Walter Pidgeon Movies: Forbidden Planet, Mrs. Miniver

Walter Pidgeon movies on TCM: Sci-fi classic Forbidden Planet, Oscar-winning blockbuster Mrs. Miniver

I mentioned dignified, gentlemanly, and usually a little dull Walter Pidgeon the other day, wishing he had been cast as Jane Powell’s grandfather in A Date with Judy (1948) so he could (more or less) have dated Carmen Miranda on-screen. Had that happened, you could forget Greer Garson – and Tracy-Hepburn, Ladd-Lake, Loy-Powell, Flynn-de Havilland, Garbo-Gilbert, and Abbott-Costello. Pidgeon-Miranda would have been the movie couple for all time.

No such luck. But Walter Pidgeon fans, nonfans, and those who don’t know Pidgeon from Adam can check him out on Thursday on Turner Classic Movies. Thirteen Pidgeon films will be presented as part of TCM’s “Summer Under the Stars” series, though nothing “new,” like, say, A Most Immoral Lady (in case it still exists), Big Brown Eyes, or Sextette. (See Walter Pidgeon movie schedule below.)

But there’ll always be Greer Garson, with whom Pidgeon can be seen in two of their most famous vehicles, the Oscar-winning Mrs. Miniver (1942) and the Oscar-nominated Madame Curie (1943), and in two of their weakest vehicles: Mrs. Parkington (1944) and Julia Misbehaves (1948), the latter a “change of pace” for the couple that didn’t quite work out.

Personally, I’m no fan of either Mrs. Miniver or Madame Curie, both of which I find dramatically stilted. But both are worth a look as historical curiosities.

Pidgeon, however, is at his best in Forbidden Planet (1956), a curious – and still very much relevant – sci-fier featuring Leslie Nielsen, Anne Francis, and the quirky Robot later seen in the TV series Lost in Space. Fred M. Wilcox directed.

The Hot Heiress (1931) surprised me because I wasn’t expecting anything out of it. Found this Clarence Badger comedy an amusing pre-Coder, while Ona Munson (Belle Watling in Gone with the Wind) is excellent in the title role.

H. C. Potter’s slow-moving, old-fashioned The Shopworn Angel (1938) is sheer moralizing melodrama; making the story even more absurd, Margaret Sullavan leaves Pidgeon for James Stewart. Had I written that tale, the young woman would have stayed with the wealthy, older man and lived happily ever after in decadent luxury. (The 1928 version starred Nancy Carroll, Gary Cooper, and Paul Lukas.)

Executive Suite (1954) is a different kind of “sheer moralizing melodrama” – one that boasts a top-notch cast and some terrific performances that help raise the level of its patronizing storyline. Barbara Stanwyck, for one, deserved that year’s Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her stellar turn as The Cool Heiress, the daughter of a business magnate who had the nerve to die without leaving an heir to the company’s throne.

Others who are quite good in this tale about money, power, family, honor, and honesty, all set within the framework of an idealized business world that exists only in Old Hollywood movies, musty books, and far-right conventions are Fredric March, the underrated June Allyson, and Pidgeon himself.

Nina Foch, one of the film’s weaker links in front of the camera, received a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nod. Others in the cast: William Holden, Paul Douglas, Shelley Winters, Louis Calhern, and Dean Jagger.

Robert Wise, already getting increasingly sentimental (despite the innovative “non-music score” approach), directed from a screenplay by the renowned Ernest Lehman (Sabrina, North by Northwest, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?), who adapted Cameron Hawley’s lah-lah-land bestseller.

Schedule (PT) and synopses from the TCM website:

3:00 AM Sweet Kitty Bellairs (1930)
Cast: Claudia Dell, Ernest Torrence, Walter Pidgeon.
Director: Alfred E. Green.
Color. 63 min.

4:15 AM The Hot Heiress (1931)
Cast: Ben Lyon, Ona Munson, Walter Pidgeon. Director: Clarence Badger. B&W. 79 min.

5:45 AM The Shopworn Angel (1938)
Cast: Margaret Sullavan, James Stewart, Walter Pidgeon. Director: H.C. Potter. B&W. 85 min.

7:15 AM Flight Command (1940)
Cast: Robert Taylor, Ruth Hussey, Walter Pidgeon. Director: Frank Borzage. B&W. 116 min.

9:15 AM Design for Scandal (1941)
Cast: Rosalind Russell, Walter Pidgeon, Edward Arnold. Director: Norman Taurog. B&W. 85 min.

10:45 AM Julia Misbehaves (1948)
Cast: Greer Garson, Walter Pidgeon, Elizabeth Taylor. Director: Jack Conway. B&W. 99 min.

12:30 PM Mrs. Parkington (1944)
Cast: Greer Garson, Walter Pidgeon, Agnes Moorehead, Gladys Cooper. Director: Tay Garnett. B&W. 124 min.

3:00 PM Executive Suite (1954)
Cast: William Holden, June Allyson, Barbara Stanwyck, Fredric March, Walter Pidgeon, Shelley Winters, Paul Douglas, Nina Foch. Director: Robert Wise. B&W. 105 min.

5:00 PM Man Hunt (1941)
Cast: Walter Pidgeon, Joan Bennett, George Sanders. Director: Fritz Lang. B&W. 102 min.

7:00 PM Madame Curie (1943)
Cast: Greer Garson, Walter Pidgeon, Van Johnson. Director: Mervyn LeRoy. B&W. 124 min.

9:15 PM Mrs. Miniver (1942)
Cast: Greer Garson, Walter Pidgeon, Teresa Wright, Dame May Whitty, Henry Travers, Richard Ney, Helmut Dantine. Director: William Wyler. B&W. 134 min.

11:45 PM Forbidden Planet (1956)
Cast: Walter Pidgeon, Anne Francis, Leslie Nielsen.
Director: Fred M. Wilcox.
Color. 99 min.

1:30 AM Calling Bulldog Drummond (1951)
Cast: Walter Pidgeon, Margaret Leighton, David Tomlinson.
Director: Victor Saville.
B&W. 80 min.