Screen Snapshots

We Want Can-tor, We Want Can-tor: It's Eddie's Birthday!!

2012-01-31T15:17:00.000-08:00

Gene Autry is the only person to have a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in all five categories of film, radio, television, recordings and stage. Taking absolutely nothing away from Mr Autry’s stellar achievements, I’ve always thought that if the Walk were to serve a purpose as a true entertainment Hall of Fame (which it doesn’t sadly) then certain stars need to be more fully acknowledged for their true achievements within the industry. To do this it needs to induct a few more into the full house club and in my opinion, first on that list should be Eddie Cantor.

In the early 30s the king of all media in Showbizland was undoubtedly Eddie Cantor. A star in vaudeville and on Broadway, he parlayed his fame into success in movies, radio, music and writing (and later he would become a pioneer and star in television). Eddie was one of the few stars who understood the power of his own image and cannily used it in merchandising as a way to extend the reach (and longevity) of his fame. With his is seemingly massive “banjo eyes”, thick eyebrows and ruffled flop of dark hair, his was an instantly recognisable caricature that appeared everywhere from newspapers to cartoons.

Despite the fact that no one combined talent and success in so many different strands of entertainment, Cantor’s career can be seen as one of over achievement whilst never being seen as the top guy in each of his chosen fields. On Broadway, record and film he was great, but he wasn’t Jolson (of course, who was?) and on radio and television he was a pioneer and evergreen mainstay but neither did he attain the critical and popular heights of Jack Benny. As supremely talented as he was, he seemed to always be in the shadow of one of his contemporaries. Just in the way that Bing Crosby allegedly joked of Frank Sinatra that “A talent like Sinatra’s comes along once a lifetime – but why did it have to be my lifetime?!”, the same could be said of Cantor at different times in relation to his close friends Al Jolson and Jack Benny. Despite being a big enough star that he turned down The Jazz Singer before Jolson got the part, his cinematic life story would later sink into obscurity in comparison to the smash hit that was The Jolson Story. Always the bridesmaid, never the bride...

Eddie took a while to commit to films completely, announcing his abdication of the Broadway throne in an open letter to his patrons in 1930 after a number of false starts. His first sound starring feature, Whoopee! was a mixture of old stage routines and the filmed Broadway tableaux so popular during the first few years of the talkies. However, once he developed his character beyond its stage incarnation, he really took off as a great film comic with a more universal appeal. His movies in the early 30s combined knockabout humour and silly impressions with the trials and tribulations of an perpetually innocent everyman, all topped off with a few song and dance numbers in the Cantor tradition. This heady mix of pure unadulterated entertainment saw him through five films during the pre code era that are among the most entertaining movies you could ever hope to watch.

Cantor’s film career didn’t sustain beyond the mid 30s and after taking a break in 1935, his film appearances became more sporadic, with decidedly mixed results that never recovered the magic of his early days. However, he was always working, and as one door closed, others immediately opened.

I watched Eddie Cantor’s films on television in my youth and loved them, but it wasn’t really until listening to his radio shows that I truly understood the depth of his appeal. He was a fixture on radio from 1931 for the next thirty years in one capacity or another. His shows are the nearest I've heard to the Jack Benny Program in terms of comedic quality, and with his cast of familiar foils like announcer Harry Von Zell and the “Mad Russian” Bert Gordon, Eddie gently sends himself up and gets himself into typically silly situations. However, it is in his moments of directly speaking to the listening radio audience, that one gets the sense of the true Eddie Cantor. Unashamedly promoting good causes, always fiercely patriotic and at times even coming across as a bit of a strict father, Eddie at all times shows sincerity, warmth and a real appreciation of his audience. During the war years, his stirring speeches aimed at the troops and the home front are strong stuff, and he's still the only radio comic I've heard to explicitly mention the horrors of the Nazi concentration camps as a reason to fight for freedom and democracy.

Perhaps just being successful at so many different things has resulted him not being remembered as well as he should be, but his talent and effervescence can’t be denied and anyone who can sustain a career spanning nearly half a century, especially in this day and age deserves respect.

Of course, no mention of Cantor can be complete without his music. When I think of Eddie Cantor, the one word that comes to mind is “fun”. His songs are fun, his films are fun and most of all his voice is the very definition of fun. Songs such as “If you Knew Susie (Like I Know Susie”, “Ida! Sweet as Apple Cider”, “Ma (He’s Making Eyes at Me)”, “Yes Sir, That’s My Baby” and all the rest are sung with such an infectious enthusiasm that they still evoke chills and stand out beyond mere nostalgia. That’s the real fun of Eddie Cantor, seeing or hearing him perform as only he could, he truly is the "Apostle of Pep".

Random Thoughts # 4 - Winter Round-Up featuring Van Heflin, Barbara Stanwyck, Hal Roach players and an Ode to Old Time Radio

2012-01-22T14:55:00.000-08:00

Well, Screen Snapshots has finally opened for business in 2012, armed with a smile, a song and a bunch of New Year’s resolutions that hopefully won’t go the way of most of my New Year’s resolutions. What does this year bring dear reader? More updates for one – definitely more updates. Most importantly, I think I finally have to master the art of the capsule review, as I’ve watched a lot of movies lately that have been interesting but not quite good enough to write an all singing, all dancing review of. I’ve often felt that if I don’t write a lengthy review of a film then I’m short changing the reader and myself. I don’t want to fall into the trap of not contributing anything worthwhile to opinion about classic movies, but on the other hand I guess you have to acknowledge that not everyone wants to read long articles about a film they’ve perhaps never seen (or may never want to!). So a slight format change is in the cards.

Another thing I need to do this year is actually start publicizing this blog, something I’ve been a tad shy about in the past, probably due to a lack of confidence on my part. Strike that, definitely due a lack of confidence on my part. I may even partake in one of those blogathon things (whatever they are) once I’m convinced I can hang with my contemporaries in terms of quality. Oh, and a visual overhaul for the blog would be on my wish list, but that involves actually knowing how to do such a thing so don’t hold your breath.

Anyway, before I get started on the shining future, here’s a quick round up of a couple of highlights from the last few months. The following films have piqued my interest of late…

King of the Underworld (1939) – In theory this movie sounds like it would be one of the all time greats. Humphrey Bogart on the cusp of stardom (I always preferred him pre 1941) teamed up in a Warner gangster film with Kay Francis (though admittedly she was out of favour and just there to make up the numbers). The thought of the two of them together, along with some pretty dynamic poster artwork and brief running time, conjures up visions of a brisk, energetic little film with bags of star power. However, the reality sadly does not live up to the hype (though if it had been made even three or four years earlier, I know things would have been different). Despite Bogart getting top billing, it’s really a fairly typical late period Kay Francis picture, during the time where Warners wanted to get rid of her and she stubbornly (and quite rightly) refused to break her contract. So we are left with Kay Francis lite and Bogart playing the usual gangster type, though in this case a particularly stupid one. And that is that really, there’s not much to say about it other than the movie pretty much exists to fill a contractual obligation for Francis. The only really notable performance is by James Stephenson as a sort of Leslie Howard-esque doomed dreamer who gets caught up in the mobster entourage. I must confess to not knowing much about Mr Stephenson but he seems to have been a very talented and dependable supporting actor who sadly died far too young. He gives the movie an unexpected emotional focus and also gets all the best lines with his veiled insults aimed at the delusional Bogart. King of the Underworld is worth seeing but it’s not as good as the 1936 version that plays in my head.

