The Maisie Series - The Final Five Films
     
                 
Maisie Gets Her Man (1942) – 7.0




The 6th in the Maisie Rivier series and one of the best yet - in particular a great big fat happy ending like movies used to do. Maisie (Ann Sothern) has once again shed her man from the previous film, Ringside Maisie, and is on her own in cold wintry Chicago. She is at the receiving end of an act - literally - as a knife thrower uses her as an outline. But when his blonde girlfriend ditches him for a flute player he wants revenge. And Maisie is blonde and female. That brings the act to an abrupt pointed end and she is unemployed as usual. She gets a job from a building superintendent (Allen Jenkins) but that only lasts a half day when his boss says no hires.

 


Next in the same building she runs into Hap, perhaps the worst comedian ever. In from the sticks with an act that he says can't fail - full of bad jokes and worse slapstick. Still he talks her into joining the act and they try to make a go of it. Hap is played by Red Skelton, who some may also say was one of the worst comedians ever. I actually love Red Skelton - a feeling likely instilled in me watching his TV show with my grandfather who would nearly fall off the couch with every joke on the show. It rubs off on you. He was just becoming successful with his three Whistling films. When his character isn't telling bad jokes or giving you exploding cards, he is quite appealing as the leading man that Maisie begins to have feelings for. Of course, it all goes off course.

 


Nicely directed by Roy Del Ruth who could direct any sort of film but was especially good at musicals - Broadway Melody of 1936, Born to Dance, Broadway Melody of 1938. There is loads of sharp smack in the face dialogue and sharp elbows from Maisie as usual but what we finally get to see is Maisie dancing and singing. Sothern started in show business as a singer and considering that Maisie is in show business, I would have expected to see her perform in every film. But she doesn't until now - the end of the film when she sings one for the boys. The army going off to war and it is terrific. A nice line-up for this film besides the above - Leo Gorcey playing hooky from the Eastside Kids, the wonderful Donald Meek, Lloyd Corrigan as a flimflam man, an always welcome Rags Ragland, Frank Jenks, Walter Catlett and a thankfully brief appearance from Willie Best.
Swing Shift Maisie (1943) – 5.5




The seventh of the ten Maisie films from MGM. These are still running about 90 minutes which is a sign that they have not fallen into B film territory. Not that the budgets look very big. This is the weakest of the films so far. Most of them center on a down and out Maisie looking for work and being banged around a bit by life before she turns the tables. This one turns into a tedious romantic threesome that felt more sour than sweet. Maisie (Ann Sothern) is on the west coast in a dog act - not a very spiffy one as the dogs can't seem to do much other than lay down and walk between her legs. But the act gets busted after the dogs go crazy and she goes to work at a defense plant. It is war time and the women left their aprons at home and went to work for America. She meets a hunky pilot (James Craig) and throws her hat at him. He naturally responds.

 

She lives in a boarding house and hears a woman crying in the room across the hall and smells gas. Maisie saves her and takes her in and gets her a job at the plant. Iris is played by Jean Rogers, a real stunner most famous for being in a few of the Flash Gordon series and also the Secret X-9 series. She radiates sexiness and I hope Flash made the most of that. She also makes a play for the pilot but our sweet Iris is part con part tramp and Maisie feels she has to rein her in - till she does Maisie bad. Just kind of an eh film. Maisie deserves better than this. Still her wisecracks and elbows remain sharp.
Maisie Goes to Reno (1944) – 7.0

 

The eighth in the Maisie series - I watched the ninth out of order a few weeks back by mistake. Not that it really matters much but I am a bit compulsive about watching films in a series in order. At the end of the seventh film Maisie was working as a riveter and in love with a pilot. Here she is still a riveter for the Defense Dept. but as always the former guy is gone. She explains that he discovered that he liked the local dancing girls in Dallas. So she is free to fall in love again. Which of course she does. Quickly.  Having seen the ninth film I know he won't last long. Anyway, she is giving all the guys in the factory a wink which is leading them to have certain thoughts and hopes that don't involve machinery. But it is just a twitch she has developed. The doctor orders her to take a two-week vacation and an old friend has a band in Reno and asks Maisie to join them for the two-weeks. Sing a few songs at night and lay by the pool all day. And she actually does get to perform one number. I wish she did in every film.

 

But she doesn't get to have much pool time. Just as she is boarding the bus to Reno a solider asks her to deliver a letter to his wife who is divorcing him. Maisie does but soon realizes that it was a woman pretending to be the wife and that something is wrong. She of course has to get to the bottom of it and the film turns into a charming screwball comedy mystery with Ann Sothern giving one of her best performances. She falls for a blackjack dealer who thinks she needs a psychiatrist. He is played by John Hodiak - kind of a Martin Landau lookalike - at first I thought he was going to be the villain with his wide smirky mouth and dark eyes. Maisie you can do better.

