The Pigeon That Took Rome (1962)

Director: Melville Shavelson
Writer: Melville Shavelson, based on the novel The Easter Dinner by Donald Downes
Stars: Charlton Heston, Elsa Martinelli, Harry Guardino, Baccaloni, Gabriella Pallotta, Marietto and Brian Donlevy

Index: 2025 Centennials.

In 4:3 aspect ratio, Paramount News tells us that Italy has been freed from the bondage of the Nazis and that a U.S. General has honoured the Carrier Pigeon Hero of Liberation. No, says the recognisable voice of Charlton Heston. The pigeon is an impostor! And so we rewind back and shift into anamorphic widescreen, though we remain in black and white.

If that didn’t suggest a comedy, the opening scenes underline it. The Italians throw bombs from bicycles, so the Nazis ban bicycles, so the Italians switch to tricycles. So it goes.

Where it will all end up is never in doubt, in part because we know that the Nazis lost the Second World War but also because everybody in Italy knows that the American Fifth Army is on its way. What nobody knows is when they’ll get there and until they do it’s about survival. Somewhere in between lies our story.

Always a Bride (1953)

Director: Ralph Smart
Writers: Ralph Smart and Peter Jones
Stars: Peggy Cummins, Terence Morgan and Ronald Squire

Index: 2025 Centennials.

While this is a sedate British comedy about gentlemanly crooks plying their trade on the French Riviera, it unfolds against a historical backdrop that sent me down a rabbit hole and I wish the filmmakers had explored it deeper.

As we begin, our focus is on Terence Winch, who’s trying to change his hotel room without luck. We soon learn that the hotel is trying to subtly pressure him into to leaving because he intimidates their guests. It’s because his job is literally to stop them spending money.

And, because that seems to make absolutely no sense at all, I need to explain. He’s an agent of the British Treasury enforcing UK exchange controls that were designed during World War II to avoid a run on the pound and to ensure a steady flow of foreign imports. Sounds crucial, doesn’t it? Well, it probably was in 1939 during wartime but the law lingered on for decades.

Fitzwilly (1967)

Director: Delbert Mann
Writer: Isobel Lennart, based on the novel A Garden of Cucumbers by Poyntz Tyler
Stars: Dick Van Dyke, Barbara Feldon, John McGiver, Harry Townes, John Fiedler, Norman Fell and Edith Evans

Index: 2025 Centennials.

While I review a lot of movies on hundredth birthdays, it’s rare that I get to do it while the centenarian is alive and celebrating, but today actually is Dick Van Dyke’s centenary and he’s still going strong. Why not tackle a film that I haven’t seen before that he made when he was forty-two, the ultimate answer?

I enjoyed this immensely but I left it with a string of questions, starting with, “Why wasn’t this British and black and white?” It feels like a classic Ealing comedy remade in Hollywood, keeping Dame Edith Evans because who could replace her, but recasting most other roles.

She’s Miss Victoria Woodworth, delightfully haughty as an old and rich force of nature who requires a vast staff to run her huge New York mansion and signs endless cheques to endless charities. The only catch is that she hasn’t any money and hasn’t had since her father left her a measly hundred and eighty bucks.

A Man Called Adam (1966)

Director: Leo Penn
Writers: Les Pine and Tina Rome
Stars: Sammy Davis Jr., Louis Armstrong, Ossie Davis, Cicely Tyson, Frank Sinatra Jr., Mel Tormé and Peter Lawford

Index: 2025 Centennials.

The poster appropriately points out that “in Adam’s world... the music never stops!” That’s pretty true because music is everywhere here. Even when Adam Johnson isn’t performing on stage, there’s music in the background: on the radio, on the jukebox, even on his reel-to-reel tape deck. Manny, his powerful agent, points out his problem: “Take that horn away, buddy, and what have you got? Nothing.”

It’s also our problem, because, while Sammy Davis Jr. is blisteringly good as Adam, he’s the sort of disaster of a human being that we can’t find much sympathy for, even if he truly went off the rails a decade ago in the aftermath of a tragic accident that took his wife and baby.

Instead, we’re asked to sympathise with the people who are closest to him. Nelson, his best friend from childhood, played by Ossie Davis, cites “that excitement, that quality of personal danger” as why Adam’s a genius and also why he can’t stop being there for him, regardless of what he’s done in the past.

The Plastic Age (1925)

Director: Wesley Ruggles
Writers: Eve Unsell and Frederica Sagor, based on the novel by Percy Marks
Stars: Donald Keith and Clara Bow

Index: That's a Wrap!

As I write, Paramount are involved in a new merger, trying to buy Warner Brothers against opposition from Netflix. This film was made by Preferred Pictures, who had been founded by a former Paramount publicist in 1918, who then merged his company with Paramount because they wanted its leading lady, Clara Bow.

I’m watching with her in mind, even though the film is far more about the character played by Donald Keith. There are reasons why Clara Bow’s name is still remembered while Keith’s is not and they’re obvious after she’s been on screen for about ten seconds.

I did have other names in mind too, because I know that Clark Gable and Carole Lombard are both in here somewhere, as they would be again later in the month in Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ, but I couldn’t find either of them. It was early for both of them, as neither made a major name for themselves until the thirties. They were both huge stars when Donald Keith was retiring, in 1936, though not yet married to each other. That happened in 1939.

In 1925, twenty-two year old Keith is the all-American boy ready to go to Prescott College, with the fastest 440 yard dash ever made by a prep student. We’re also told that the thrill of going to college is the thrill for the plastic age of youth, which is the only mention of the title anywhere in the film.