Thoughts on Spring

Astronomical spring arrived a couple of days ago, although it was just in time for the weather to take a turn for the worse here, as the temperatures dipped from the 60s, with a lot of sun, down to rainy 40s. But, being too lazy to do a review of any of tonights upcoming Ginger Rogers movies, I thought about some of the various meanings of spring.

Springtime shows up quite a bit in the movies. There's the dreadful early musical Spring Is Here, one of those pre-42nd Street musicals that's static and full of dated singing. Indeed, when I recorded it the last time it showed up on TCM, I found it so awful that I started fast-forwarding through the songs! It hasn't been released to DVD, and somehow, I doubt it ever will. More famous from the musicals might be the "Springtime for Hitler" number from The Producers. Paris in the spring shows up quite a bit, too.

Spring break is another obvious choice, as there were a lot of college movies from the 1960s that dealt with coeds going south for the break. Where the Boys Are would probably be the best-known of such movies.

IMDb's search doesn't yield too many matches for spring water, but then the keyword matching isn't the best. There are a few movies dealing with the horse racing at Saratoga, including Jean Harlow's final movie, but it should be recalled that Saratoga got its start as a spa, and the town is called Saratoga Springs.

IMDb also lists about a dozen titles for bed springs, although to be honest, the only bed springs I can remember come in cartoons, when a bed falls apart and you can see a spring popping out from the mattress. There should be some watch springs, although we don't normally get to see these up close. The closest example I can think of to showing the workings of a watch would be in the bomb sequence of Alfred Hitchcock's Sabotage. (There's also The Big Clock, although I don't remember that clock having any springs.)

The one other Spring would be Spring Byington, who made a lot of movies from the 1930s to the 1960s. Since spring starts in March, I wanted to do a post on her and Fredric March, but the only movie they made together (and Byington doesn't even have a big part in it), The Buccaneer doesn't seem to have been released to DVD. Byington was actually nominated for one Oscar, that coming in You Can't Take It With You.