 

More interesting though is the wife - played by the perfect Ava Gardner. And I mean perfect. Basically, she had had only uncredited roles up till this. She had a nice bit in one of the Dr. Gillespie films and here her role isn't large but you won't forget that face.  MGM was bringing her along slowly as they liked to do. It was still two years till The Killer which gave her a nice platform as the femme fatale. She did find time to marry Mickey Rooney though. And divorce him. Maybe in Reno. The husband is played by Tom Drake who is quite appealing here. Both he and Hodiak had heart conditions that kept them out of the army. It killed Hodiak when he 41 years old. Drake made it to 64. This is one of the better Maisie films - she is utterly charming and funny and the plot is good enough.
Up Goes Maisie (1946) – 7.0




Maisie (Ann Sothern) is still flying high - literally - in this ninth of the ten film series. A very kookie cute ending pushes the film up on the ratings scale. The war is over and Maisie is no longer riveting and welding in the defense plants. She is a proud graduate of a woman's business school (which in those days qualified a woman to be a secretary) and the film opens with her walking down the avenue in a large flouncy hat and swishy skirt to receive her diploma. She looks grand and as happy as a lark. The man passing by think so too. But she quickly runs into sexual harassment first from her professor (John Eldredge) and then in a series of interviews for jobs. Welcome to the working life. Of course, with her background in show business this is nothing new. Her defenses are well primed and practiced. The good old days when men would actually whistle at a girl in the office.

 

She decides to play down her looks with a pair of glasses, prim outfits and her hair pulled back in a bun and sure enough it works. She gets hired by Joe when he learns that she worked in a defense plant because he is building a new type of helicopter which is partly push button. Joe is played by George Murphy who was Maisie's romance in Ringside Maisie - but that was back in 1941 and I expect audiences had forgotten. Unknown to Joe one of his small group of workers is a rat and is playing a double-cross game with a group who want the helicopter but not Joe.


 

Of course Maisie saves the day, wins Joe's love and with no experience has to fly the helicopter to the Rose Bowl - and makes a mid-air stop next to an apartment building to make a phone call. It is very sweet but she deserves someone better than Murphy. He always strikes me as a used car salesman, which made it natural that he run for political office years later. The future Lt. Tragg (Ray Collins) plays a wealthy investor, Hillary Brooke is great as the icy but beautiful snake who betrays Joe and one of her friends at the pool party is Leave It to Beaver's mom, Barbara Billingsley. I am sure by the next film she will fall in love again with someone new.
Undercover Maisie (1947) – 5.5

 


Well, the Maisie series comes to a sad end after ten films from 1939 to 1947. MGM kept up the quality throughout never letting the series fall into B film territory. The main attraction of all the films no matter how weak the plots sometimes got was Ann Sothern who hands out looks and charms like a Christmas elf. Maisie was a distinct character that she created with her Brooklyn accent, Woolworth wardrobe, sharp wits, take no guff from men, her cutting remarks and her never give up attitude. In every film it looks like she has met the right man at the end only to discover in the next film that she is single and struggling with everyday things like work, bills, rent, keeping grabbers off of her and looking for the right guy who respects her and her background as a vaudevillian.

 


Maybe she finally does find him here though my guess is that if there had been another film, there would have been another man. Where they all went was only mentioned in one film. Though her Maisie films took up most of her time, Sothern still acted in a few other solid ones - Brother Orchid, Lady Be Good and Cry Havoc. She was in a few more good ones after the series ended - A Letter to Three Wives and The Blue Gardenia - before she made the jump to television where she found success in two series long forgotten - Private Secretary and The Ann Sothern Show. Before this series I only really had a vague idea of who she was (and thought her name was spelled Southern) but now am a big fan.

 


This plot is sillier than most. I imagine the writers sat around and thought what can she be in this one. So they come up with being a cop. On her way back to NYC with a promised job as a bubble bath model she gets swindled by a sweet old lady for everything she has. But she gives such a good description of the woman that the head of Bunco (Barry Nelson) decides she would be a great undercover cop. Perfect logic. So she goes through training and judo classes. And is put on a case of a gang of confidence crooks (Leon Ames). Some nice judo at the end. But she never gets the old lady which disappointed me. Times have changed in the police force. Try calling a woman officer "honey" or "darling" now and see what happens. One of the weaker Maisie films -  a little underwritten in the comic aspects - but it is still Ann Sothern. I imagine they all knew this was the end.