You’re My Wife and the Mother of My Children: Move Over Darling (1963)

So this film is a remake of the Cary Grant and Irene Dunne screwball comedy, My Favorite Wife. Now you all know how I feel about remakes:

But I actually really enjoyed this one. I mean Doris Day? Young James Garner? You can’t go wrong with that.

Nick Arden’s (James Garnier) wife Ellen disappeared in a plane crash five years ago. After all the searching, wondering, and raising his daughters on his own; he decides that he has to face facts. Ellen is dead and never coming back. He needs to move on.

He decides to have Ellen declared legally dead, marry Bianca, and head out on a honeymoon to Monterey.

At the very moment those two are being married, Ellen (Doris Day) has just arrived on the California shore. It turns out she survived all those years on a desert island. They finally found her and she is eager to return home to her husband and children. However, when she gets to the house, her mother-in-law reveals what has happened.

Not good

Ellen hurries to get to Nick before he can consummate the marriage with his new wife. She gets to him in time, but Nick finds it difficult to tell Bianca what has occurred, especially as Bianca isn’t in the mood for talking.

This turns into even more hilarious hijinks as Nick discovers his wife wasn’t alone on that island but with an adonis. He tries to search out the truth, while Ellen hires a nerdy shoe salesman to pretend to be her co-survivor. Will this family be able to straighten everything out or will Nick end up with not two, but zero wives?

Most Romantic Moment: You’re My Wife and the Mother of My Children

**Spoiler Alert**

So the most romantic moment comes at the very end of the film. They have had a huge blowup in the courthouse: Nick is cleared of bigamy, Nick and Bianca are annulled, Ellen is declared legally alive, but Steven Burkett (Ellen’s co-islander) came and has disrupted the Ardens getting back together.

Nick storms out of the courthouse and after beating up Steven and driving around Ellen has returned home unsure what to do. She is distraught over how it looks like she and Nicky are headed for divorce, and still afraid about what to do with the girls. She has wanted to tell them she is their mother, but hasn’t had the courage to do it. What if they hate her? They already have said they don’t need a mother, just their father.

She heads out to the backyard to talk to them, and finds out they already know. Their father told them and he is waiting with them in the pool for Ellen.

Aw!

Now I know this may sound strange to be romantic, but it just shows how much he loves his wife and wants to be with her. I mean his kids were babies when she left, he  could tell them nothing and use that lack of time together as a selling point in court to get full custody.

So not only does he want them to continue to be a family; but he also wanted to spare her any pain or rejection; instead letting the kids know who she is and getting them excited to see her.

That’s extremely romantic and caring.

To start Romance is in the Air: Part V, go to I Did It for You: Edward Scissorhands (1990)

For the previous post, go to I Know You Can Do This: Working Girl (1988)

For more on James Garner, go to It’s Fantastico!

For more remakes, go to Dracula. Not Myth, Nor Ravings of a Mad Irish Novelist, Oh No, He’s Real: Dracula 2000 (2000)

Considering Lily

9) Something That Has Inspired You

Something that has really inspired me is the book Consider Lily, by Anne Dayton and May Vanderbilt.

The story is of an Californian, Christian girl, Lily Traywick, who is the daughter of true fashionistas and owners of the humongous department store Traywicks. Lily didn’t inherit this fashion gene, as she hardly knows what goes together, and also is bemoaning her lack of ever being on a real date. She starts writing a blog and becomes famous as her pseudonym “Fashion Victim”;  starts a bet with one of her best friends Lily promising to get a makeover and follow everything to the letter, while her friend promises to come to three Sunday services; and sets out to try and win the man of her dreams. Of course nothing is perfect as the guy she originally likes is not her, the fame from her blog gets her a real job writing but her editor turns out to be horrible, the cute Christian boyfriend she lands ends up dumping her, and everything she has ever ranted gets spilled in the San Francisco Chronicle. What’s girl to do?

AAAAAAAAHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Trust in the Lord.

And everything turns out alright.

