SITTING PRETTY – Clifton Webb, Maureen O’Hara

Sitting Pretty (1948)
Direction: Walter Lang
Screenplay: F. Hugh Herbert; from Gwen Davenport’s novel Belvedere
Cast: Clifton Webb, Maureen O’Hara, Robert Young, Richard Haydn, Louise Allbritton, Randy Stuart, Ed Begley
 

 

In the late 1940s, the bucolic suburb of Hummingbird Hill is shaken in its tranquil complacency by the scandalous actions of two middle-aged, unmarried men. Each of these elitist, academic bachelors threaten the norm of twin beds, parlor games, and ladies who lunch. One escapes his overbearing mother in persistent eavesdropping and snooping; the other inserts himself as a platonic wedge between a husband and wife, usurping household authority with conceited pleasure.
The couple eventually separates under the strain, while the community itself is exposed for its flaws and hypocrisy. The convention of the two-parent, heterosexual family [...]

Best Films – 1941

Orson Welles in Citizen Kane
FILM
Cheers for Miss Bishop
d: Tay Garnett; scr: Sheridan Gibney, Adelaide Heilbron
Citizen Kane
d: Orson Welles; scr: Herman J. Mankiewicz, Orson Welles
The Devil and Miss Jones
d: Sam Wood; scr: Norman Krasna
Dumbo
d: Ben Sharpsteen; scr: Joe Grant, Dick Huemer and others
The Great Lie
d: Edmund Goulding; scr: Lenore J. Coffee
Here Comes Mr. Jordan
d: Alexander Hall; scr: Seton I. Miller, Sidney Buchman
The Lady Eve
d, scr: Preston Sturges
The Little Foxes
d: William Wyler; scr: Lillian Hellman
Manpower
d: Raoul Walsh; scr: Richard Macauley, Jerry Wald
The Sea Wolf
d: Michael Curtiz; scr: Robert Rossen
 

Sara Allgood, Roddy McDowall in How Green Was My Valley
CHECK THESE OUT
La Fille du puisatier / The Well-Digger’s Daughter
d, scr: Marcel Pagnol
How Green Was My Valley
d: John Ford; scr: Philip Dunne
Meet John Doe
d: [...]

Best Films – 1940

Henry Fonda in The Grapes of Wrath
FILM
The Blue Bird
d: Walter Lang; scr: Ernest Pascal
The Grapes of Wrath
d: John Ford; scr: Nunnally Johnson
Kitty Foyle
d: Sam Wood; scr: Dalton Trumbo
The Letter
d: William Wyler; scr: Howard Koch
The Mark of Zorro
d: Rouben Mamoulian; scr: John Tainton Foote, Garrett Fort, Bess Meredyth
Pinocchio
d: Hamilton Luske, Ben Sharpsteen; scr: Ted Sears, Otto Englander and others
Pride and Prejudice
d: Robert Z. Leonard; scr: Aldous Huxley, Jane Murfin
Rebecca
d: Alfred Hitchcock; scr: Robert E. Sherwood, Joan Harrison
Waterloo Bridge
d: Mervyn LeRoy; scr: S.N. Behrman, Hans Rameau, George Froeschel
 

Cary Grant, Rosalind Russell in His Girl Friday
CHECK THESE OUT
Busman’s Honeymoon / Haunted Honeymoon
d: Arthur B. Woods; scr: Monckton Hoffe, Angus MacPhail, Harold Goldman
His Girl Friday
d: Howard Hawks; scr: Charles Lederer
The Long Voyage Home
d: John [...]

Best Films – 1945

Celia Johnson, Trevor Howard in Brief Encounter
FILM
Blithe Spirit
d: David Lean; scr: Noel Coward
Boule de suif / Angel and Sinner
d: Christian-Jaque; scr: Henri Jeanson
Brief Encounter
d: David Lean; scr: Noel Coward, Anthony Havelock-Allan, David Lean, Ronald Neame
Dead of Night
d: Alberto Cavalcanti, Charles Crichton, Basil Dearden, Robert Hamer; scr: John Baines, Angus MacPhail
Les Enfants du paradis / Children of Paradise
d: Marcel Carné; scr: Jacques Prévert
Leave Her to Heaven
d: John M. Stahl; scr: Jo Swerling
Love Letters
d: William Dieterle; scr: Ayn Rand
Mildred Pierce
d: Michael Curtiz; scr: Ranald McDougall, Catherine Turney
A Royal Scandal
d: Otto Preminger; scr: Edwin Justus Mayer
State Fair
d: Walter Lang; scr: Paul Green, Oscar Hammerstein II, Sonya Levien
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
d: Elia Kazan; scr: Tess Slesinger, Frank [...]