Hollywood Studios Year-by-Year – Paramount – 1944: LADY IN THE DARK & AND NOW TOMORROW

This week's Paramount 1944 films take the studio's talent of this period in unexpected directions: Mitchell Leisen's Lady in the Dark makes a Technicolor extravaganza of the fantasy sequences in this psychoanalytical tale of a woman's (Ginger Rogers') ambivalence about glamour, based on a hit Broadway musical; and Alan Ladd and Raymond Chandler (as star and screenwriter) bring a hardboiled note to a soapy plot about a socialite (Loretta Young) seeking a cure for her deafness in And Now Tomorrow, a woman's picture/noir hybrid with more interest in class issues than that genre usually shows. Bouncing off of Martin Scorsese, we discuss the "psychological disturbance" in relationships between men and women in Hollywood musicals and just what Lady in the Dark has to say about the possibility of an equal relationship between a woman and a man.    Time Codes: 0h 00m 45s:      LADY IN THE DARK [dir. Mitchell Leisen] 0h 31m 58s:       AND NOW TOMORROW [dir. Irving Pichel] 0h 52m 35s:        Letter from Listener Gregory Studio Film Capsules provided by The Paramount Story by John Douglas Eames   Additional studio information from: The Hollywood Story by Joel W. Finler                                     +++ * 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 latest film piece on Preston Sturges, Unfaithfully Yours, and the Narrative role of comedic scapegoating. * Check out Dave's new 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!  Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy Write to us at [email protected]   We now have a Discord server - just drop us a line if you'd like to join!