Behind That Curtain (1929) – This is a real oddity, the first sound appearance of Earl Derr Biggers legendary detective Charlie Chan, though strangely here he’s actually played by an Asian actor and is reduced to a minor part (despite the movie being a loose adaption of one of his literary adventures). It’s possibly one of the worst early sound features I’ve seen, with some appallingly poor acting, overly melodramatic histrionics and long periods where pretty much nothing happens. In fact, I had to double check the running time as I found it difficult to believe that what I watched actually only lasted 90 minutes. The film concerns the usual pre-code obsession of a married woman having an illicit affair, and drags out the premise to film-breaking proportions. In fact, I’m surprised they decided to keep making any films after this one. Lois Moran as the scarlet woman is the worst culprit as she is obviously out of her depth with the role and the new technology. I’ve seen her in Transatlantic from 1931 and though she doesn’t stand out much she at least improved. The big surprise from the cast is the performance by Warner Baxter, who is positively wooden. It was by no means his first sound film but he certainly struggles with the dialogue and more importantly, his vocal range and pitch. Thankfully he did improve and became a truly fantastic movie star but from watching this, I wouldn’t have given him much of a future. Behind That Curtain is really only of interest to lovers of dull obscurities or ardent Chanophiles. Ultimately it gives rise to the myth of early sound films being slow and awkward, something I feel couldn’t be further from the truth. Sadly, on this occasion I’d have to defer to the critics.

Grand Central Murder (1942) – Memory really plays tricks with the passing of time. I saw this film on television about 15 years ago and loved it, especially liking Van Heflin’s sardonic, shambling plastic coat wearing detective. It seemed really sharply acted with an arch script full of witty one liners and a feisty dynamic between Heflin and his on screen wife Virginia Grey. Fast forward 15 years and I dusted off my old VHS copy and…well, like I said, memory plays tricks. It’s actually a pretty decent movie, though a bit too talky in parts (I kind of lost track of which character was which, never mind their motives). However, the one thing that really stands out is the performance of Van Heflin himself, which wasn’t quite as brilliant as I remembered but nonetheless earmarks him as an actor with a considerable screen presence. I first became aware of Heflin from watching a few of his early appearances (The Feminine Touch, Johnny Eager and Presenting Lily Mars to be precise) and I’ve always preferred him in this era. He’s really at ease with any genre but his weary, deadpan delivery in comedy really makes me laugh. Of course, he would later find a lot more success in serious drama, be they westerns or noirs but I think it was a missed opportunity to not try him in more comedic roles. Probably the latest one I’ve seen is B.F.’s Daughter, in which he slips very easily into the traditional romantic comedy style. As for Grand Central Murder, it’s not the B-grade Thin Man I remembered but it did give me time to consider the talents of its star.

Annie Oakley (1935) - I hate to sound like a broken record, but I also much prefer the early work of Barbara Stanwyck, just like I seem to prefer the early work of pretty much everyone when I think about it. She is feisty yet world weary, glamorous yet ordinary and all in a way that fits in perfectly with the ‘working girl trying to make a living’ ethos of Depression era film. By the time the late 30s rolled along, her performances if anything improved, but she became an altogether more confident and assured (and glamorous) film star. In the character of Annie Oakley, you can see elements of both these screen personas as she transforms from the ordinary girl with a talent for shooting to the well travelled superstar brimming with confidence. Despite the obvious lack of historical accuracy, it’s a very entertaining film and Stanwyck gives a memorable performance that almost succeeds in standing out from the spectacular trappings of the Buffalo Bill Wild West show around her. Luckily the movie is directed under the assured and watchful eye of George Stevens, who never lets the need for spectacle get in the way of the story. Despite all of this, what really made the film interesting for me was the presence of a number of the Hal Roach stock company in (very) small parts, I’d imagine due to the presence of Stevens, himself a Roach alumni. It must be strange to be a featured player in Laurel and Hardy films, creating characters that make millions laugh one day, only to find yourself playing uncredited bit parts the next. Both Charlie Hall and Walter Long appear in Annie Oakley fleetingly and are both effective in their roles (a drunk and an Indian hater respectively). It’s a subject I’m going to look at in more detail in a future blog but it’s just so odd that the likes of Charlie Hall, Walter Long, Mae Busch and James Finlayson didn’t thrive in mainstream features on the strength of their Roach performances (though to be fair, both Edgar Kennedy and Billy Gilbert did). In the end though, I’d like to think that they had the last laugh. Mae Busch may have been seen by mainstream Hollywood as a faded silent star past her best, but today her name and image is far better remembered that the majority of her contemporaries. I know that most actors are just happy to be working but it seems that with the benefit of hindsight, certain character actors like Hall and Long were definitely not used to their full potential.

Old Time Radio Highlights – I’ve been listening to a lot of Old Time Radio lately, in fact it has become a relaxing daily ritual. I listen to mostly comedy and a bit of drama and have sampled episodes of most of the well known shows. Rather than point to one particular show or episode this time I‘d like to recommend the joys of listening to Old Time Radio in general. I guess it’s difficult to imagine the hold that radio had on the public from the 1930s through to the mid 1950s when television finally became the norm but in listening to a run of shows, be they comedy, drama or serial you can really feel how the people on the radio managed to reach out and talk directly to the listening audience. In the few years I’ve been listening I have learned to call characters like Lum and Abner, Amos and Andy and many others my friends. I feel reassured by the voices of announcers like Don Wilson and Harry Von Zell and feel a comfortable glow each time I hear the theme music to my favourite shows. Of course, I’m taking a veritable crash course, listening to years worth of shows in a matter of weeks and months. I can only wonder what the cumulative effect of turning on the radio and listening to Jack Benny or Eddie Cantor each week over the course of 20 years or more.

It’s strange, but I often catch myself humming a long forgotten advertising jingle (Rinso is always a favourite) or when (for example) feeling ill, immediately think of a product that (I'd assume) no longer exists (e.g. Sal Hepatica – For the Smile of Health!). I genuinely do wonder how Lum and Abner are going to get out of their latest scrape and feel resentment at the way Squire Skimp treats them, like a follower of any daytime soap. What really makes me marvel is when I laugh at a topical joke from the 1940s and realise that it made me laugh more than a 2012 topical joke despite only really getting half the reference (Oh, that Mayor La Guardia and his baby kissing antics!). It underlines that I have spent a lot of time in the company of Eddie Cantor, Fred Allen, Jack Benny and the like and in a strange way they have become part of my family too. And don't get me started on catchphrases...

Of course, the great thing about Old Time Radio is that it co-exists in the same world as the Golden Age of Hollywood and that your favourite actor is a mere guest starring role away from heart wrenching drama or self parodying comedy. Some movie stars seem to do more radio than others but pretty much everyone makes an appearance somewhere. What is more surprising is that the vast majority of the movie stars are adept at radio acting, a separate skill in itself and even more surprisingly, that they had the time! There are quite a few actors that I had overlooked in movies that have really impressed me with their abilities on radio. Herbert Marshall, for example is fantastic in drama and comedy and I really need to see some of his films to see if he's as good on screen.

I’d strongly encourage anyone with a love of classic Hollywood to pick up one of the inexpensive collections of OTR shows available on MP3. For me it enabled me to immerse myself deeper into the waters of Hollywood, and to get a fuller understanding of the fashions, gossip and news items of the day. Of course it helps that the shows themselves are hugely entertaining in their own right, with personalities and performances to treasure. Whether it’s Lux Radio Theater, Command Performance, The Jack Benny Program or Amos and Andy, it’s a fascinating window into a vanished era. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to smoke a Lucky, eat some Jell-O (in five delicious flavours) and help the war effort by buying some extra War Bonds…

The Hollywood Heritage Museum

2011-11-27T15:35:00.000-08:00

At the end of September I returned for two weeks to dear old Los Angeles for a well earned vacation. I hadn’t been there for seven years and knowing the rate of change in cities a lot less busy than Los Angeles I was fairly apprehensive as to what would await me. Indeed, would any of it still be there since 2004? Los Angeles, in all its wonderful, terrible glory is probably my favourite place on earth. I desperately love the way that round every corner lurks some long forgotten relic of old Hollywood. Behind any boarded up doorway lurks an upstairs room where Rudolph Valentino once danced the tango or Joan Crawford waited tables. Or something like that.

If you look hard enough, the liminal nether world of the past suddenly becomes illuminated and fleetingly alive. Literally every street from the Sunset Strip through to Culver City and beyond positively glows with movie history waiting to be rediscovered. On my first visit to the city this fact largely passed me by, and it wasn’t until I discovered the amazing work of John Bengtson and his frankly astonishing book Silent Echoes that the light went on above my head and I started to look around me. This time around there was simply too much to see and not enough time to see it in. Additionally, I’m not helped by my inability to drive and while I’m no stranger to public transport, it takes a lot longer to get around by bus than just jumping in a car. So, equipped with my two modestly sized legs I made my way across the city.

