering, the Texas Congresswoman unleashed a precision […]
Source: This piece was originally posted at The New Democrat
The Daily Press 