FILMS MAIN

The Films of Julie London

1959

Night of the Quarter Moon       The Wonderful Country

 Night of the Quarter Moon

1959. MGM. 96 mins. Not available on VHS or DVD.   IMDb page.

 

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and publicity stills.

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posters and book cover.

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lobby cards.


Albert Zugsmith - Producer

Hugo Haas - Director

Frank Davis - Screenwriter

Franklin Coen - Book Author, Screenwriter

Ben Lewis - Editor

Ellis W. Carter - Cinematographer
Malcolm Brown, William Horning - Art Directors
Albert Glasser - Musical Direction/Supervision, Score

Cast:

Julie London - Ginny Nelson
John Drew Barrymore - Roderic "Chuck" Nelson
Anna Kashfi - Maria Robbin
Dean Jones - Lexington Nelson
Agnes Moorehead - Cornelia Nelson

Nat "King" Cole - Cy Robbin
Cathy Lee Crosby - The Singer
Ray Anthony - Hotel Manager
Jackie Coogan - Sgt. Bragan
Charles Chaplin, Jr. - The Neighbor

 

PLOT: Scripted in another era, the premise for this interesting though conventional drama defending a partially mixed marriage would not be as convincing a few decades later. Chuck Nelson (John Drew Barrymore) is a wealthy young man who travels South of the border and meets and then marries Ginny (Julie London). His new bride is a wonderful woman until Chuck's socialite mother (Agnes Moorehead) discovers that one of Ginny's grandparents was of African ancestry. The imperious mother-in-law lands the new couple in an embittered court battle as she makes every attempt to annul their marriage. Nat "King" Cole plays Ginny's uncle, and Anna Kashfi is Maria, her cousin.  Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

New York Times Review by Howard Thompson (March 5, 1959)
There are some mighty mean people in the world. And two nice young people in a mixed marriage are going to meet them head-on. So "Night of the Quarter Moon" contends and rather shrilly demonstrates in yesterday's new Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer release at the Capitol. Thanks principally to a pair of sincere performances by Julie London and John Drew Barrymore, as a cruelly victimized couple, this misguided film is most affecting as a simple love story.

Unfortunately, to put it bluntly, everything but the kitchen sink is dropped into the screen play, written by Frank Davis and Franklin Coen. There is enough material in this Albert Zugsmith production to supply five pictures.

Surely there's drama enough in having a beautiful quadroon enter a distinguished, if skeptical, San Francisco family on the arm of her proud new husband. The youth, incidentally, has met the girl on a Mexican vacation and dismissed her casual racial admission with the most disarming line in the picture: "Statistics bore me."

But not, assuredly, the rest of San Francisco. After a newspaper headline shrieks its discovery (Miss London happens to be "one fourth Portuguese-Angolan"), to the in-laws' horror, the couple are sadistically tormented by white neighbors. The police move in, almost as cold-blood-edly, and so do the boy's family, who try to have the marriage annulled (through tricks, lies and outright persecution of the girl).

The picture closes in courtroom bedlam, as the bride, befriended by some Negro relatives, is ordered to disrobe partially (we fail to get the point, but nobody will miss the careful suspense of Hugo Haas' direction).

These melodramatic riggings extend into the very characterizations. In addition to being extremely rich, Mr. Barrymore turns out to be a Korean war veteran given to blackouts and hallucinations of a prison camp. His mother, played by Agnes Moorehead, is an abominably mean hypocrite. His brother (Dean Jones) is a wholesome-looking, sunny-faced liar.

As the night-club relatives who befriend the desperate bride, Anna Kashfi and Nat (King) Cole (with one tune) make wise, welcome spectators to Miss London's plight. Likewise James Edwards, as her shrewd Negro lawyer, and Robert Warwick, as an admirably impartial judge (even with that dénouemen).

The picture churns along melodramatically and loudly, and the love of the young couple, who are mercifully reunited, somehow manages to anchor it to credibility. Miss London's acting is muted, admirably so. With an even tougher assignment, Mr. Barrymore is just as convincing. In watching this storm over a barely discernible skin pigmentation; spectators will wonder just how much more two decent people can take, as their own blood runs cold.

The Wonderful Country

 1959. United Artists. 98 mins. Not available on VHS or DVD.   IMDb page.

 

Click to see film shots.

Click to see lobby
cards and handbill.

