This is an amiable enough comedy that feels
like it was reaching for Preston Sturges with a touch of Capra but falls
a bit short. It has a great cast though beginning with the wonderful Veronica
Lake in one of her lesser known films. Actually by 1948, her film career
was coming to an end and this was to be her final film with Paramount. Amazing
in that only seven years previously she had won America over in Sullivan's
Travels with her streaming blonde hair, peek-a-boo hair style and her don't
fuck with me softness. She had a vulnerability that was just built into her
body. Classics quickly followed - This Gun for Hire, The Glass Key, I Married
a Witch, So Proudly We Hail and a few years later another great noir - The
Blue Dahlia. But word of how difficult she was to work with - both to fellow
actors and the filmmakers - also followed her. Her co-star in Sullivan's
Travels Joel McCrea said he would never work with her again - though he did
in the 1947 Ramrod. She very sadly had a worsening mental illness - paranoia
and schizophrenia - that led to a very depressing life after film that
I don't even want to go into. But for a while no one was more glamorous.
The It Girl for a few brief years.
Director William Russell makes no use of that at all - it takes place in
the late 1800's and her period fashions do nothing for her looks or figure
and her hair is kept high and pulled back accentuating her perhaps too thin
facial bone structure. The hair usually covered that and made her look rounder,
softer, more seductive. But I will watch her in pretty much anything from
that period. Along with her in this one is a great supporting group of actors
- her sister is Joan Caulfield, then there is Barry Fitzgerald, William Demarest,
Chill Wills, Beulah Bondi, a very young Darryl Hickman and a yet to be famous
George Reeves as the town hunk who gets to kiss both of them.
It is a sweet film with all the makings of a Christmas film though that holiday
only makes a cameo appearance at the end to give us a happy ending. The two
sisters are cold hearted con women (you have to wonder if the title may have
given people a wrong impression) who just had the big con that they wanted
- getting $25,000 out of a male sucker - and are now on the run to Canada.
But a fire breaks out on their carriage and they are stranded in a small
Maine town. Hicksville USA.
They sneak into what they think is a deserted house to get out of the rain
only to find it inhabited by Fitzgerald - who isn't a priest in this one
but may as well be. He sees the money and a wanted poster of them and blackmails
them into staying. Meanwhile, he starts giving their money away to the needy
people of the village who think it is the sisters and so they acquire the
nickname The Sainted Sisters. The sisters are not that sainted though - yet.
Good parts for everyone involved as the acting time is spread around in a
collegial way.
