Prodigal Summer

Melanie Benjamin and Edward Kelsey Moore discuss Kelly Harms's novel about a Pennsylvania librarian who spends a week in New York, at a librarians' convention, while her estranged husband has their kids. The pairing follows the previous episode's film, Dear Heart, set at a postmasters' convention in New York. Contains spoilers. Substack: https://melanieanded.substack.com Write to us: [email protected] © Who The Hell Are We 2026

Bosley Crowther called Dear Heart "a stale, dull and humorless pretension." Melanie cried at the end. Ed laughed out loud at a joke the screenplay had set up half an hour earlier. Melanie Benjamin and Edward Kelsey Moore watch DEAR HEART (1964), directed by Delbert Mann from Tad Mosel's screenplay. Geraldine Page is Evie Jackson, an Ohio postmaster at a New York convention who pages herself in the hotel lobby so she'll have a message to take home. Glenn Ford is Harry Mork, a greeting-card salesman engaged to someone else. Angela Lansbury is the someone else. Henry Mancini's title song got an Oscar nomination; the film got forgotten. WHAT THEY LAND ON — It's a comedy. Neither of them expected that. Mosel plants jokes that don't pay off for another forty minutes, and then they pay off hard. — Page's Evie is a lot, and knows she's a lot. "You have to watch me on that." She's also competent, self-aware, and has a genius for making people who start out annoyed by her end up loving her. — The film says out loud what happens to a woman travelling alone. A man corners her in the corridor: "You're a woman alone. I know what you want." Both hosts assumed he was the house detective. He isn't. — Melanie goes Team Phyllis. Lansbury's fiancée isn't a villain — she's a woman done with cooking Thanksgiving for twenty who wants to live in a hotel and order room service. "You go, Phyllis." — Before any of that: Ed plays Ravinia and scores Top Gun live with an orchestra, and Melanie explains, at length and with feeling, exactly why she hates bed and breakfasts. — The verdict: both recommend it. Ed's reservation is the Patrick subplot. Melanie's case is that it's a film about real human connection, which she'd like a great deal more of right now. CHAPTERS 00:00  Who the hell are we — and a new once-a-month schedule 01:36  Ed's summer: Hugh Jackman at Ravinia, and Top Gun with an orchestra 10:11  Melanie in Alabama, and the bed and breakfast problem 15:39  Cookies, cognac, and what fresh hell is this 17:52  Dear Heart (1964): Delbert Mann, Tad Mosel, and that Mancini song 21:43  Evie Jackson arrives in New York — and pages herself 45:26  The brush-off, the quickie, and a joke that pays off an hour later 50:07  "You're a woman alone": the corridor scene 52:00  The spinster pack, and what Evie is afraid of becoming 68:52  Team Phyllis: Angela Lansbury has a point 71:32  The train station, and the verdict 75:21  Next month's book: The Overdue Life of Amy Byler WHERE TO WATCH Dear Heart (1964), 113 minutes. Apple TV: https://tv.apple.com/us/movie/dear-heart/umc.cmc.5h2qvwx3djbpb3tbxjvxrap7n TCM: https://www.tcm.com/watchtcm/titles/15890 NEXT MONTH The Overdue Life of Amy Byler by Kelly Harms. MORE Substack: https://melanieanded.substack.com Write to us: [email protected]

In 2023, Tembe Denton-Hurst published a debut about a young Black media writer who quits her job with a letter — and then has to live with what happens next. Melanie Benjamin and Edward Kelsey Moore read Homebodies, the debut novel by Tembe Denton-Hurst (HarperVia, 2023). Mickey Hayward works a media job that's mostly listicles instead of the journalism she wanted. When she's laid off, she writes a detailed letter calling out racism and sexism in the industry — it goes nowhere, at first. She retreats to her Maryland hometown to regroup, reconnect with old friends, and reconsider her relationship with her girlfriend Lex, just as the letter unexpectedly goes viral without her.