 

Chester Erskine - Producer

Robert Parrish - Director

Robert Ardrey - Screenwriter
Tom Lea - Book Author

Michael Luciano - Editor

Alex Phillips, Floyd D. Crosby - Cinematographers
Harry Horner - Art Director
Alex North - Musical Direction/Supervision, Score
Mary Wills - Costume Designer

Cast:
Robert Mitchum - Martin Brady
Julie London - Ellen Colton
Gary Merrill - Maj. Stark Colton
Pedro Armendáriz - Gov. Cipriano Castro
Jack Oakie - Travis Hight
Albert Dekker - Capt. Rucker
Victor Manuel Mendoza - Gen. Castro
Charles McGraw - Doc Stovall
John Banner - Ben Turner
LeRoy "Satchel" Paige - Sgt. Tobe Sutton
Tom Lea - Peebles
Jay Novello - Diego Casas
Mike Kellin - Pancho Gil
Max Slaten - Ludwig Sterner
Joe Haworth - Stoker
Chuck Roberson - Gallup
Chester Hayes - Rascon
Anthony Caruso - Ludwig "Chico" Turner
Claudio Brook - Ruelle

PLOT: Although a mood of melancholy or worse pervades this excellent western, it remains an honest and hard-hitting look at the realistic adventures of Martin Brady (Robert Mitchum -- who produced). Brady fled to Mexico while still quite young in order to avoid prison in the U.S. -- he had killed his father's murderer. After years spent working as a gunman for a wealthy "padron," he hates white Americans but has to go north to get weapons. Once on the wrong side of the border, he gets into trouble with U.S. Army for not helping them hunt down Apaches. But the people he meets in a small town, one a European immigrant, begin to change his black-and-white view of the world. Meanwhile, he and Ellen Colton (Julie London), the unhappy wife of an army major, begin to fall in love. Several more adventures and a tragedy or two affect the unlikely couple's future -- ultimately for the better. Baseball hero "Satchel" Paige shows up in a cameo role, leading an Afro-American unit of the U.S. army. Mexican star Pedro Armendariz is Brady's boss, Governor Castro. Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

 

New York Times review by Howard Thompson (November 5, 1959)

It was a pleasure yesterday to watch Tom Lea's novel "The Wonderful Country" spreading across the screen pretty much, we suspect, the way the author must have wanted it.

This is a superior, intelligent film on nearly every count. Robert Mitchum, Julie London, Gary Merrill and a good supporting cast are framed against a superbly authentic landscape of the Rio Grande territory, in a faithful retelling of Mr. Lea's post-Civil War drama about an American-born "pistolero"—a hired killer in Mexico. For reasons best known to United Artists, the picture bowed at local neighborhood theatres (tied to that dog-pound fugitive, "The Hound of the Baskervilles").

Mr. Mitchum is ideally cast as the hard-bitten derelict hero stealthily crossing the border in the pay of the divided Castro family, periodical rulers of his adopted land. Robert Ardrey's script, retaining the blunt Lea dialogue, carefully details the hero's precarious status as a revolutionary pawn and his tender romance with Miss London, as the wistful wife of a cold American Army officer, Mr. Merrill. Mr. Mitchum's encounters with various Mexicans and Texans, on both sides of the law, providing a compelling, colorful gallery of spokesmen for the turbulent Rio Grande territory of the Eighteen Seventies, beset with marauding Apaches.

To shoot or not to shoot, that is the question—both Mr. Lea's and picture's. And unfortunately Mr. Mitchum's final decision isn't altogether convincing. A professional killer simply chucking away his six-shooter for, apparently, the love of a slightly tarnished lady? This is the one weakness of a film that substitutes irony and understanding for real depth.

However, as a well-acted, introspective adventure yarn, beautifully paced by Robert Parrish's direction and magnificently evocative of the locale where it was made, this Chester Erskine production is consistently rewarding. Billowing out in the background like a full-masted schooner at sunset, the country itself is truly wonderful to behold, as framed by the color camera of Floyd Crosby. And let's not forget the art director, Harry Horner, or the film editor, Michael Luciano.

The author's knowledge and love of the craggy, cactus-studded wasteland down below are resoundingly echoed by these technicians. Practically every "take" arrests the eye in tinting and detail. Some of the shots—quietly looming adobe villages, nocturnal street festival and a frenzied onslaught of Apache riders—are spine-tingling.

With a theme that seems basically rather familiar ("The Gunfighter" was better), the picture has bite, restraint and true pictorial grandeur. That interesting vignettes do not culminate in unified power is certainly no fault of the cast, straight down the line.

The three principals are first-rate, as are such contributors as Pedro Armendariz, Victor Mendoza, Albert Dekker, Jack Oakie, Charles McGraw and Leroy Paige (of baseball fame). Even Mr. Lea steps into the act, briefly, as a barber. Finally, Alex North's musical score is grand, as usual.

But the haunting canvas of "The Wonderful Country" should have exposed more heart. Or packed a genuine wallop. Better still, both.

1958, part 2      1959      1960s