PHOTOS OF THE DAY: SUMMER WITH CLASSIC HOLLYWOOD

On this first day of summer I wanted to take a look at how some of the classic Hollywood stars celebrated the fun and the sun that is summer. As always, the classic stars always looked great...

Ann Sheridan

Eartha Kitt

Gene Kelly

Bing and Dixie Lee Crosby

Sammy Davis Jr and Maria Stinger

Ava Gardner

MOVIE REVIEW: GEORGE WASHINGTON SLEPT HERE

The movie George Washington Slept Here (1942) came first, but the movie is an awful lot like Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House (1947). However, Jack Benny was really great in the Washington movie, and it can stand on its own as a pretty great film.

The play opened on Broadway, in New York City, New York, USA, on Friday, October 18th, 1940 and closed on Saturday, March 15th, 1941, after 173 performances. The cast included Ernest Truex, Dudley Digges, Jean Dixon and Percy Kilbride, who originated his movie role as Mr. Kimber. The film version, sparked up by the completely unexpected chemistry of dry-humored Jack Benny and "Oomph Girl" Ann Sheridan, is every bit as charming.

George Washington Slept Here" was an interesting departure for Jack Benny. Benny usually played a nice guy--a guy who let funny things happen to him and around him. However, since this film was based on a play, Benny played the role as it was written--acerbic and full of snappy one-liners. If you are used to Benny from his TV show or other films, this type of character is pretty different. Now I am NOT saying that this is a bad change. After all, considering how horribly stupid his wife (Ann Sheridan) is in the film, his sour disposition isn't all that bad--most husbands would have killed her! The film begins with Sheridan's dog, Ramy, getting the family tossed out of yet another apartment. So, without telling her husband, she buys a wreck of an ancient house in the country! Supposedly  George Washington is said to have once slept at the house. Needless to say, husband Bill is horrified--and keeps on being horrified as the price of renovation skyrockets.

In order to create the dilapidated farmhouse, the house used in Arsenic and Old Lace (filmed in 1941) was modified by knocking out bannisters, rafters and plaster.

Near the beginning of the movie, while still in his New York apartment, the character played by Jack Benny mentions "Hobby Lobby". This was a radio program that was first broadcast nationally as a summer replacement for "The Jack Benny Show". 

John Emery, playing actor Clayton Evans, says he's arrived in town to appear in a production of "The Man Who Came to Dinner", by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart (who also wrote the play on which this film is based). Ann Sheridan played Lorraine Sheldon in the 1942 film version (The Man Who Came to Dinner), which was also directed by William Keighley.

The dog in the movie, called Terry, was also the same one in The Wizard of Oz, where it gained its fame, as Toto, three years earlier.

Leon Ames, who appears as a neighbor, makes reference to "The Man Who Came To Dinner" (1942), another Moss Hart/Irving Kaufman play. He states that he is appearing in that play in a community theater.

Jack Benny's character mentions The Phil Harris Orchestra, in the movie. The Phil Harris Orchestra was Mr. Benny's Band on The Jell-o Show starring Jack Benny in 1936, later changed to The Jack Benny Show.

After seeing the play on Broadway, Jack Benny insisted that Percy Kilbride should reprise his role as the handyman, Mr. Kimber, in the film version. Benny managed to convince studio head Jack L. Warner to bring Kilbride out to Hollywood for a screen test, even though Warner thought there were plenty of local character actors who could take the handyman role. However, once filming began, Benny and his co-star, Ann Sheridan found they could barely get through a scene with Kilbride without laughing. Warned by director William Keighley that constant re-takes were taking the film over-budget, Benny finally had to resort to not sleeping at night, so that when he came to work in the morning, he would be too tired to laugh at Kilbride's character.

Jack Benny never really made it in movies the way his other comedy counterparts like Bob Hope and Jackie Gleason did. However, George Washington Slept Here as well as To Be Or Not To Be (also released in 1942) were two of Benny's best movies. Ann Sheridan was an underrated gem, and the movie as a whole is just a fun movie to watch. It is not the funniest movie, but it will bring a smile to your face. That is what great movies are all about...

