Honeymoon for Three: Movies about Writing

I started watching this 1941 film on TCM and as I got 10 minutes in I thought, “Have I seen this before?” Finally, I looked it up and realized it was a remake of Goodbye again (see previous blogs).

Ken Bixby (George Brent) is a successful author and former playboy getting ready to marry his secretary Anne Rogers (Ann Sheridan) when a young woman (Osa Massen) shows up at their hotel claiming to be the muse of his bestseller. Although Bixby doesn’t remember this Julie ,who is now married, but still pines for Bixby, his ego and curiosity gets the better of him. As he spends the day with Julie while her cousins (which includes a young Jane Wyman) beg Anne to stop any scandals from occurring. By the way, I want to punch Wyman’s husband in the movie so badly. He’s a condescending moron who needs a good smack. Anne seems to agree with me as she tears up his business card with force. Then Julie’s husband, Harvey (Charlie Ruggles), shows up to get a look at Bixby. Anne spends the day trying to distract Harvey as Bixby cancels his book engagements to be with Julie. All of this leads to miscommunications and court subpoenas.

As a famous writer, Bixby has hotel maids stealing copies of his book and fans waiting to see him in the lobby including a woman who named her baby after him. Anne helps him dodge most of these annoyances while trying to keep him down to earth. As his secretary, she is also one of his editors and when he tries to quote her from it, she has the great line, “That in total, is the love scene from page 77 of' ‘Silent Woods’. I typed it. . . You worked three days polishing that speech and it still sounded phony.” She has a larger vocabulary than him and states the typing for him is enough punishment in her life.

Torchy Blane Plays with Dynamite: Movies about Writing (also called Torchy Blane Playing with Dynamite)

Jane Wyman . . . how did you get here? Once again they tried to to recast the whole formula. Jane Wyman is news gal Torchy Blane. Allen Jenkins plays her lieutenant fiancee Steve McBride. And Gahagan is still Tom Kennedy. Why doesn’t that guy ever get recast? Also, this movie was made THE SAME YEAR as the two previous movies. Stop messing with our heads, Warner Bros. Also, the movie is listed everywhere as “Torchy Blane Playing with Dynamite”, but the posters all say “Plays with Dynamite”. Warner Bros. - the master of the stupid gaslighting.

Torchy decides to get herself arrested so she can get the scoop on a woman who’s been jailed for shoplifting. What the police who picked her up don’t know is that the woman is a girlfriend of a notorious bank robber and murderer named Denver Eddie. Torchy (called Helen at the prison) befriends the girlfriend from another inmate (who appears to be the only African American woman in the cell block) and the pair break out together. Steve follows, hoping the girlfriend will lead them to Denver Eddie (how’s that for a name, by the way). She and Steve meet in a bookstore and use make-up plot descriptions to tip each other off. Meanwhile, Gahagan is forced to fight in a wrestling match for . . . reasons. I don’t know. This movie is only an hour long and the story still got a little lost. The one spoiler I will give away is that another reporter blows Torchy’s cover! Is there no honor among journalists? Oh wait. No, there isn’t.

That’s the end of the Torchy Blane films and by the end of #9 she and Steve are still not married. All I have left to say is this - run, Jane Wyman! Run before Ronald Regan tries to marry you!