Ida Lupino. Rosalind Russell. Hayley Mills. Gypsy Rose Lee. An ungodly constellation of lady stars lined up in the Hollywood skies only once, and the result was The Trouble with Angels, a convent school comedy that TCM graciously saw fit to air last week when the cinetrix was at low ebb. Prayers answered!
This flick bowed in '66, in a post-Kennedy, post-Vatican 2 world, but you'd never know it. Catholicism here offers merely an opportunity to extend the plucky Haley Mills single-sex brand and make the world safe for the Flying Nun and Sister Acts of the future.
Sidebar: What is it with Hollywood and Catholicism? It's long been the go-to denomination for horror [extra books in the Bible!] and nunsploitation of all stripes. Could it be the iconography? Tough to say.
Anyway, there are hijinks a go-go in this coming-of-age story, as little orphan Mary [Mills] and her pal Rachel, an adenoidal refugee from a progressive school, play "scandalously brilliant" pranks on fellow students and the sisters. And you really haven't lived until you've seen regal Rosalind Russell swanning around in a full habit. Or, for that matter, Haley Mills smoking a cigar.
But that's about as phallic as things get for Miss Mills, the girl Hollywood never really let grow up. By the time graduation rolls around, Mary betrays her partner in crime by opting to stay behind at the school and become a bride of Christ. [And we know He never puts out.] The cinetrix can relate to Rachel's sense of surprise. Lupino shows us only a fleeting glimpse of Mary struggling with her vocation before there she is, gamely trying on a serene smile as the movie ends.
It's a trifle, Angels, and done on the cheap, but, oh, to have been a fly on the wall on that set. Imagine the advice Lupino or Russell could have given the Disney ingenue and the war stories they could have shared! The mind reels.
****
A confession: The only reason the cinetrix stumbled across this little oddity is because she was channel surfing after "Gossip Girl" ended. Am I the only one who thinks the blonde on that show looks like a baby Kim Gordon?