MY RATING: 8 OUT OF 10

TO BE OR NOT TO BE: JACK BENNY IN HOLLYWOOD

Everyone knows about the comedic talents of Jack Benny. His radio and television show made audiences laugh from the 1930s to his death in 1974. Benny had great timing and skill with any entertaining he did, so it was natural that he would try his hand at acting in movies. Like many radio comedians of the day, Hollywood did not know what to do with Jack Benny at first. While Benny never became another Spencer Tracy or Cary Grant, his contribution to film should not be overlooked though.

One of Benny's first roles was in the Academy Award-winning The Hollywood Revue of 1929. The early talkie film basically had Benny as the master of ceremonies. His talent was definitely wasted in the film, and MGM did not quite know what to do with the up and coming comedian. MGM wouldcast him in a different role as the bad guy agent and the benign nemesis for Eleanor Powell and Robert Taylor in Broadway Melody of 1936. However, Benny's movies in the 1930s did not use him effectively.

The 1940s saw Benny making some excellent contributions to film. In 1942, Benny starred in one of his greatest movies To Be Or Not To Be, which was directed by the great Ernest Lubitsch. The movie was about a troupe of actors in Nazi-occupied Warsaw who use their abilities at disguise and acting to fool the occupying troops. Lubitsch had never considered anyone other than Jack Benny for the lead role in the film. He had even written the character with Benny in mind. Benny, thrilled that a director of Lubitsch's caliber had been thinking of him while writing it, accepted the role immediately.

For Benny's costar, the studio and Lubitsch decided on Miriam Hopkins, whose career had been faltering in recent years. The role was designed as a comeback for the veteran actress, but Hopkins and Benny did not get along well, and Hopkins left the production. Lubitsch was left without a leading lady until Carole Lombard, hearing his predicament, asked to be considered. Lombard had never worked with the famous director and yearned to have an opportunity. Lubitsch agreed and Lombard was cast. The film also provided Lombard with an opportunity to work with friend Robert Stack, whom she had known since he was an awkward teenager. The film was shot at United Artists, which allowed Lombard to say that she had worked at every major studio in Hollywood.

To Be or Not To Be, now regarded as one of the best films of Lubitsch's, Benny's and Lombard's careers, was initially not well-received by the public, many of whom could not understand the notion of making fun out of such a real threat as the Nazis. It was said that, during the premiere, Benny's own father walked out of the theater early in the film, disgusted that his son was in a Nazi uniform, and vowed not to set foot in the theater again. Benny convinced him otherwise and his father ended up loving the film.

Benny's next film work was the charming George Washington Slept Here. It was based on the 1940 play of the same name by Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman, adapted by Everett Freeman, and was directed by William Keighley. The movie starred Benny and Ann Sheridan as Bill and Connie Fuller, New Yorkers who purchase a dilapidated farmhouse where, according to rumors, George Washington spent the night.

In 1945, Jack would make a movie that would become forever associated with him, and it would become an endless joke for the rest of his life. The Horn Blows At Midnight also starred Alexis Smith and Guy Kibbee. The plot is interesting enough: Athanael (Jack Benny), the third trumpet player in the orchestra of a late night radio show sponsored by Paradise Coffee (motto: "It's Heavenly"), falls asleep listening to the announcer, who is doing his best to prove it is "the coffee that makes you sleep." Athanael dreams he is an angel (junior grade) and a trumpeter in the orchestra of Heaven. Due to the praise of his girlfriend Elizabeth (Alexis Smith), the assistant of the deputy chief of the department of small planet management (Guy Kibbee), he is given the mission of destroying planet 339001 (Earth) and its troublesome inhabitants by blowing the "Last Trumpet" at exactly midnight, signaling the end of the world.

