LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Henry Koster: Directors
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Koster signed on with Universal, a studio facing bankruptcy at the time. Despite not knowing a word of English, he molded soprano Deanna Durbin into a child star in his first studio film Three Smart Girls, which, against the studio heads' predictions, proved to be a smash hit, single-handedly saving Universal. Their next picture, One Hundred Men and a Girl, made Universal the top studio again and cemented Koster's position as a musical and comedy director. It ... featured the famous musical conductor Leopold Stokowski as an actor, a role he would replay later in Disney's Fantasia. Even with his success Koster was considered an "enemy alien" until he had lived here for five years. Forced to stay home at night, he was luckily befriended by actor Charles Laughton who would come over and read to him in English to teach him about the language.
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James Stewart reunites with his Harvey director, Henry Koster, in this 1962 comedy, which is charming enough even though it doesn't seem quite up to the level of talent involved. (The screenwriter is the legendary Nunnally Johnson--writer and director of The Three Faces of Eve, among many other titles--and the music is by Henry Mancini.) But it is pleasant, summery entertainment with Stewart and his screen wife, Maureen O'Hara, taking their urban family to a crumbling, seaside house for a vacation. The film was calculated to pull in older fans with Stewart as well as draw in a younger crowd that would enjoy the fairly extensive beach scenes with pop-star Fabian. Stewart is deft with the easy jokes about bad plumbing and such, and golden in several nice moments where he gets to play an attentive dad to his kids. --Tom Keogh
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Five directors adapted five short stories by O. Henry with varying results for this anthology film. A blustery Charles Laughton is a high point in Henry Koster's "The Cop and the Anthem," playing a homeless man trying to get arrested so he can spend the cruel winter in jail. A young, vivid Marilyn Monroe ... appears in a small role. The writer's famous Christmas story, "The Gift of the Magi," is here too, but director Henry King allows it to get a bit maudlin. The unquestionable pinnacle is Howard Hawks' energetic "The Ransom of Red Chief," about a pair of hapless kidnappers whose victim, a vicious, nasty kid, sabotages their plans. As seen in other adaptations, this story can get a bit prickly and hysterical, but Hawks' expert hand keeps the tone dry and funny.
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[T]his light touch was as important behind the camera as well: Koster encouraged a relaxed and warm atmosphere on his sets, in contrast to many other German émigré directors. "I found out that the best acting comes out of complete relaxation, not out of complete tension," he told an interviewer.
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This anthology film assembles five respected directors and a top-notch cast to bring a handful of stories by the great American author O. Henry to the screen. In The Cop and the Anthem, a tramp named Soapy (Charles Laughton) tries to get arrested so that he can spend the winter in jail, only to find that is not as easy as it used to be. Marilyn Monroe appears in this episode as a streetwalker.
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