Tag Archives: Sonnie Hale

Musical Monday: Evergreen (1934)

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It’s no secret that the Hollywood Comet loves musicals.
In 2010, I revealed I had seen 400 movie musicals over the course of eight years. Now that number is over 600. To celebrate and share this musical love, here is my weekly feature about musicals.

This week’s musical:
Evergreen (1934) – Musical #529

Studio:
Gaumont-British Pictures

Director:
Victor Saville

Starring:
Jessie Matthews, Sonnie Hale, Betty Balfour, Barry MacKay, Ivor McLaren, Harley Power, Patrick Ludlow, Betty Shale, Marjorie Brooks, Stewart Granger (uncredited)

Plot:
In the early 1900s, popular stage performer Harriett Green (Matthews) says goodbye to her audiences, as she plans to retire to get married. But on the eve of her wedding, her past shows up and she disappears. Thirty years later, her daughter—also named Harriett (also Matthews)—is wearily looking for a job in a musical show. A down-on-his-luck publicity man Tommy Thompson (MacKay) makes the connection between Harriett and her mother. With the help of performers who knew Harriett in the old days (Hale, Balfour), Tommy hatches a plan to have young Harriett pose as her mother returning to the stage.

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Review: Friday the Thirteenth (1933)

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When it comes to Friday the 13th films, audiences generally recollect horror films involving a man in a ski mask. But before those gory films came to be, British film released by Gainsborough Pictures follows a group on a bus just minutes before the clock strikes midnight on Friday the 13th.

Directed by Victor Saville, Friday the Thirteenth (1933) the film begins with the following statement:

“You hear of an accident. There are victims. Strangers to one another. Supposing we could put back the clock and see how chance made these strangers share this appalling moment.”

The film begins as we see people riding a bus on a rainy night with the clock ticking closer to Friday the 13th. Lightning strikes a crane, and the bus driver has to swerve to miss the falling debris and wrecks. Newspapers flash on the screen with headlines about the wreck and that two people were killed. Before we know further, Big Ben ticks back to the beginning of Thursday the 12th and we see what lead everyone to get on this bus.

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