In 1949 Warner Bros. built a movie out of its own stars for one reason: to make Doris Day famous. It worked. Melanie Benjamin and Edward Kelsey Moore watch It's a Great Feeling, directed by David Butler and starring Doris Day, Dennis Morgan, and Jack Carson. It was Day's third Warner Bros. picture, made when the studio had a big star on its hands and wanted the whole town to notice. The plot is thin on purpose: Day plays a studio cafeteria worker who wants to be in pictures, Morgan and Carson play themselves, and the film opens on the joke that no director will work with Jack Carson except Jack Carson. What fills the rest is the cameo parade. Joan Crawford reprises her Mildred Pierce dialogue and slaps both leading men. Gary Cooper gets a single word. Edward G. Robinson parodies his own gangster persona, Errol Flynn turns up as the small-town fiance, and Bugs Bunny arrives by way of Mel Blanc. Bette Davis and Humphrey Bogart are conspicuously absent. The hosts are honest about the rest: forgettable songs, a dream ballet that defeats explanation, a Maurice Chevalier parody that runs long. What works is Day herself, and one quiet late number in a train lounge car. Not a good movie. A delight anyway. Also discussed: Calamity Jane, Mildred Pierce, Christmas in Connecticut, Singin' in the Rain, The Sound of Music. Next: Homebodies by Tembe Denton-Hurst. Who the Hell Are We? is hosted by novelists Melanie Benjamin and Edward Kelsey Moore. Subscribe at melanieanded.substack.com. Notes: [email protected].

Muriel Spark wrote it in months while Nixon was still in office. Fifty-two years later, Melanie and Ed test whether the joke still lands. Spark's 90-page novella, subtitled "A Modern Morality Tale," relocates Watergate to a Benedictine convent in Cheshire. The newly elected Abbess Alexandra has bugged the grounds, rigged her election, and reads Yeats and Milton over dinner while her sisters eat dog food. Her working theory is that the world wants a myth and facts don't matter. A stolen thimble doubles as the Watergate burglary; Sister Gertrude, the Kissinger figure, phones in advice from Peru while negotiating between cannibals and vegetarians. Melanie carries Alexandra's strategy forward into 2026 without much trouble; Ed flags the tonal divergence — Spark's abbess is composed and unbothered, where Nixon was paranoid and raving at portraits. The honest verdict is mixed: dry, esoteric, of its time. Glenda Jackson played Alexandra in Michael Lindsay-Hogg's 1977 film adaptation Nasty Habits. Related episodes: - Black Narcissus (1947) — https://whothehellarewe.libsyn.com/website/10th-anniversary - Lilies of the Field (1963) — https://whothehellarewe.libsyn.com/website/lilies-of-the-field Full discussion notes and the WTHAW catalog: https://melanieanded.substack.com Who the Hell Are We? is hosted by novelists Melanie Benjamin and Edward Kelsey Moore. New episodes roughly monthly.

Lilies of the Field is a 1963 American comedy-drama film directed and produced by Ralph Nelson. Praised by critics, Lilies of the Field earned five Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture and Best Supporting Actress for Skala. Poitier won the Academy Award for Best Actor, becoming the first Black actor to win in a leading role. 📧 [email protected] 📖 melanieanded.substack.com

It's book review week, Melanie and Ed discuss Prodigal Summer (2000) by author Barbara Kingsolver. Also, Melanie explains why it has been her best sports weekend EVER. More at melanieanded.substack.com or email [email protected]

Our hosts seem to have hit the eggnog early as they discuss The Shop Around the Corner, a 1940 American romantic comedy-drama film produced and directed by Ernst Lubitsch starring Margaret Sullavan, James Stewart, Frank Morgan, and Joseph Schildkraut. More at melanieanded.substack.com or email [email protected]

Robert Mitchum's preacher in The Night of the Hunter was inspired by real murders that also shaped Jayne Anne Phillips's novel Quiet Dell. Ed and Melanie trace the link between book and film, exploring how truth becomes myth and how art transforms tragedy. More at melanieanded.substack.com or email [email protected] .

Robert Mitchum's sinister preacher, Charles Laughton's only directorial effort, and one of cinema's most haunting thrillers — The Night of the Hunter (1955) went unappreciated in its day. Ed and Melanie explore its striking imagery, Shelley Winters' fate, and Lillian Gish's quiet strength. More at melanieanded.substack.com