Now I have loved this book because the main character is a lot like me. We have had trouble in not having a date either because the guy sees us as too much of a friend:

Doesn’t want to date us once they find out we are a Christian and plan on waiting for sex along with our other beliefs:

Or wants the whole marriage and tons of kids thing instantly

We both had a love of sports, writing, and are fashion-challenged. Although she is worse than me.

We also had a similarity in dating, although her guy turned out alright in the end, while mine was a rotter. But ah that is fiction versus reality.

I loved the idea of her blogging, and  this book really inspired me to start my own blog and share me thoughts on the internet with others who would be receptive.

I mean it’s not that my friends or family don’t like listening to me, but if you have been following you know that when I like something, I really like it and love to talk about it. Sometimes making it annoying for those who don’t care about it as much as me, or who really don’t care about it at all.

So having a blog is a great way of releasing all that, without making those close to me bored.

This book also taught me that it is probably best to keep the topics away from friends and family, just in case they ever read it or you were exposed. I try to not talk about them, or if I do I have given them all fake names so I can deny it was them I was talking about.

And it made me kind of want to be a writer too. Too bad I don’t have a friend who can fix me up with a great job like she does in the book. But once again, that’s fiction versus reality.

But I loved this book, and it inspired me to create this blog, of which I have had a lot of fun these last few years. Thank you Anne & May, as without you’re lovely character Lily, janeaustenrunsmylife.wordpress.com would not exist.

To start the 30 Day Challenge from the beginning, go to Musical Madness

For the previous post, go to GISHWHES Girl

For more on May Vanderbilt, go to Fashionably Postworthy

For more bookish posts, go to Going on a Treasure Hunt

A Family Affair

So I already did a post on the opening line of Sense and Sensibility, you should go here if you want to check that out. So Sense and Sensibility is far different from Pride & Prejudice. In Pride & Prejudice we have a basic introduction to the family-5 daughters, and their mother’s need to marry them off.

Sense and Sensibility is a little different.

We get a big family entanglement of who’s who in the family and who’s inheriting. It can be a bit much.

It’s not as bad as Love Actually or He’s Just NOT Into You, but it is pretty knotted. But lucky for you all, that’s what I’m here for. I shall untangle it for you.

So it’s always about the property and land right?

And in this case it’s the same. But the one in question here is Norland Park, belonging to Mr. Dashwood.

Now Mr. Dashwood was a confirmed bachleor, and shared his house with his sister who managed everything for him. Both of them grew older, and Miss Dashwood died. Mr. Dashwood found himself alone and didn’t enjoy it. So he decided to invite his nephew, Mr. Henry Dashwood.

Now Henry is where things become a bit more complicated. Henry has two families.

Now I don’t mean that he was married to two women at the same time, this isn’t Sister Wives. And he wasn’t a conman either. He was a widower who remarried. This might not sound too complicated right now (I mean with how high the divorce rates are today, things are far more complicated,) but it does cause some legal issues I’ll get into later.)

So we have Mr. Dashwood’s first family. This includes his son John, horrible daughter-in-law Fanny,

and awful grandson.

I hate these people. Absolutely HATE THEM.

But more on that later.

And his second family consists of the new Mrs. Dashwood, Elinor, Marianne, and Margaret.

So here we are.

John being older and married was the one that didn’t move into the family homestead. But he and his family visited all the time. The three girls however, joined Old Mr. Dashwood. They take good care of him and greatly amuse him in his old age.

Only one problem.

Ugh

One thing my drama director always told us:

“Never work with kids or animals. They’ll steal the show.”

It’s true. Kids and animals are too cute, and they don’t even try. They’ll do something that will cause all others to be overlooked.

And here it’s no different.

Yes, the little spoiled brat steals away all the love of his grandfather.

“…this child, who, in occasional visits with his father and mother at Norland, had so far gained the affections of his uncle. by such attractions as are by no means unusual in children of two or three years old, an imperfect articulation, an earnest desire of having his own way, many cunning tricks, and a great deal of noise, as to outweigh all the value of all the attention which, for years, he had received from his niece and her daughters.”

