Waterloo Bridge (1940)

The last time I saw Robert Taylor directed by Mervyn LeRoy, it was in Quo Vadis, which I dug. That may be the main reason I took a suggestion to see this. It was also the personal favorite of both Taylor and co-star Vivien Leigh, who had just made it big as Scarlett O'Hara at the time.

In World War I London, Capt. Roy Cronin (Taylor) escorts ballet dancer Myra Lester (Leigh) to safety during an air raid. They soon take interest in each other and are eventually engaged, but Roy gets deployed before they can marry. Myra's effort to give him a proper sendoff means missing a rehearsal and getting kicked out of the troupe. She later reads Roy's name in a list of fallen officers. Between financial desperation and romantic despair, she takes up the world's oldest profession -- only to run into Roy again, as he'd been a POW, not dead. (It's not a spoiler if other summaries say it, right?) He has no idea what she's been up to, and she'd rather keep it that way, but the secret complicates their engagement, particularly in light of his haughty aristocratic relatives....

Gold Diggers of 1933

Yeah, I don't even have to add the date in parentheses. Back then, musicals about stage productions were sickeningly common, and some titles had dates as the only way to distinguish them from others. This one, directed by Mervyn LeRoy, could be taken as a companion piece to Footlight Parade and/or 42nd Street, involving many of the same names in the same year.

What makes GDo1933 stand out, not just among musicals but among non-dramas at the time, is that it does not try to make the audience forget the Depression. Opening number "We're in the Money" gets interrupted due to the inability of the stage director (Ned Sparks) to pay bills. Soon after, three dancers -- amusingly named Carol King (Joan Blondell), Trixie (Aline McMahon), and Polly (Ruby Keeler) -- are sharing an apartment, hunger, and sporadic contact with frenemy Fay (Ginger Rogers). Fortunately, Polly's neighboring crush, undiscovered composer/pianist/singer Brad (Dick Powell), agrees to give not just his talent but considerable startup funds to the next show. Where did he get this money, and why does he insist on remaining a mystery? You can probably guess....

Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (1944)

AFI's celebration of Dalton Trumbo prompted me to give this some priority, a few months after my last war film viewing. The casting of Robert Mitchum and the direction of Mervyn LeRoy helped intrigue me.

The reportedly mostly true story follows Lieutenant Colonel James Doolittle (Spencer Tracy) and his men on the first U.S. Air Force mission of retaliation for Pearl Harbor. The titular period of bombing comes in the middle of the piece, after much preparation. What follows is an effort to stay alive after crashing in China, in an area pretty well hemmed in by the Japanese.

The Bad Seed (1956)

You may question whether a mere thriller, with no sci-fi or supernatural elements and no gore, belongs on a Halloween-type schedule. But I tend to find movies scarier when they're basically credible...and when they leave something to the imagination.

Besides, Mervyn LeRoy's The Bad Seed may easily call to mind genuine horrors like The Omen, if only because of the enfant terrible. I can't name many films about evil children, partly because not every filmmaker wants to get kids thoroughly involved in something not fit for family viewing, but they are a promising ingredient for disturbance if not fear. Think about it: Young children, especially girls, are commonly upheld as symbols of innocence. But I for one remember having worse ethics then than now; I was "innocent" only in the sense that I'd had little time or ability to do anything seriously bad. A child with a bit more of the right talent and know-how could do much worse. And eight-year-old Rhoda (Patty McCormack) is one such child.