On my travels I realised that the downside to being more aware of my environment in Los Angeles is that one tends to notice when formerly favourite sights and haunts change, or even worse cease to exist. So it was with heavy heart that I accepted the passing of formerly great dive bars like Cole’s and Boardner’s in favour of their faux-remodeled replacements. Some places, like Clifton’s Cafeteria seemed to be undergoing a worrying refurbishment (I hate the cod 20s style font they have decided to use and what happened to the grotto?) Others, such as Trader Vic’s at the Hilton, have gone altogether. That is life, as there is nothing achieved without progress and we must always be looking forward. As much as I’d like to invent a time machine and travel back to the Hollywood of old, I appreciate and enjoy just as much about the modern Los Angeles too. The problem comes when progress is at the cost of a city’s character and history. It’s a difficult problem, what with money and the intricacies of city politics, but going on the example of bars, I’d prefer a well-preserved original to an upscale approximate recreation. Or to put it another way I would prefer a restored Ambassador Hotel and Cocoanut Grove to the abomination that they built over it.

So, to cut a long story short, a highlight of my holiday was the discovery of the Hollywood Heritage Museum. In fact it’s only really a discovery to me as it has been around for ages, but I find myself almost ashamed to say that I had never noticed it before. And the more I found out about it, the more I liked. Most of all, what is really the most wonderful thing about the place is that in this day and age that it exists at all.

The museum itself is situated inside the Lasky-DeMille barn, which in 1913 was used as an impromptu studio to film Cecil B. DeMille’s feature The Squaw Man. As the fortunes of Lasky, DeMille and the film’s distribution company Paramount grew, the barn became one of many buildings on the expanding Famous Players-Lasky lot. Later it was moved from its home on the corner of Selma and Vine to the Paramount Studios lot on Melrose Avenue where DeMille kept it as a sort of keepsake of his early years and where it eventually became used as part of Paramount’s Western backlot. After DeMille died the studio struggled to find an excuse to keep it and it was eventually moved back to Vine Street to rot until it was rescued and restored by the Hollywood Heritage people, who moved it to its current location on Highland Avenue.

The story of it’s near destruction and eventual restoration seems to have been a long and arduous journey but keenly emphasizes the struggle faced by preservation organizations when trying to save a historically important site from the wrecking ball. What’s more, the age of the structure (it was built in 1901), its importance in film history and the story of it’s revival makes the structure neatly emblematic of not only early Hollywood and movie history but of the ongoing process of architectural and historical preservation.

All this and a lot more is documented inside the museum, generously illustrated with many rare photographs telling the complete history of the barn and it’s occupiers. Also inside is a selection of photographs and postcards showing the sights and wonders of early Hollywood, with an enlightening emphasis on the pre-moviemaking era. Of great interest to me was a selection of ephemera from the great night spots, bars and hotels of the golden age (and in the gift shop they even sell authentic Brown Derby coasters, salvaged prior to it’s demolition!)

The museum also has a number of cool DeMille movie props and memorabilia and as well as a nice display profiling all the major stars of the silent era. Add to that is a corner dedicated to Rudolph Valentino and Valentino memorabilia, film shows (with a mini cinema), displays of relics from a few buildings they were unable to save and a spiffy reconstruction of Cecil B. DeMille’s office at Paramount. I spent a good few hours looking around the place and recommend it highly to anyone with a love of early Hollywood. In fact, there really is no other place in Hollywood where you'll even hear mention of half this stuff. The museum should be a required visiting spot for all local schools if I had my way.

What’s more, the guide on duty the day I visited (George) was very knowledgeable on the subject of Hollywood history and answered my many, many questions with enthusiasm. He recommended historical places of interest to visit in town and when I mentioned I was going next to Larchmont Boulevard for some location spotting, offered to drive me there as the museum was closing up for the day. The ten minute journey turned into an hour long impromptu tour of the homes of the silent stars in the Hollywood Hills and Hancock Park which was unbelievably kind of him and definitely one of the highlights of my vacation. Now, that’s service for you!

Of course, the museum is just a part of the work of Hollywood Heritage as a look at their website attests. Of special interest is their top ten most endangered Hollywood sites, an eye opening account of the struggles to get politicians to recognize the importance of preserving Hollywood’s rich history. While it’s great to see the work they have done, losses like The Ambassador Hotel are a depressing reminder of the reality of change and city politics. It baffles me that a city like Los Angeles, and especially Hollywood finds it so difficult to commit to preserving culturally important landmarks. Most cities would kill to have the built in tourist-friendly history that Hollywood has, yet they want to brush their heritage under the carpet and let it quietly decay. As usual, people will only sit up and take notice once something precious has gone and by then it’ll be too late.

Despite all this, if you are ever in the neighbourhood, you should visit the Hollywood Heritage Museum and support its work. I came away with even more respect for the amazing mix of architectural styles present in what’s left of old Los Angeles and of the organisations trying their best to preserve them. Check them out at http://www.hollywoodheritage.org/

So This Is Africa (1933) - So This Is 'So This Is Africa'...

2011-09-06T17:55:00.000-07:00

Rather than being the celebration of sin and lewdness that many would have you believe, I’ve always thought that pre code movies were, at their best movies made for an adult audience, and largely made without the need to look down on their paying public. They are saying “What you see is what you get – were all adults here, aren’t we?” Of course, in a heady climate of low brow dialogue and veiled reverences to loose morals, it was inevitable that some films would push the envelope too far and would run into trouble. Such is the case for the legendary Convention City, which was apparently so scandalous that the mere existence of a print would have corrupted the fabric of 1930s society beyond repair. Convention City is lost to us but luckily the second most notorious film of the pre code era still exists, albeit in a severely truncated form.

That film is Wheeler and Woolsey’s So This Is Africa, and the story of its making and eventual unmaking is a long and tortuous one. Now, I had planned to outline the saga but a quick look at the ever excellent “Give me the good old days!” reveals that, with the help of the New York state archives the story has been told far better than my words could do it justice. So I’d advise a quick trip to this link to be filled in on the sad tale of cinematic clipping. I’ll be here when you get back. *waits patiently, tapping foot* Right? Wasn’t it a fantastic piece of research? Sadly, after all that you're stuck with me again…

I was really looking forward to finally watching So This Is Africa, partly to see what all the fuss was about and partly to see if in fact there was anything left of the film as eventually released. From the sound of it, the movie as originally written would have been a raucous, low brow, innuendo-laden affair and perhaps the quintessential Wheeler and Woolsey vehicle, cementing their reputation as kings of pre code comedy. As released …well it’s not quite what it should be. Wheeler and Woolsey made So This Is Africa for Columbia after a brief falling out with their home studio RKO over money. As such, we miss out on the presence of the lovely Dorothy Lee, and the cast of familiar comic faces usually employed on their RKO features. In fact there is no one in the cast that I recognized, and this probably either says something about the importance of Wheeler and Woolsey to Columbia or the state of comedy at the studio at that time. However, the film does get a safe pair of hand in director Edward Cline who as well as being a former Buster Keaton collaborator had also worked with the boys on two of their previous films.

The plot concerns out of work lion tamers Wheeler and Woolsey’s trip to the wilds of Africa to help shoot the greatest jungle picture of all time. The reason they have been picked is because the leading lady, one Mrs Martini is afraid of animals and their lions are so moth eaten and toothless that she’ll feel safer making the film with them. However, once the premise is set up, it is quickly forgotten as we travel from one absurd jungle parody to the next. In fact the plot, and indeed the cast don’t seem to take things very seriously as the tone of the humour oscillates between being pitch black and downright silly. And the poor lions simply disappear once their duties as plot devices are done. Poor old mangy lions.

