From the 1950s: Mister Cory

1957 Drama

From Universal-International

Directed by Blake Edwards

Starring

Tony Curtis

Martha Hyer

Charles Bickford

Kathryn Grant

William Reynolds

Henry Daniell

Willis Bouchey

Tony Curtis had been around Universal-International since 1949.  He was under contract to them for most of his years there and they put him in one silly movie after another. They put all of their stars in one silly movie after another.  

Curtis's career could be compared to another U-I star, Rock Hudson. They costarred with many of the same actresses in movies where either of them could have had the male lead.  Both were handsome, fun-loving and easy to get along with.  

Prospects for Hudson changed in 1954 when the studio teamed him opposite Jane Wyman in the mega-hit, Magnificent Obsession.  No doubt Curtis was playing close attention.  He and Hudson were studio buddies but they were also competitive and far more visible than other U-I players.  

As it happened, in 1956 he had a bona fide hit opposite Burt Lancaster in Trapeze but it was made at another studio, United Artists.  Curtis was annoyed that when he returned to his home studio, they assigned him the lead in a B western.  I never found him to be a good fit for westerns and I suspect he felt the same.

It was at this point that he and then-wife Janet Leigh formed their own production company Curtleigh Productions. The company bought the rights to Mister Cory and it became Curtleigh's first production through U-I.  It may not have been the A film he was hoping for but it was better than those his studio offered him, a tailor-made role for his persona and talents.

Mister Cory (we never learn his first name) is a street-smart young guy from Sagamon Street in the Chicago slums.  As Bernie Schwartz, Curtis was a street-smart kid from the slums of New York City who was as eager to get out and make it big as the fictional Mister Cory was.

Cory makes his way to Wisconsin and the posh Green Pines Lodge Country Club where he gets on as a busboy-dishwasher.  He has a devil of a time with his snooty boss, Henry Daniell, who doesn't trust him for a moment. 

The irrepressible and ambitious Cory has a love of gambling and when he finds high-stakes poker games being played in the club's back rooms he is eager to make his mark.  He is mentored by a wise, old card shark, Jeremiah (Charles Bickford) who likes Cory and thinks he has talent at the poker table but wants to  turn Cory into a force to be reckoned with.

Actually, once Cory's skills improve, Jeremiah wants them to form a secret alliance at the tables where those combined skills will bring about riches and glory on the gambling circuit.  Jeremiah is the brains and Cory with his charm and audaciousness goes out there and sells it.  Soon people want to sit at his table where the stakes are very high.

Curtis and Hyer

Soon after he arrives at the country club, he gets into tangled relationships with two high society sisters. Abby Vollard (Martha Hyer) couldn't be more different from Jen (Kathryn Grant).  Abby is blond and beautiful... the chignon is always in place and the designer clothes look like an elegant uniform.  She's rigid and icy and not particularly warm to Cory when she meets him.  She has no idea he's a busboy... he even cleared away her dinner dishes but she was too busy being queenly with her fellow diners to notice someone of his station.

Jen is brunette, bubbly, adorable, far more outgoing than her sister and not quite as beautiful.  She is genuine and Cory is enchanted with how fun and perky and imaginative she is.  She does notice him as he's clearing those dishes away.  By the time they go on an unplanned motorboat ride on the lake, she's swooning.

Of course, Cory wants Abby. Let's face it... their sparring makes for a better story. And Abby is engaged to the equally wealthy Alex Wyncott (William Reynolds) whom she is partially just playing while he's over the moon about her. But Cory is persistent and soon Abby is sneaking around with him. Then he's pawing her in the front seat of her convertible and she's not able to convince him that she doesn't do such things.

Curtis and Grant

He's arrogant enough to try to melt her icy exterior and he and Jen spend time together where she will coach him on breaking through to her sister.  Jen has no trouble taking part in doing that but she believes Cory will come to realize Abby is not for him and she, Jen, is. She'll be there waiting.

Then Abby hears that Cory is not a guest at the hotel after all but works in the kitchen. In the kitchen!  She puffs herself up and goes marching into there where she catches him washing a dish. Ooops.

Abby makes it clear they will be no more while he and Jeremiah, by now fairly renowned in gambling circles, are offered a chance by a gambling magnet to run (at 30% of the evening's profits) a high-class gambling casino being built in Chicago.

Cory's been away from the Vollards for a couple of years when they walk into his poker palace.  Now he's acceptable to Abby and apparently he's still hot for her.  Jen brings her own handsome date but we know she's still steamy for Cory.  

Alex has come along and Cory sets it up that he is to win at his table.  But soon the happy Alex is most unhappy when Abby will still not marry him and he doesn't know why.  Or does he?  He figures out there are three in this relationship and he speaks with Cory... pleads really, that he leaves Abby alone.  Cory refuses.  Jeremiah thinks his partner has become someone he doesn't want to know.

Reynolds confronts Curtis

A day later Alex shoots Cory.  He will mend and he will not call the police nor have Alex arrested.  Cory feels like a bum.  He's seen the error of his ways.  He's lost his passion for gambling.  He's been chasing the wrong sister.  That will be corrected.

Curtis was pleased with the film and his performance.  He knew it was a slam dunk because he knew this character so well.  Like the character, the actor was ambitious and given to doing most anything to climb up the ladder.  

As a youngster I saw most everything he made. Some of his films were atrocious under the iron hand of Universal but he more or less did as he was told.  He didn't think he was the greatest actor of his youthful days but he knew what he had.  His films were always entertaining and he was someone to keep an eye on.  He knew it, the studio knew it, his fans knew it.

He saw Mister Cory as being better than most of the stuff he'd done but he knew better work was on its way.  The same year he made Sweet Smell of Success, arguably his best acting job, at United Artists. It would only be the following year when U-I thought he deserved his biggest break and they assigned him The Defiant Ones and his career would never be the same.  And the year after that was Some Like It Hot.  As it turns out, however, most of his best work was not done at U-I.

Hyer said she enjoyed working with Curtis and with Reynolds as well.  She knew she'd played this same role countless times and would do so again.  Few did it better.  Grant never became a big movie star.  She married Bing Crosby this same year and working was never again such a high priority.  The best film she ever made was 1959's Anatomy of a Murder but I think her role in Mister Cory is arguably her best.

Charles Bickford

Bickford was one of my favorite character actors.  I always thought he was quietly imposing. He didn't think much of the film or his part but he never denied having fun doing it.  Likewise, Reynolds was one of my favorite young B players.  He was another U-I contractee who never benefitted from the studio's push.  Too bad.  He was one handsome dude.

Curtis said that while he was fighting hard for some recognition at his studio and around Hollywood in general, so was a new friend he'd met there... Blake Edwards.  Curtis asked Edwards to adapt the screenplay for Cory but he went after Sir Carol Reed, his Trapeze director, to steer the film.  But when Reed couldn't oblige, Curtis asked Edwards to direct as well.  It was just his third directing job.  It was the first time director and actor worked together but they would do so again in The Perfect Furlough (1958), Operation Petticoat (1959) and The Great Race (1965). 

This is a nice little film, immensely entertaining thanks to Edwards, Curtis and a fine cast.  I could not find an available trailer.

Next posting: 

A 1950s film noir