Duh!

 

Yep, just another case of those who slaved and cared being pushed aside for something “cuter”.

Ugh

So the old Mr. Dashwood dies. And leaves things unpleasant. He entails all his money and estate to his grandnephew.

Entailment!

Replace Rothbart with entailment

Entailment sucks!!!!!!!

Entailment was something that was done a lot in the 18th-20th centuries. All the money, property, the whole shebang was entailed to the next male heir. So this is good and bad. It means that Henry will have everything, but only for as long as he is alive. When he dies it will be passed on to John, and then to the kid. This means that the female Dashwoods will receive nothing. The old Mr. Dashwood gave them £1000, but that won’t be near enough for them to marry well.

So I’m sure you are wondering about Mr. Henry Dashwood. I mean he doesn’t have to entail his personal money. Or Mrs. Dashwood’s money. Right?

 Well you’re half-right. He wouldn’t have to if he had any. Yep, you see Mr. Dashwood has no money.

He had status and married wealthy. His first wife had a fortune!

Unfortunately, she died.

And left all her money to her only child, John.

When he remarries it’s for love and his second wife is poor. They have only £7000. (I’m not sure if that’s a year or what, but it’s not enough for taking care of his family long-term).

And then he hopes to get the inheritance, but winds up with basically nothing.

To rub salt further in the wound, John doesn’t even need the money. You see John not only has all that dough from his mom, but when he married he increased his net worth tenfold.

Yep, he’s rolling in dough.

So the Dashwoods got the shaft.

But then Henry decides maybe it’s not such a bad thing after all. He is not an old man, he’s still has plenty of years left in him and he could start setting money aside to take care of his family. After all it’s not like he is going to die any day.

For more on Sense and Sensibility, go to A Sense of Sense and Sensibility

For more on the Dashwood family, go to Opening With…

For more on how entailment sucks, go to Fantastic Fantasies

For more on Gone With the Wind, go to At the End of the Rainbow

Touch a Button. Things Happen. A Scientist Becomes a Beast: The Beast of Yucca Flats (1961)

Touch a button. Things happen. A scientist becomes a beast

THIS IS ONE OF THE WORST MOVIES I HAVE EVER, EVER, EVER, EVER SEEN! It was BEYOND AWFUL! I mean it was  Attack of the Killer Tomatoes or Mean Girls 2 bad. My sister bought a box set of the Greatest 100 Horror Classics, and the two of us has been working through them. Most of them were really good, I mean Carnival of Souls, Phantom of the Opera (1925), etc were on there; but this one was really a major dud.

The first scene has nothing to do with the rest of the movie. A women takes a shower and is strangled. We never see the murderer, we never mention the murderer, in fact nothing at all comes from this.

I know like what the heck movie makers? Why would you do that do your viewers? A  later interview done with the producer revealed that the scene was added because the director liked nude scenes. Seriously? Why would you add something like that in when it has nothing to do with the plot. It’d be like having half-naked women singing about Hitler.

In Yucca Flats a Soviet scientist, Joseph Javorsky, is defecting. As he is running he and his American contacts are attacked by KGB. Javorsky gets away but wanders in an American nuclear test and is transformed into a mindless beast.

I know, its awful. It’s like Really? Really? That’s what you’re going with?

We get a lot of this in the film.

He then kills a couple in their car. Two police officers who seem to have no clue what being a police officer means go after him. (The head cop looks like he’s sixteen while the deputy 45, how that worked out I don’t know.)

A vacationing family ends up getting caught up in this. (This is where the story got interesting as we made up this whole back story about how both kids were the moms but the youngest was from her now husband  and that is why they care so much about him when he runs off while a killer is lose in the hills, but when the oldest one does they hardly even bother to look for him. I mean it was pretty sad how they didn’t even seem upset that the eldest son was missing.) And

Evetually the cops kill the scientists and everything ends somewhat well.

It was HORRIBLE!  DON”T WATCH IT!

Even though it sucked I couldn’t leave it out of my countdown.