When we first meet Bob and Bert (thanks to a quick camera pan up the side of a skyscraper), we find the two down on their luck lion tamers about to jump out the window. There then follows a fairly bleak exchange as they discuss the best technique for killing yourself. Woolsey won’t jump as he feels that his partner’s jumping skills aren’t good enough and will only accompany him if he can get it right. One gets the impression that this is a regular ritual for the characters. Though not massively funny it’s a good example of how direct Wheeler and Woolsey’s comedy is, as they attempt to defy social airs and graces. There is very little of the comic business associated with other double acts, nor is there the heavily laboured vaudeville routines of many of the early sound comics. They display a confidence with the camera and generally don’t mess about, approaching situations and ideas head on and hoping for the best.

The doorbell rings and pulls them back off the ledge. It is a doctor, who looks at their lions and after proclaiming one of them dead (it's not, it just looks dead), decides that the lions need a vacation in Africa, and kept out of drafts. The boys meet up with the film people, the lions vanish and the film starts proper. However, before they leave there is time for a quick musical number in the hotel lobby (which looks slightly under rehearsed and suffers from some obvious cuts and over dubs) and a very funny gag involving the African tribesmen that for some reason are waiting in the hotel. The film producer remarks that they need to get to Africa as “the natives are getting restless” as the camera cuts to the tribesmen aimlessly milling around the lobby looking bored. Well, it made me laugh…

Thus far, there is nothing too risqué, but luckily the sheer silliness of the ideas keeps the film from ever getting dull. However, once we reach the jungles, it’s obvious that the dialogue gets a bit more adult, only because of the regular jumps and clicks in the soundtrack. Despite this, a few gems do survive almost intact. A reference to the “virgin trees” gets the response “Huh! They look pretty wild to me!” Later on during some chitchat between Mrs Martini and Woolsey, Martini mentions her gown and asks him “Do you think it’s becoming?” at exactly the moment that one of her shoulder straps falls down. He fires back, “It’ll be coming off any minute now!” About the only other surviving moment of adult humour is Robert Woolsey’s response to his partner’s disappearance during the night “You’ve been streetwa…sleepwalking again!” From what I’ve seen of the scripts, that’s the tip of the iceberg, but those censors really went to work on the picture, almost with religious zeal. As is usually the case in these situations, once they get the scissors out they just can’t stop.

Luckily however, So This Is Africa does not rely wholly on innuendo for its laughs. There are a number of very imaginative comic scenes in the film, most of which work well, but which are really not taken to their full potential. What struck me about the best scenes, and indeed most of the film itself was the sense of boredom with many of the clichés of cinema. The movie has fun with genre and narrative staples with an almost cynical resignation. One scene sees Wheeler, Woolsey and Mrs Martini (played by Esther Muir) engage in a spot of big game hunting. The three of them stand next to an obvious cheap jungle set as Woolsey shouts “Get that alligator!” We cut to really grainy stock footage of an alligator in the real jungle and back to Bert Wheeler shooting it with nonchalant ease. Next up, “Look! A wild panther!”, as this time we cut to the same grainy stock footage but this time amusingly of a giraffe. Bert shoots it anyway. Finally the cry is “A rhinoceros is charging us!” to which Bert responds, (after the stock footage, of the right animal this time) “I’m sorry, I haven’t got any more bullets”. The footage then runs backwards, letting Woolsey say melodramatically “We’re saved! He’s in reverse” Despite being a well deserved sending up of cheap jungle pictures, the way Wheeler and Woolsey play it is absolutely stunning. They say each line as if they where reading it for the first time with the most wooden delivery imaginable and in essence sending up their own picture for the very same flaws. It’s at once very modern (or post modern, if you like) and very funny, with a free wheeling sense of mischief that is largely absent from comic movies of the era.

Another interesting scene happens later when the boys and Mrs Martini begin discussing important plot points with each other but after saying each line we hear their internal dialogue in voice over. The voice overs start out quite conventionally but then get increasingly bizarre. Esther Muir is the absolute star or the scene in saying her line then turning to her right and staring off camera with determined concentration and furrowed brow as her internal monologue declares “This is a strange interlude” Bert Wheeler’s inner voice responds “Lies, lies, lies! I cannot stand this constant lying. Oh, I wish I were free of all this like a bird, like a bee, like a balloon!” For no apparent reason Robert Woolsey’s inner voice chips in with “Little does she know that she’s my sister’s mother’s father’s brother’s black cat’s niece. Say yes you weasel, say yes or I’ll brain ya!” The idea eventually comes to a head when Wheeler and Woolsey find that they can hear each others thoughts and start a fight in their minds. Needless to say each line is said with over the top melodrama and a far away look off camera. The scene is fantastic and again pokes fun not only at the clichés of film drama, film acting and cinematic language but also the tawdriness of the film itself. The scene, and the previously mentioned one both stand out because the performances from the players descend into parody and seemingly exist apart from the narrative flow of the movie itself. I’ve never seen anything quite like it. Either the scriptwriter (Norman Krasna but I’d imagine that the script went though a number of hands before it was finished) or Wheeler and Woolsey themselves had some real frustrations with movie making to vent or people were enjoying themselves just a little too much on set whilst shooting the film. Regardless of motive, the scenes present interesting comic ideas and a rare example of truly irreverent humour. Never have I seen a Hollywood film of the era where the cast appear to be saying so openly that they don’t in any way take what they are doing seriously.

After these post modern shenanigans, the plot wheezes on to its inevitable conclusion. We meet the prerequisite Dorothy Lee replacement Raquel Torres, who does a good job with what she’s given but who, let’s face it just isn’t Dorothy Lee. Torres is part of a tribe of ferocious Amazons that (in another censor troubling idea) “love men to death at night”. The boys are captured by the tribe and are awaiting their fate worse (or better) than death when they are “saved” by a wandering tribe of Tarzans, who arrive in formation to take their mates. We last see Wheeler and Woolsey as they are dragged off by a couple of Tarzans to begin domestic life (they happen to be dressed as women as part of an escape plan) The whole chaotic mess ends with a caption declaring “Only a Year Later” where the pair, still in dresses busy themselves with washing clothes. They turn around to reveal a baby on each of their backs – have they by some freak of nature, been impregnated by their male kidnappers? No, of course not, (although in the original script who knows!) as a couple of jungle girls come to help them. Robert Woolsey gets the last line, “Boy! That’s Africa for you!” as the whole troubled production comes to an end.

Of course, we can forever wonder what the uncut version of the film would have been like. From what I’ve read of the script it’s certainly racier but it doesn’t sound particularly obscene, even for the times. Perhaps the problem was the sheer quantity of the innuendos and scantily clad women. Where most films would make just a couple of oblique sexual references, So This Is Africa shovels a constant barrage of veiled filth at the unsuspecting viewer. It’s interesting that the lobby card at the top of the page describes Wheeler and Woolsey as “sexplorers”, and perhaps this overt and open attitude to sex and more importantly, the marketing of the film in this manner lead the censors to get cold feet in a hurry.

At the end of the day, I can only judge the movie on what remains, and what remains is a pretty decent little comedy. It doesn’t have the rough, almost low budget charm of the team’s previous RKO features but is does have some very bold comic ideas and a genuinely anarchic spirit. Wheeler and Woolsey may lack the free form absurdity of the Marx Brothers at their best but the pair have a disarmingly irreverent view of the world where things seem at once real and earthy but equally ridiculous and trivial. So This Is Africa displays this spirit in spades and though ultimately there’s not many hints of it being a great lost masterpiece, it’s a miracle it exists at all so for that we should be thankful. Now can everyone check their attic tonight for that missing print of Convention City?

Three Cheers for Joan Blondell!

2011-08-30T16:48:00.000-07:00

I can't let today pass without a (very) brief mention of the ever lovely Joan Blondell. Bright, shiny, dear Joan Blondell. How can you fail to be charmed by her? She makes any film instantly more enjoyable. She is truly the heart and soul of the pre-code era. I don't think anyone could sum up the hopes and dreams of the early thirties and the Depression audience better than Joan. A consummate professional, a great actress and a real, bonafide, honest to goodness proper film star.

Sadly, I've no time for a full birthday tribute, as I'd much rather go and watch one of her films! Union Depot is sitting in my DVD player and it's calling me!

Happy Birthday Miss Blondell.

Happy Birthday Myrna Loy!

