Pollyanna (1960)

In the interest of coping with a dark time, I picked the most famously optimistic movie I could think of. OK, all I really knew about it was the reputation of the title character.

The movie deviates a little from the book's setting and doesn't indicate the state or year, but it appears to be New England in the early 1900s. Preteen Pollyanna Whittier (Hayley Mills in her Disney debut) is moderately fortunate for an orphan in that she gets to live in the mansion of her Aunt Polly Harrington (Jane Wyman), but lest you think it a dream come true, the aunt is bigger on making sure the niece acts like a lady than on loving or spoiling her. Furthermore, Polly is effectively the town matriarch, which may explain the local prevalence of bitterness and hostility. But Pollyanna has embraced her late father's insistence on looking on the bright side, and she shows it to everyone she meets.

City for Conquest (1940)

Already another mid-20th-century drama with an alliterative title in the "X for Y" format, based on a book, with Anthony Quinn in a supporting role. But that's about where the similarity ends.

Truck driver Danny (James Cagney), from a New York slum, resumes boxing to pay for the musical education of his ambitious brother, Eddie (Arthur Kennedy in his debut). He does a great job of it, but sometimes he has trouble keeping his emotions in check, especially when girlfriend Peggy (Ann Sheridan) has less time for him while advancing her dance career under wannabe boyfriend Murray (Quinn). And when people are betting good money on fights, you can bet that criminal elements will come into play....

The Old Maid (1939)

I've seen enough late-'30s and early-'40s dramas about the love lives of class-conscious 19th-century women to conclude that it was a fad. This one debuted in between Jezebel and Gone with the Wind and had at least three of the former's actors.

Charlotte (Bette Davis, 3 years before her turn as Charlotte in Now, Voyager and 25 before starring in Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte) develops an interest in Clem (George Brent), an old flame of her married cousin Delia (Miriam Hopkins). Clem dies in the Civil War (the Union side, FWIW), and Charlotte opens an orphanage for children of war casualties, with a special fondness for one child, Tina (Marlene Burnett) -- short for Clementina, which should tell you why. Delia also finds out why and jealously talks Charlotte's rich fiance (Jerome Cowan) into calling it off -- with a lie about Charlotte's health, just in case he would've accepted her anyway. Unable to sustain the orphanage, Charlotte allows Delia to adopt Tina unofficially. After being widowed, Delia allows Charlotte to move in as well. By this time, Tina sees Delia as her mom and Charlotte as her aunt. This spells tension between the sisters.

The Uninvited (1944)

Martin Scorsese and Guillermo Del Toro count this among their favorite horrors. In earlier days, it stood out as one of the first non-comedy ghost stories in Hollywood. It's also remembered for the debut of much-covered jazz standard "Stella by Starlight," which, oddly enough, isn't remotely scary. I don't know which if any of these details first drew my attention to the film, but I wanted at least one oldie for the month.

While vacationing on the Cornwall coast, Rick (Ray Milland) and Pamela (Ruth Hussey) stumble on a disused yet charming cliffside mansion and decide to move in from their London flat. Commander Beech (Donald Crisp) gives them a good deal on it, explaining that it is not only out of the way but often considered creepy, if only by virtue of having enigmatic old-house personality and his daughter Mary's tragic death 17 years ago, which had prompted him to move out. Beech's 20-year-old granddaughter, Stella (Gail Russell), is too sentimental about her childhood home to let it go altogether, so she appeals to Rick's heart, and he lets her visit. Only after they enter the one unpleasant room do they start to see why previous tenants bailed. Something there overwhelms the senses if not the will, and that something doesn't entirely restrict itself to that room thereafter. What were the exact circumstances of Mary's death, anyway?

Broken Blossoms (1919)

I first heard of this silent as evidence that D.W. Griffith was not really a Ku Klux Klan sympathizer, just a storyteller who used whatever structure he found convenient. Coming four years after The Birth of a Nation, it has also gone by The Yellow Man and the Girl. Despite what you'd think, it tries for a positive depiction of a man from China and his feelings for a young white woman (Lillian Gish), while the main villain (Donald Crisp) is a white bigot. Sure, a white actor plays the protagonist, identified only as the Yellow Man, but he's more convincing than some cross-racial actors from much later decades and appears to mean no insult.

That said, there's not much of a romance. I thought I'd remembered reading that they got married, but no, not even close. The only line between them (as far as the intertitles tell us) is "What makes you so good to me, chinky?" Yeah, real sweet. The man shows clearer passion, which the narrator assures us is most "pure and holy." So...chaste? I wonder if Griffith even entertained the idea of letting them be happy together for long. I'd've given him major bonus points for that.