Easy Living *** (1949, Victor Mature, Lizabeth Scott, Lucille Ball, Sonny Tufts, Lloyd Nolan) – Classic Movie Review 10,215

Director Jacques Tourneur’s 1949 Easy Living stars Victor Mature as football star Pete Wilson, who matures and realises the game doesn’t make him or his greedy wife Liza (Lizabeth Scott) happy.

His retired buddy Tim (Sonny Tufts) gets his top coaching job and then Mature finds that he is suffering from a heart condition and mustn’t play any more.

Charles Schnee’s screenplay is based on Irwin Shaw’s story Education of the Heart. The script carefully circumnavigates the cliché pitfalls of the sport genre and Tourneur does a realistic job on the direction. The much-scoffed-at Mature is stalwart and the movie is decently played throughout by a large, well-chosen cast. Lucille Ball is back at RKO, after seven years, making nice work of her role as the football club secretary with a crush on Mature.

It has no connection with Paramount’s 1937 Easy Living with Jean Arthur, Ray Milland and Edward Arnold.

Also in the cast are Lloyd Nolan, Paul Stewart, Jeff Donnell, Art Baker, Jack Parr, Gordon Jones, Don Beddoe, Richard Erdman, William ‘Bill’ Phillips, Charles Lang, Kenny Washington, Julia Dean, Everett Glass, Jim Backus, Robert Ellis, Russell Thorson, Alan Dinehart, Bill Erwin, and Dick Ryan.

© Derek Winnert 2020 Classic Movie Review 10,215

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