2011-08-02T15:11:00.000-07:00

I’ve been thinking long and hard about penning a profile of Myrna Loy on the anniversary of her birth, but the problem arises – what can I possibly add to the debate that hasn’t already been said? Is it actually possible to write about Myrna Loy without using the phrases “Queen of Hollywood”, “Perfect Wife” or “Thin Man”? Myrna Loy is one of those great, pure film stars, an absolute distillation of the ethos of MGM studios in their prime. Witty, urbane, independent and beautiful, her performances largely hold up very well these days, but of course we all know that. She is loved by those in the know yet mostly overlooked, and even perhaps taken for granted by modern film fans, but again this fact is nothing particularly new. In the end I got to thinking not so much about what drew me to Myrna Loy and her films, but what it was that kept me a fan once I had I had a few under my belt. What was it that made me trek to the other side of the world (in the pre Ebay days) to find a copy of her autobiography and that elusive tome The Films of Myrna Loy by Lawrence J. Quirk?

What it comes down to is Myrna’s long rise to the top. It’s amazing that she had made almost 80 film appearances and been in movies almost a decade before getting her big break as a star in her own right (and all before she was thirty). Not for her the instant stardom and hype of a new Broadway or European import. Nor did she arrive on screen with a fully formed persona. In comparison to my two other favourite leading ladies, Joan Blondell and Kay Francis, Myrna certainly took the long road to fame. Blondell and Francis were from virtually day one at the top of the bills with more or less the screen persona they would become famous for already established (Kay Francis moved from villainous roles to the more sympathetic leads, but her almost patrician bearing remained essentially unchanged) In contrast Myrna Loy pulled herself up from the chorus lines, moving into bit parts and minor featured roles, then slowly rising to secondary leads and eventually to emerge miraculously as a star in her own right. On this journey she played all manner of exotic and frankly ridiculous characters, which really makes the eventual creation of the well known Loy persona positively miraculous. One would have expected a degree of schizophrenia and uncertainly about playing herself as a leading actress after constantly having to don silly wigs and pretend to be people of undisclosed foreign origin for so many years.

However, for me part of the fun of Myrna Loy is to watch her as she travels from studio to studio, clawing her way up the ladder of fame, gaining experience and trying to make the best of often awful material and bad casting. The strange thing is that she’s not one of those actresses who steals the show in a minor role, and from viewing her early parts there is often, in truth little glimmer of the talent and charisma that was to come. In fact her early films are really only interesting if you are aware of what she would eventually become. If for example she had (heaven forbid) died or retired before 1931, I feel few would be writing about her much today other than for features about forgotten starlets. Even right up until her breakout performance in Manhattan Melodrama in 1934, she was still to be found as an occasionally solid yet uninspiring female lead (Vanity Fair and Consolation Marriage, are both particularly bland parts for her). Maybe all she needed was the chemistry that William Powell provided her to truly find her feet? Possibly, but that’s a thought for another day…

As I said, the fun is to be found in seeing the debonair and delightful Miss Loy we all know and love thrust into the most ridiculous of roles. Thanks to her early tag as a go-to for exotic parts, (something she would not really fully shake until taking on the part of Nora Charles in The Thin Man) even as late as 1932 she was still donning oriental makeup to look Chinese, exotic and ultimately evil. Sadly, many of her early sound films do not seem to exist any more (and, to my eternal shame never having seen any of her silent films – call myself a fan?? – I can’t comment on those either) and though I’ve managed to get hold of the majority of her pre-fame appearances though there are still some elusive gaps (and here’s the usual empty plea – anyone got The Great Divide, Evidence, Isle of Escape, Under a Texas Moon, Skyline or Body and Soul to name but a few? I’ll gladly swap any of them for my cat). Moving on…

Some random highlights (or lowlights, depending on your view) from her early work include –

The Squall (1929) – Myrna plays Nubi, a gypsy girl with a large dark frizzy wig and accent of the “You feelthee peeg!” variety. It’s actually a pretty decent movie for a film where the top three key words on IMDb are “Gypsy”, “Hungary” and “Farming”. She enlivens the proceedings considerably by doing quite a lot of seductive writhing, which is more often than not a good thing in my book. Especially in films about Hungarian Gypsy farmers.

Last of the Duanes (1930) – Myrna Loy did a number of westerns in this era, which isn’t quite a shocking as say, Louise Brooks in a western but is still an initial “huh?’ moment. Okay, she’s not quite a rootin’ tootin’ cowgirl here, in fact the opposite, the appropriately named Lola Bland, but she gets to be evil (the caucasian type this time). Which swiftly leads us to…

Rogue of the Rio Grande (1930) – Another western but this time one of those all singing, all dancing borderland and bandits type of affairs. Myrna gets into the spirit of things a bit more here playing Carmita, a saloon girl with dubious morals and even more dubious accent, though she redeems herself by dancing a mean tango. So mean in fact that she literally has men fighting over her on the dance floor. Ole!

The Devil to Pay! (1930) – This is one of a number of films where Myrna Loy sports blonde hair. I say hair in the technical term. It is hair, just not her own hair. Nonetheless, like appearing in westerns, Myrna Loy with platinum blonde hair just isn’t right, but each to their own. I once overheard a woman at the museum at Elvis Presley’s birthplace in Tupelo, MS say that she only collected pictures of the young Elvis with his natural light brown hair and refused to have anything to do with him when he dyed it black. I though that was rather odd and a severely limiting condition to put on your hobby, but I’m sure it made her very happy. In that spirit I hereby declare that I am only going to write about Myrna Loy’s films where she doesn't show her legs. No other ones. Ever.

A Connecticut Yankee (1931) – Probably the real undiscovered gem of her early appearances, this Will Rogers vehicle goes all out to bring the viewer into the imaginary court of King Arthur. It’s full of castles, knights, wenches and jesters and all the trappings of medieval Merrie Olde England. In the middle of this is a delightfully sly Myrna Loy as the evil Morgan le Fay. Apart from the fact she looks absolutely stunning in her slinky frock and assortment of matching headdresses, as she spars with Rogers and plots her diabolical schemes there is for the first time a real and noticeable glint her eye, a stirring of the subtle touch and delicate delivery she would ultimately become known for. The whole film is incredibly silly and for once it seems she is aware of this, and the good dialogue gives her a previously unseen screen presence. Luckily she would swiftly follow this up with her marvelous turn in Rouben Mamoulian’s Love Me Tonight, which although brief brought promise of definite potential in her given the right script.

Thirteen Women (1932) – Of course, after a couple of well-received performances, the studios must have started to pay attention to her, so what did Myrna end up doing next? How about a sinister half Asian, half Indian with strange hypnotic powers out for murderous revenge? Okay! Myrna has black hair, darkened eyes and upturned eyebrows to make her even more evil in a movie which has the decency to at least mention that she has been pushed into her killing spree due to racial intolerance, while sadly playing up as many stereotypical clichés as possible. Luckily, by this time in her career Myrna Loy was an actress with an upward progression, a gal going places so surely it was an unfortunate blip on the way to fame. Her next film would put her right on track…yeah, right on track.

The Mask of Fu Manchu (1932) – Well, maybe not.

I could go on, but the point is that when you watch any of Myrna Loy’s pre 1934 movies, you just never know what you are going to get. Sometimes she’s just scenery dressing, sometimes she has good parts, and other times you feel she is being used as the butt of some studio producer’s joke. A glance at the previously mentioned The Films of Myrna Loy reveals a whole host of tantalizing Loy stills from forgotten movies and it makes you realize the sheer variety and absurdity of the roles she had to play in order to get to where she could have some control over her own career.

Another great thing about Myrna Loy is her brilliant autobiography Being and Becoming, which combines a pleasing level of detail (she makes sure to have a reminiscence of every movie she worked on, no matter how obscure), some outspoken opinion (Ronald Reagan’s ears must have been glowing when it was published) and a surprisingly honest account of her own flaws, mistakes and regrets. In terms of her early career, what is admirable is her never say die attitude whilst being passed from studio to studio and being offered ridiculous and demeaning roles. She charts her determination to succeed in Hollywood whilst avoiding the casting couch and the other all too familiar pitfalls, and to emerge with her morals and ethics intact. The title of her book is due to her misappropriation of a Matthew Arnold quote, which she remembers as “Life is not a having and a getting, but a being and becoming”. In terms of the narrative of her life the phrase rings true, but it is equally appropriate to describe her emergence as one of the great film stars of the golden age. She was not given her stardom, or groomed for a place at the top; neither was she the favourite of any producer foisted on the public, or ushered into Hollywood with months and months of press hype. She earned her place through hard work and by gaining the experience in her chosen field so that when her opportunity finally came she grabbed it with both hands and showed Hollywood, and the world what she had to offer.

