Cinema Betty

In Stars Through the Mist, we meet Deborah as she is wearing a surgical mask and another hidden mask over her real self.  Which brings me to:

Roman Holiday (1953)

Ann is a royal princess of an unspecified country (so much more tidy than having actual subjects!) who chafes from her rigid life.  Upon her escape she meets Joe the reporter, falls in love with him and must, in the end, renounce him.  (The same year, Princess Margaret was proposed to by Group Captain Townsend--two years later it was to end in public renunciation.  Eek.  Holy, drama, Batman.)

It's not my favorite movie.  (Though, when I told Betty Debbie this was my choice she said, 'Oh I love that movie.')  Peck I enjoy (in a boat, with a goat, in the rain, on a train, here or there, anywhere...) but I'm not an enormous Hepburn fan--like Cary Grant she played a lot of the same character over and over and either you liked it or you didn't--I don't mind it usually but the story is terribly sad.  I'm always wanting to shout into the screen, 'It's Gregory Peck!  Grab him and run for the hills!'

A Star Looks Down.  Betty Debbie suggested that I find something with a boat rescue because at the end of the book the Dreaded Dirk nearly maroons them.  Will do:

Lifeboat (1944)

"Hitchcock's inventiveness extended to the problem of how to justify a cameo appearance on a lifeboat in the middle of the ocean."

When an Allied boat goes down mid-ocean, the survivors pull a German aboard and proceed to squabble over whether or not to drown him outright. I love any movie where Tallulah Bankhead goes slumming.