By Nicholas Stix
Updated at 12:20 p.m., on Tuesday, October 12, 2021
A few hours ago, I watched a Mickey Rooney picture on TCM, Drive a Crooked Road (1954).
It’s about a little guy, a master mechanic, who’s never so much as been kissed by a girl. He has a big scar across his forehead, he’s 5’2,” and he’s terrified of females.
One day, a beautiful girl asks for him by name to fix her expensive sports car. Then she shows herself to be interested in him.
But why?
Various versions of some lovely music was playing in the background. Eventually, the tune started to sound familiar. It was “I Can’t Believe that You’re in Love with Me.”
The name of the tune was the theme of the picture. And although the song was from the ‘20s, it was a standard which was performed again and again, and which many audience members would have recognized.
Smart movie directors and composers are well aware of the power music has to mold viewers’ emotions.
The beautiful girl is not interested in the mechanic. She’s setting him up, as part of a diabolical plan concocted by her boyfriend. But she is not your usual femme fatale.
Drive a Crooked Road involved numerous magical creatures, among them Mickey Rooney, Blake Edwards, Dianne Foster and Richard Quine.
In John Wayne’s amazing, 1971 Playboy interview, he said that Hollywood is in the magic business. He was dead, solid perfect, but that required that Hollywood have magical creatures.
“Once upon a time, in the place called California, there was an enchanted kingdom. It was said the streets were paved with gold and it was inhabited by gods and goddesses, sorcerers and elves, wise men, jesters and kings. For three decades the kingdom flourished, it was loved, for it offered human multitudes a rare and precious gift - escape from the mortal coil into wondrous flights of fantasy.”
Irwin Rosten, writer, Hollywood: The Dream Factory
Anita O’Day: "I Can’t Believe That You’re in Love with Me" (1945)
1 comment:
"The beautiful girl is not interested in the mechanic. She’s setting him up, as part of a diabolical plan concocted by her boyfriend"
Just like Eve in the Bible. Set the man up for the fall. Damn woman.
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