In an era that has lost sight of the hard work it takes to succeed in any occupation, where stardom has lost its currency and a generation has grown up thinking fame is something to be handed out, not earned, Myrna Loy's example becomes all the more important. She needs to be remembered as an actress, a star and most of all as a decent hard working and principled woman who succeeded in a pretty rotten industry and emerged with her dignity (and sanity) intact.

Oh, and before I forget, Queen of Hollywood, Perfect Wife and Thin Man. Told you it couldn't be done.

Lux Radio Theater # 3 - A Miscellany of Mostly Made Up Facts

2011-07-07T14:32:00.000-07:00

I've been slowly making my way through the vast archive of Lux Radio Theater episodes and now, having listened to the existing shows from 1936 to 1939 I thought I would share with you some of what I've learned about Hollywood's top stars. In these early episodes, often the most interesting moments are the banal chats with either the Hollywood insider of the week or the stars of the play itself. Invariably during the heavily scripted banter we end up learning some minor fact about the lives of our Hollywood idols, and here, in all their sordid glory are a collection of the most trivial!

Now, I'm in no way implying that any of these fascinating facts have any basis in reality or truth. Some are obviously studio propaganda, but some could be true. However, they struck me as either entertaining, stupid or just plain odd. Some of these titbits are interesting if you read between the lines, as they tell you a lot about what the studios wanted the public to think about particular stars, whilst others tell you absolutely nothing whatsoever.

There are two stars that, based on the sheer volume of implausible (and the occasional plausible) facts given I've had to reduce their presence. The first is Errol Flynn, who I've included based on a few of the more obviously preposterous facts, while ignoring the many fictions given about his colourful life before movies. I'm not getting into that mine field of half truths, thank you very much. The other is Cecil B. DeMille, who if we are to believe him, invented everything, discovered everyone and inspired the making of every great moment in cinematic history. He may be right, but after a while it gets a bit tiresome, so he's been cut out.

Anyway, here's the first instalment of interesting facts, a sort of "Everything I Wanted to Know about Hollywood I Learned from the Lux Radio Theater"

Lily Pons has the smallest shoes in Hollywood, size one and a half. She also has a village in Maryland named after her

Adolphe Menjou has a parrot that speaks English, French and Italian

Dolores Del Rio has never seen a football game

Shirley Temple’s life insurance policy is void if she takes up arms in defence of her country or if she meets death due to intoxication

Lionel Barrymore invented the moveable microphone

Ruth Chatterton sponsors air derbies

Warner Baxter’s appendix is on his left side instead of the right

Robert Montgomery carries on a perpetual game of backgammon with Frank Morgan

Edward G. Robinson can put an egg in his mouth and turn a hand spring without cracking the shell

Cecil B. DeMille is the landlord of the famous Brown Derby restaurant

Grace Moore is writing a book of international recipes

Clark Gable and Spencer Tracy never need to wear make up on the screen due to their natural tans

Ida Lupino prefers to wear sneakers and is an excellent mimic. The Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra have played her music

James Stewart is the owner of over 30 stray cats, who were attracted to him by his accordion playing

Victor McLaughlan has a sports stadium, drills and manages a troop of two thousand horsemen and sponsors a championship group of motorcycle riders

Charles Ruggles is a dog fancier

Errol Flynn was a member of the 1928 British Olympic boxing team

Reginald Denny designs and markets model aeroplanes

Ginger Rogers has installed a soda fountain in her home. She also likes roller-skating, knitting and saving old wrapping paper

Barbara Stanwyck paid for her stable boy’s wedding and danced there all night

Cecil B. DeMille started the first commercial passenger airline

According to studio trainers, the best boxers in Hollywood are Gary Cooper, George Raft, Sir Guy Standing, Jack Oakie and Ida Lupino

Joe E. Brown is spending a month being a radio announcer for the Chicago Cubs and has a sports column for the Los Angeles Examiner

Errol Flynn is a Dublin born globetrotter who first saw a Douglas Fairbanks film while at school in Ireland

Although he became movie star, Robert Taylor still regularly attends medical lectures as his father was a doctor who wanted him to go into medicine

Hollywood's most avid collectors of handkerchiefs are Leslie Howard, Merle Oberon, Joan Blondell, Jeanette MacDonald, Gracie Allen and Tyrone Power, who prefers silk ones

Fred MacMurray has given up the saxophone and now practises target shooting

Now, isn't your life more complete now that you know all that stuff about your favourite star? And personally I really hope that the James Stewart one was true...

Transatlantic (1931) - Mystery, Murder, Machines and Myrna Loy!

2011-07-03T16:58:00.000-07:00

Transatlantic comes from that small sub-genre of melodramatic movies about groups of strangers whose lives intersect while being stuck in a particular place for a brief amount of time. The most famous example from the early 30s is of course Grand Hotel, where the lives and loves of a group of seemingly disparate characters unfold and cross over, revealing new and previously unknown connections and ultimately, changing the characters profoundly in the process. Transatlantic predates Grand Hotel by a year but uses the same formula, relocating the drama to a (you guessed it) transatlantic liner.

Where Transatlantic differs from the aforementioned film and its imitators is that unfortunately we are not treated with an all-star cast. Here we have to make do with an actor early in her career (Myrna Loy), a B picture star in the middle of his (Edmund Lowe), some solid character actors (John Halliday and Jean Hersholt) and some whose careers ending up being brief and unfulfilled (Lois Moran and Greta Nissen). But no matter, for it’s off to sea for, as a press release described it, “thrills let loose in a super-whirlwind, on a gigantic ocean greyhound. Love and dalliance, intrigue and millions…a supreme creation of heart gripping suspense.” What’s not to like?

And what is causing this super whirlwind of thrills? Well, since you ask, Edmund Lowe stars as likable rogue Monty Greer, a man on the run hoping to start a new life at the destination of the voyage. On board he meets wealthy banker John Halliday and his long-suffering wife Myrna Loy. Halliday’s character Henry Graham is infatuated with Greta Nissen’s nightclub singer Sigrid. Monty attempts to solve the problematic love triangle whilst also helping father and daughter Lois Moran and Jean Hersholt when they too get sucked into the drama. Add in a robbery, a couple of betrayals and an attempted murder and everything is swinging on the high seas.

The film opens with a beautifully fluid tracking shot where the camera takes in all the various details of the hustle and bustle as the ship leaves port. We follow a crowd of happy people rushing from the pier to the gangplank and finally on board the liner. The camera surveys a wedding party, heaps of confetti, crowds pushing and laughing, brass bands playing, porters unloading luggage (including a confused dog accidentally on the luggage conveyor that looks like Asta), flashbulbs clicking and much more. Once on board, goodbyes are said, as relatives hurriedly leave the ship and lovers make tearful goodbyes. A gong is sounded, lots of feet click past, a steam horn blows, a man in a monocle and top hat waves a fond goodbye to the shore and the ship leaves in a cloud of confetti, music and shrieks. As an aside – when did this sort of thing stop happening? And why did it stop? Sea travel in the 20s and 30s, at least in the movies, looks like the most wonderfully romantic way to travel. What went wrong?

Anyway, the brass band fades and is replaced by the endless dull whirring and grinding of the giant engines as we pan down to see the faceless workers below decks tirelessly feeding the great cogs and pistons, like a shot out of Metropolis or Asphalt. The whole opening sequence lasts seven and a half minutes and is astonishing in its combination of pace, editing, storytelling and detail and perfectly captures the romance, industry and drama of not only ocean travel but the film to come. It’s the type of economic cinematic shorthand that seems to be a lost art these days.

