Thursday, February 28, 2013

Fun Peg Is On First

I recently purchased a set of Abbot and Costello movies, second hand for almost nothing. I prefer
Laurel and Hardy, but these were cheap laughs, so...
Their first movie together they were fourth billed, a trifle called, "One Night In The Tropics" in which
the lady above, Peggy Moran was third billed.
The first thing that sparked my interest was seeing who had written the musical numbers: Dorothy Fields
and Jerome Kern, with one song from Oscar Hammerstein II.
This is the like going to neighbor's BBQ and finding Wolfgang Puck and Gaida De Laurentiis  flipping the burgers.
So, Peggy Moran. When she came on the screen, she reminded me instantly of a friend named Mickey,
and it turned out that Mickey was also the name of her character.
I checked her page at the Internet Movie Data Base, and she had another distinction remarkable for Hollywood-she married once, Henry Koster, and they remained wed for life.
Henry Koster directed Jimmy Stewart in "Harvey" and many, many other features, and this from her page made me smile:
"When she married Henry Koster in 1942, he promised to put her in every movie he made in the future and he did. He had a bust of her head made and it was used in all of his films after their marriage."
Sometimes we should tip our coffee cup to those who get it right. I wouldn't say that
"One Night In The Tropics" is a masterpiece, but it is FUN. Allan Jones is the lead, Abbot and Costello
prove their worth, and with the Fields/Kern songs, it was a delight.

2 comments:

Doug said...

The fist of their movies from the collection that I watched was, "Hold That Ghost" which I remember from when I was a kid. It is quite different, seeing it with older eyes, but it was all right.
Check em out.

Doug said...

I had some friends over tonight to watch "The Quiet Man" on Blu-ray, and it looked and sounded great. It is the most Irish of films, and I may be watching it again closer to St Pat's Day, (which is no holiday), as the Emerald Isle is a part of my very varied heritages. We have Ireland on the list of countries my back-whens were kicked out of.