After making The Horn Blows At Midnight, Benny would never star in a movie again - although he was offered many roles. He enjoyed making cameo appearances in such movies as: Somebody Loves Me (1952), Beau James (1957), It's A Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963), and A Guide For The Married Man (1967). At the young age of 80, Benny was planning a return to movies in 1974 to star in "The Sunshine Boys". Benny was forced to withdraw when he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Before he died Benny recommended his friend and fellow real-life vaudevillian veteran Burns, who had not been in a film since 1939, for the role. Burns' Academy Award-winning role revived his career and redefined his popular image as a remarkably active old comedy star.

With the popularity of Jack Benny's radio and television career, his film work is largely overlooked. Movies might have failed to capture his personality completely, but the roles Benny did take were enjoyable and memorable. What we need in films and television for that matter today is a Jack Benny. His personality made people feel better and laugh in times that were hard and trying...

SPOTLIGHT ON ANN SHERIDAN

Ann Sherdian was personally one of my favorite actresses that Warner Brothers had under contract in the 1940s. She was not the greatest actress, but she made any film better by her appearances in it. Born Clara Lou Sheridan in Denton, Texas on February 21, 1915, Ann was a college student when her sister sent a photograph of her to Paramount Pictures. She subsequently entered and won a beauty contest, with part of her prize being a bit part in a Paramount film. She abandoned college to pursue a career in Hollywood.

She made her film debut in 1934, aged 19, in the film Search for Beauty, and played uncredited bit parts in Paramount films for the next two years. Paramount made little effort to develop Sheridan's talent, so she left, signing a contract with Warner Bros. in 1936, and changing her name to "Ann Sheridan."

Sheridan's career prospects began to improve. The red-haired beauty would soon become Warner's top sex symbol. She received as many as 250 marriage proposals from fans in a single week. Tagged "The Oomph Girl," Sheridan was a popular pin-up girl in the early 1940s.

She was the heroine of a novel, Ann Sheridan and the Sign of the Sphinx, written by Kathryn Heisenfelt, published by Whitman Publishing Company in 1943. While the heroine of the story was identified as a famous actress, the stories were entirely fictitious. The story was probably written for a young teenage audience and is reminiscent of the adventures of Nancy Drew. It is part of a series known as "Whitman Authorized Editions", 16 books published between 1941-1947 that always featured a film actress as heroine.

She received substantial roles and positive reaction from critics and moviegoers in such films as Angels with Dirty Faces (1938), opposite James Cagney and Humphrey Bogart, Dodge City (1939) with Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland, Torrid Zone with Cagney and They Drive by Night with George Raft and Bogart (both 1940), The Man Who Came to Dinner (1942) with Bette Davis, and Kings Row (1942), where she received top billing playing opposite Ronald Reagan, Robert Cummings, and Betty Field. Known for having a fine singing voice, Ann also appeared in such musicals as Thank Your Lucky Stars (1943) and It All Came True (1940). She was also memorable in two of her biggest hits, Nora Prentiss and The Unfaithful, both in 1947.

Despite these successes, her career began to decline. Her role in I Was a Male War Bride (1949), directed by Howard Hawks and costarring Cary Grant, gave her another success, but by the 1950s, she was struggling to find work and her film roles were sporadic. She appeared in the television soap opera Another World during the mid-1960s.

In 1966, Sheridan began starring in a new TV series, a Western-themed comedy called Pistols 'n' Petticoats. But she became ill during the filming, and died of esophageal and liver cancer in Los Angeles, California. She had been a chain cigarette smoker for years, and Cagney remarked in his autobiography that when the cancer struck, "she didn't have a chance." She was cremated and her ashes were stored at the Chapel of the Pines Crematory in Los Angeles until they were permanently interred at Hollywood Forever Cemetery in 2005. Pistols 'n' Petticoats was officially canceled before her death, though some episodes aired afterward. Her lines were dubbed in at least one of these (presumably because the cancer had affected her voice), and she did not appear in a few of the final episodes.

Sheridan married three times, including a marriage lasting one year to fellow Warner Brothers actor George Brent and co-star in Honeymoon for Three...