Despite the aforementioned drama not quite living up to this introduction, the cast give it a good try. We are quickly introduced to Billy Bevan’s knowing steward Hodgkins, who in case we missed it tells Edmund Lowe that, “No two crossings are the same. The ship is like a little world…with all sorts of people bundled together…shaking hands and making friends and loving each other and hating each other…” Right, well that’s the premise sorted out then. Amusingly, Bevan continues to trot out the speech at various points in the film (including the final scene of the movie) until Lowe virtually knows it word by word and looks visibly pained each time he has to endure it. This is a clever ploy to not only milk some humour from the situation but it also acts as a knowing wink to the audience, highlighting that we all know such words are in themselves trite and cliché, much like the plot

We then enter the sad world of Myrna Loy’s Kay Graham, who stands by as her husband flirts openly with Greta Nissen (doing a sort of cod-Garbo Scandinavian showgirl floozie). It turns out that Loy knows Lowe from an earlier encounter in Havana five years before, wearily remarking “I was certainly young then, I didn’t know what real happiness was”. It’s a strange thing that they have the 25 year old Myrna Loy play a supposedly middle aged woman. I guess the idea could be that she’s actually young but just worn down by her husband’s philandering but she plays the part with the resigned and restrained poise of a much older woman. Anyway, whatever is being attempted it doesn’t quite work as Loy is plainly too young for the role. This mis-casting was probably another reason why she quit Fox shortly after shooting Transatlantic since they obviously had little understanding of her ability or idea of what they wanted to do with her. In her autobiography, Loy remarks that Fox had triumphantly attempted to re-brand her as the “Revamped Vamp” then proceeded to give a mixture of unsuitable roles, of which this surprisingly was one of the better ones. In the end they got bored and started giving her vamp roles again so she left.

A later highlight of the movie is, once the murder plot is in full flow, a gripping chase through the engine rooms. The ship hits a storm, although everyone continues with their partying - well it is 1931, (including Nissen vamping it up in a top hat, this time trying her best Dietrich). The storm then gets worse and the beat of the jazz music gets faster and faster, cleverly mirroring the drama on the sea and also the escalating trouble below decks. The chase itself is beautifully shot with angular jets of steam randomly spraying out and combining with the glowing heat of the engines (and contrasting nicely with the storm outside). This casts eerie pulsing shadows that loom in and out of the deserted bulkheads as Lowe and the hoodlums tussle amongst the unblinking steel and iron of the machines. As if to emphasize the overwhelming presence of the machines even the sound of the final and lethal gunshot is masked by the endless pulsing of the great engines. The glimpses given of this metal underworld, despite being brief are the moments that set this movie slightly above its peers and an underlying theme such as the dominance and reliance on the machines perhaps could have given the film a slightly more unusual tone. The cinematography and art direction certainly give the situation an inhuman, oppressive feel. As it is these glimpses give Transatlantic an almost European mood at times, despite the comparative everyday nature of the above deck melodrama.

Overall, this European feel is achieved by the tight direction of William K. Howard, a director whose work I’m not too familiar with (I’ve seen The Power and the Glory which is excellent and Evelyn Prentice which is pretty good). In her book, Myrna Loy was certainly pleased to work with him saying, “I admired his meticulous methods, and his films retain an original quality derived from them. He had respect for me and my work, which pleased me no end”. Of course, in Transatlantic he is ably assisted by the phenomenal cinematography of James Wong Howe and the Oscar winning Art Direction of Gordon Wiles. The combination results in some set pieces that belie the poor script and lack of star power the movie was given and at times hint at something fairly ahead of its time. Sadly, like in many other movies made quickly by the studios I’d guess that there just wasn’t the opportunity to take any complex ideas about mood, lighting and deep focus to their artistic conclusions so I suppose we should be thankful for what we have.

All in all Transatlantic is a mixed bag. It’s not Grand Hotel, but then again it doesn’t have to be. There are no standout performances, though Billy Bevan is excellent and Edmund Lowe is very appealing and shows some depth with a difficult and under written character. However, Myrna Loy is miscast and actors like John Halliday and Greta Nissen despite their talents come across as types rather than people (Halliday is really just Lewis Stone, Nissen is Garbo or Dietrich depending on the scene). With Fox, the lavish production of MGM just isn’t there and the script is merely acceptable, but behind all these faults lie some truly great cinematic flourishes, from the amazing opening scene to the shadowy climax.

Ultimately, Billy Bevan’s tired old speech about people loving and hating each other comes to fruition, not only in terms of the central characters, but also in terms of it’s cliché value, as highlighted by a passenger muttering on his way out that it was a ”horribly dull voyage, don’t you think?” Though perhaps the unknown guest was right, in true melodramatic fashion, some passengers are changed forever, some are unaffected, and in the end the vessel emerges from the storm triumphantly as it ends one voyage and readies itself to start another, with it’s new cast of characters. Ah, the romance of travel…

Random Thoughts # 3 - Winter / Spring Round-Up featuring Dorothy Lee, Kay Francis and Ronald Colman

2011-06-10T17:16:00.000-07:00

You know, sometimes life deals you a bad hand and you have to stop what you are doing and concentrate on life’s bare essentials. To put it plainly, the last six months or so have just plain sucked for me and leisure pursuits like watching movies and writing about them have fallen somewhat by the wayside, as has this blog to my eternal shame. However, there comes a time where you have to pull yourself up from the mire and return to public life and so, as part of that process I’ve decided I need to rededicate myself to these meager missives. Unfortunately since the turn of the year I’ve barely watched anything so I’ve got a bit of catching up to do. In the meantime, before everything returns to normal I thought I’d do a brief catch up of the admittedly few films I have watched lately – films that, had I the time or correct frame of mind, would have got the full review treatment.

Before I start, I really need to make note of a special event that I missed from last month, as May 23rd 2011 was the one hundredth anniversary of the very lovely Dorothy Lee. For me, Dorothy Lee is a truly archetypal pre code star and a perfect example of why the era appeals to me so much. Of course, she is best known for her many appearances with Wheeler and Woolsey, thirteen in all. In fact, so integral to the act is she that you could make a strong argument for the team to really be billed as a trio. Anyway, the early sound era always interests me because of the feeling you get of watching something new come into its own. As the silent era ended, the studios obviously in a panic started hiring just about anyone they could find from the stages of Broadway and beyond to bolster the ranks of the silent survivors making their first tentative forays into sound. As a result, movie cast lists of the era are often eclectic, with a mix of players either on the way down or the way up, and others searching to find their place on the bill. The combination of often struggling silent stars adjusting to the new medium and the musical theater imports trying to find the correct level to perform at makes films often very interesting.

The movies of the pre code era are full of careers that stalled despite their potential or, in the case of Miss Lee actors that had a slightly haphazard charm that would eventually be silenced by the glossy productions of the late 30s. I’m not saying Dorothy Lee was untalented, as that’s far from the case but she was obviously a musical stage star adapting to a medium she wasn’t quite at ease with. This slight lack of confidence, to me gives her bags of charm and in a way makes her performances (and especially her song and dance routines with Bert Wheeler) shine with real (nervous) energy. She’s not the only one that this rough round the edges charm applies to (Clara Bow’s sound appearances would also make the list, but for different reasons), as it can be seen in many other stars and starlets from 1929 to the early 1930s. It’s the effect of filmmakers just throwing everything they had at a wall to see what sticks. Of course, once they found out what worked and what didn’t, movies became (naturally) a much slicker looking operation. Personally I feel the switch over to ‘gloss’ was some time in late 1936 to early 1937. After that, the machine was in full effect and a lot of the soul of the early sound films was forever lost.

Getting back to Dorothy Lee, she like many of her contemporary early sound stars faded somewhat as the 30s marched on and her vivacious, permanently peppy brand of song, dance, comedy and romance was lost to the world. For me, she is every bit as big a star as those who came after her. Watch any of her routines with Wheeler and Woolsey and you will see a brand of entertainment that you just want to wrap your arms around and hug! Cute as a button and with bags of talent, Dorothy Lee was a character that could only shine in the pre code era of exuberance and fun.

