For our second Sandra Dee episode we watched two films from 1959 (March 1959, to be exact): the Ross Hunter family melodrama A Stranger in My Arms (directed by Helmut Käutner), from a novel by the author of Written on the Wind, and the infamous Gidget (directed by Paul Wendkos), based on Frederick Kohner's novel about his daughter. We do our best to reconstruct the movie Stranger could have been while marveling at Dee's exhausting performance of a neurotic rich girl, and then turn our flabbergasted attention to Gidget, a movie with much more on its mind (particularly concerning gender roles and alienation) than we could ever have imagined based on its reputation. And in our So This Is Sarris section we get sensitive about Sam Fuller's visual forms.

Time Codes:

0h 00m 20s: STRANGER IN MY ARMS (1959) [dir. Helmut Kautner]

0h 20m 54s: GIDGET (1959) [dir. Paul Wendkos]

1h 00m 32s: So This is Sarris (Andrew Sarris's The American Cinema) – Samuel Fuller

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Listen to our guest episode on The Criterion Project – a discussion of Late Spring

* Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s

* Intro Song: "Sunday" by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive)

* Read Elise's piece on Gangs of New York – "Making America Strange Again"

* Check out Dave's Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist's 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project!

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