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Dear Heart (1964): Geraldine Page and the Romance Nobody Remembers
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
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