It Happened to Jane / Send Me No Flowers / Cover Girl / It Happened One Night

It Happened To Jane (1959): Jane Osgood (Day) is a widowed mother who runs a struggling lobster business in coastal Maine, while Harry Malone (Kovacs) is a wealthy businessman who has bought out the local railroad. He harbors big plans for it, aiming to transform it into a luxury passenger train, replacing the freight train the residents of the area depend upon. When a large lobster shipment of Jane’s is rerouted and returned to her dead, she decides to fight back, and sues Malone with the help of her longtime friend and lawyer George Denham. This instigates a battle of increasingly epic proportions, as Malone uses every trick in the book–as well as his massive bank account–to quell the resolve of the spitfire businesswoman; Jane, for her part, has public sympathy on her side. A reporter for the national news doing a story on Jane (Steve Forrest) begins to fall in love with her, and she is forced to decide between the romantic journalist and her childhood friend, George. The magical pairing of Lemmon and Day is augmented by the beautiful location photography in Maine and a stellar supporting cast including Mary Wickes, Russ Brown, and a rare film appearance from Kovacs.

Send Me No Flowers (1964): When he overhears a doctor discussing the imminent death of a patient, hypochondriac George (Hudson) believes the doc is referring to him. Convinced he’s living on borrowed time, George enlists the aid of his best friend Arnold (Randall) to find a new husband for his soon-to-be-widowed wife Judy (Day). Already alarmed by her husband’s increasingly strange behavior, Judy is even more bewildered when an old flame shows up George bends over backwards to encourage his advances!

Cover Girl (1944): Rita Hayworth, Academy Award winner Gene Kelly, Phil Silvers and Eve Arden star in this lavishly produced musical about a nightclub dancer from Brooklyn who leaves her sweetheart after winning a Cover Girl contest - only to learn that fame and fortune are no substitute for true love. Rusty Parker is a chorus girl at a nightclub run by her sweetheart, Danny McGuire. Driven by ambition, she enters a “Cover Girl” contest. When Coudair, the magazine’s publisher, discovers that she is the granddaughter of a former Broadway belle with whom he had been in love, Rusty wins the contest. Cover Girl proved to be a turning point in the history of the Hollywood musical. For the first time, the songs were not merely strung together, but were themselves vital elements, serving to move the story forward. Cover Girl was also a major turning point in the career of Gene Kelly, as it established him as a virtuoso choreographer as well as a major dancing talent. Cover Girl also cemented Hayworth’s reputation as Hollywood’s most talented female dancer.

It Happened One Night (1934): Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert team up for laughs as mismatched lovers in this 1934 screwball comedy classic. Spoiled Ellie Andrews (Colbert) escapes from her millionaire father (Walter Connolly), who wants to stop her from marrying a worthless playboy. En route to New York, Ellie gets involved with an out-of-work newsman, Peter Warne (Gable). When their bus breaks down, the bickering couple set off on a madcap hitchhiking expedition. Peter hopes to parlay the inside story of their misadventures into a job. But complications fly when the runaway heiress and brash reporter fall in love. Directed by Frank Capra, It Happened One Night was the first movie to be honoured with all five major Oscars: Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Director and Best Screenplay.

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