Charles Hoffman

The fictionalized biography of composer Cole Porter from his days at Yale in the 1910s through the height of his success to the 1940s. The film's attempted biography matches many public myths, despite its lack of relationship with truth.

"The girl is hot," the Motion Picture Herald's critic wrote about Lana Turner's performance in this film. "No holds barred and no conditions stipulated." Turner stars with Clark Gable in this wartime romantic drama. Pearl Harbor is about to be bombed and crack reporter Jonny Davis (Gable) has just returned from the Pacific. At his old rooming house, Davis meets fellow reporter Paula Lane (Turner), a girl he once knew who never got over him. Now, she's involved with Davis's clean-cut younger brother Kirk (Robert Sterling). But Paula wasn't meant to settle, and Jonny's passion for her is equally fervent. Hoping he'll forget her, Jonny persuades Paula to take an assignment in Indochina. But she disappears there - and Jonny and Kirk are sent to search for her. What they find changes everything.

Better known as Reunion in France, this women's-magazine-style romantic \melodrama was the first major production for director Jules Dassin -- who was promptly demoted back to the MGM "B" department when the picture tanked at the box office. Joan Crawford stars as Frenchwoman Michele de la Becque, who comes to believe that her fiancé, wealthy munitions manufacturer Robert Cortot Philip Dorn is a Nazi collaborator. When her suspicions are apparently corroborated, Michelle falls in love with Pat Talbot John Wayne, a downed American aviator stranded in occupied Paris. Only then does Michelle discover that she's been all wrong about Cortot -- but what to do about Talbot, who has been marked for death by the Gestapo? Ava Gardner has a tiny role as a Parisian shopgirl. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

A movie star on tour gets thrown into a variety of wacky publicity stunts.