Bosley Crowther called Dear Heart "a stale, dull and humorless
pretension." Melanie cried at the end. Ed laughed out loud at a joke the screenplay had set up half an hour earlier.

Melanie Benjamin and Edward Kelsey Moore watch DEAR HEART (1964), directed by Delbert Mann from Tad Mosel's screenplay. Geraldine Page is Evie Jackson, an Ohio postmaster at a New York convention who pages herself in the hotel lobby so she'll have a message to take home.

Glenn Ford is Harry Mork, a greeting-card salesman engaged to someone else. Angela Lansbury is the someone else. Henry Mancini's title song got an Oscar nomination; the film got forgotten.

WHAT THEY LAND ON

— It's a comedy. Neither of them expected that. Mosel plants jokes that don't pay off for another forty minutes, and then they pay off hard.

— Page's Evie is a lot, and knows she's a lot. "You have to watch me on that." She's also competent, self-aware, and has a genius for making people who start out annoyed by her end up loving her.

— The film says out loud what happens to a woman travelling alone. A man corners her in the corridor: "You're a woman alone. I know what you want." Both hosts assumed he was the house detective. He isn't.

— Melanie goes Team Phyllis. Lansbury's fiancée isn't a villain — she's a woman done with cooking Thanksgiving for twenty who wants to live in a hotel and order room service. "You go, Phyllis."

— Before any of that: Ed plays Ravinia and scores Top Gun live with an orchestra, and Melanie explains, at length and with feeling, exactly why she hates bed and breakfasts.

— The verdict: both recommend it. Ed's reservation is the Patrick subplot. Melanie's case is that it's a film about real human connection, which she'd like a great deal more of right now.

CHAPTERS
00:00 Who the hell are we — and a new once-a-month schedule
01:36 Ed's summer: Hugh Jackman at Ravinia, and Top Gun with an orchestra
10:11 Melanie in Alabama, and the bed and breakfast problem
15:39 Cookies, cognac, and what fresh hell is this
17:52 Dear Heart (1964): Delbert Mann, Tad Mosel, and that Mancini song
21:43 Evie Jackson arrives in New York — and pages herself
45:26 The brush-off, the quickie, and a joke that pays off an hour later
50:07 "You're a woman alone": the corridor scene
52:00 The spinster pack, and what Evie is afraid of becoming
68:52 Team Phyllis: Angela Lansbury has a point
71:32 The train station, and the verdict
75:21 Next month's book: The Overdue Life of Amy Byler

WHERE TO WATCH
Dear Heart (1964), 113 minutes.
Apple TV: https://tv.apple.com/us/movie/dear-heart/umc.cmc.5h2qvwx3djbpb3tbxjvxrap7n
TCM: https://www.tcm.com/watchtcm/titles/15890

NEXT MONTH
The Overdue Life of Amy Byler by Kelly Harms.

MORE
Substack: https://melanieanded.substack.com
Write to us: melanded@whothehellarewe.com

In 2023, Tembe Denton-Hurst published a debut about a young Black media writer who quits her job with a letter — and then has to live with what happens next.

Melanie Benjamin and Edward Kelsey Moore read Homebodies, the debut novel by Tembe Denton-Hurst (HarperVia, 2023). Mickey Hayward works a media job that's mostly listicles instead of the journalism she wanted. When she's laid off, she writes a detailed letter calling out racism and sexism in the industry — it goes nowhere, at first. She retreats to her Maryland hometown to regroup, reconnect with old friends, and reconsider her relationship with her girlfriend Lex, just as the letter unexpectedly goes viral without her.

In 1949 Warner Bros. built a movie out of its own stars for one reason: to make Doris Day famous. It worked.

Melanie Benjamin and Edward Kelsey Moore watch It's a Great Feeling, directed by David Butler and starring Doris Day, Dennis Morgan, and Jack Carson. It was Day's third Warner Bros. picture, made when the studio had a big star on its hands and wanted the whole town to notice. The plot is thin on purpose: Day plays a studio cafeteria worker who wants to be in pictures, Morgan and Carson play themselves, and the film opens on the joke that no director will work with Jack Carson except Jack Carson.

What fills the rest is the cameo parade. Joan Crawford reprises her Mildred Pierce dialogue and slaps both leading men. Gary Cooper gets a single word. Edward G. Robinson parodies his own gangster persona, Errol Flynn turns up as the small-town fiance, and Bugs Bunny arrives by way of Mel Blanc. Bette Davis and Humphrey Bogart are conspicuously absent.

The hosts are honest about the rest: forgettable songs, a dream ballet that defeats explanation, a Maurice Chevalier parody that runs long. What works is Day herself, and one quiet late number in a train lounge car. Not a good movie. A delight anyway.

Also discussed: Calamity Jane, Mildred Pierce, Christmas in Connecticut, Singin' in the Rain, The Sound of Music.

Next: Homebodies by Tembe Denton-Hurst.

Who the Hell Are We? is hosted by novelists Melanie Benjamin and Edward Kelsey Moore. Subscribe at melanieanded.substack.com. Notes: melandEd@whothehellarewe.com.