Movie highlights of the last few months –

Passion Flower (1930) – Well, not exactly a highlight but interesting nonetheless. This fairly creaky melodrama of infidelity has the usual story of a happily married man (Charles Bickford), lured from the arms of his loving wife (Kay Johnson) by a cruel temptress (Kay Francis). I was quite looking forward to this one but the presentation was so flat and lifeless, as director William de Mille frames everything with a static matter of fact view that gets virtually nothing out of its talented cast. The movie was a MGM production, and all it shows is that in many respects in 1930 they were lagging somewhat behind their competitors First National / Warners and Paramount in terms of making exciting and relevant dramatic pictures. Even Kay Francis, still in her home wrecker phase, doesn’t get the chance to enjoy the freedom of the pre code spirit. In comparison to the similar role from First National's A Notorious Affair earlier in the year, Miss Francis is a very restrained seductress. Another problem is that the leading man Charles Bickford just isn’t suited to the role. He’s too gruff to be a sympathetic leading man, and better suited to a more action-orientated scenario. Kay Johnson is fine but really doesn’t leave much of an impression. If nothing else, the film shows how much of a star Kay Francis was this early in her career. She looks striking (she’s immaculately dressed as usual) and though she doesn’t exactly steal her scenes (the direction is so sluggish that just making it through to the next scene is a victory for cast and viewer) but she’s plainly got more screen presence and charisma than any of the other main players. Even the usually excellent Lewis Stone is reduced to mere wallpaper, and the presence of Zasu Pitts as a morbidly depressed landlady isn’t as funny as it could be. Passion Flower is definitely worth seeing, but really only as a comparison to other more exciting films being made as the time, and for confirmation that in 1930, Kay Francis was one to watch.

East Side of Heaven (1939) – Lately, I’ve begun to better understand what a huge ‘king of all media’ figure Bing Crosby was in the 30’s and beyond. I think these days, his influence on modern society (and especially music) is largely overlooked. Indeed, Bing Crosby the movie star is almost taken for granted – Christmas musicals, Road pictures, singing priests and little else. There certainly seems to be more to his acting career than that, but a lot like Elvis Presley in the 60s he was also guilty of churning out films to meet the demand of his public. Recently I was listening to a Lux Radio Theater from 1937 where Crosby is announced for the following week to rapturous applause and female squeals (the only other person I’ve heard get a reaction when announced was Jean Harlow, possibly due to the rarity value of her appearing on the air). You just don’t associate Bing Crosby with teenage screams, but in the pre Sinatra age his singing must have hit the spot. Anyway, this particular Crosby movie of the month features none other that Joan Blondell and is actually rather good. Crosby plays a singing (obviously) taxi driver who finds himself with a baby to look after and a whole lot of trouble (you can basically fill in the gaps of the plot yourself – it involved lots of baby hiding, a confused girlfriend and a kidnapping). The big surprise is how good Crosby and Blondell work as a team in their one and only film together (incidentally, in the aforementioned Lux episode - 'She Loves Me Not' broadcast November 8th 1937 fact fans - , Joan Blondell was also Crosby’s co star and they share the same chemistry on radio). In fact, it’s almost like old times for Joan, who by 1939 was winding down as a featured star. Of course, with Bing being the main draw, she was never to have the chance of a great screen partnership (luckily Dick Powell was still around to supply that) but there is definitely a rapport between the two stars, though possibly five years too late…

My Life with Caroline (1941) – Ronald Colman gets to show his exquisite comic timing once again in this unjustly neglected farce. Colman plays a long suffering husband who, to keep his marriage intact lets his flighty wife (Anna Lee) think she is having an affair. In fact, Colman is actually pulling the strings by manipulating his wife and her new beau (Reginald Gardiner) in order to wreck the affair and send her running back to him. As is usual with these sorts of films, the plot is somewhat more complicated than my brief description would allow. Interestingly, it’s mainly told by flashback, with Colman looking straight into the camera and talking to the viewer whilst recounting the story. This gives an odd sense of whimsy to a tale that played wrong could look to be in dubious taste. Although the film has an excellent cast (dependable types like Charles Winninger and Gilbert Roland), and a great director in Lewis Milestone (there’s some wonderful camera work, including a long tracking shot through a ski lodge at the start that’s very impressive) it’s Ronald Colman who holds it all together buy somehow making his character sympathetic and funny rather than manipulative and cold. I have no idea why it’s not a better known movie other than the fact that Ronald Colman is largely out of favour these days. I guess I’ll just have to sing his praises until more people notice!

Old Time Radio Highlight – This time I haven’t been listening to much Hollywood related radio but I need to mention the show that has really helped to get me through some tough times (and they made some films so it’s kind of relevant) – Lum and Abner. At first when I listened to the show I was confused by the characters and didn’t really find them very funny but as I made my way through each of the 15 minute episodes I slowly realized why the characters were so beloved. Like Amos n’ Andy they used the short episode time and daily frequency to build up a whole world of living characters engaging in their own soap like dramas. With Lum and Abner, because so many of the episodes still exist, I have started to really get the sense of them living in a real community (sadly the gripping comic soap opera of Amos n’ Andy is a little more difficult to follow due to the lack of existing shows) where the rural humour is gentle and subtle. In time, the characters have slowly come into focus, so that now I really do feel (like millions of listeners all those years ago) that they are my “ old friends down in Pine Ridge”. It’s difficult to fully explain their appeal, but listening to them has a soothing, calming effect on the soul, like slipping off into a dream. I find myself walking down the road or out shopping and quietly worrying if Lum is going to manage to convince the townsfolk that he’s innocent of whatever disaster has befallen him this week. I think that’s quite impressive for a radio show about a way of life half way across the world and separated by over 70 years. In Lum and Abner, Chester Lauck and Norris Goff created two truly universal and gentle characters that continue to make me very happy. I’m currently up to 1942 right now and although there is another decade to go, I will miss my two friends when I get to the end of the shows.

That’s all for now, as I draw a line under my past misfortune and get back to the business of watching movies. I have a huge backlog so I better get started. Thank you to anyone who has followed this blog up until now or even taken the time to occasionally read it, and I hope I can give you something worth reading in the months to come. Until next time...

The Good Humor Man (1950) - Jack Carson Wonders, 'What Would Captain Marvel Do?'

2011-04-26T16:55:00.000-07:00

In my younger years, when I would avidly watch the plethora of classic movies scheduled on television, Jack Carson was always one of those familiar faces that would turn up and was instantly identifiable with a certain type. He’d be the guy competing with the star for a girl’s affections, the big lunk with the smart comments who is ultimately outfoxed by our hero. All along the way you kind of felt sorry for him, as there was rarely any malice in his antagonistic role, yet he always lost the girl (who was usually Ginger Rogers). His nameless appearances had a sort of cumulative effect on me until suddenly the light went off above my head and I realized that this boorish yet good-natured guy was in fact named Jack Carson. I had initially seen him in films such as Stand-In, The Saint in New York and Carefree, but it was really his role alongside James Cagney in The Strawberry Blonde that crystallized my screen memories of him.

From there I started to seek out his appearances and enjoyed his comedic turns in The Bride Came C.O.D and The Male Animal as well as his excellent and under appreciated skill with dramatic parts in movies such as Blues in the Night, The Hard Way and of course Mildred Pierce. I’ve since found him a difficult fellow to categorize – not quite a leading man, yet far more than a character actor; a natural comic yet an accomplished actor. He was popular in film, radio and television yet is not quite forgotten but not well remembered either. Despite this, I feel his real talents lay in out and out comedy that required his trademark double takes and a healthy dose of physical comedy. To that end, you really can’t do better than The Good Humor Man. The picture belongs solely to Carson and for once is built around his character without the need to have him play off against the likes of Dennis Morgan or Doris Day (not that that's a bad thing either). Carson plays Biff, a big-hearted ice cream salesman who in reality is really just a grown up kid. He’s a favourite of the local children and is a member of their Captain Marvel fan club. In fact the whole movie seems to be a massive advertisement for Fawcett publications and Good Humor ice cream.

What immediately struck me when watching the film was how despite a solid cast, a seasoned director (Lloyd Bacon) and a good writer (Frank Tashlin), the art of making comedies by 1950 had kind of been lost. The script is good and contains lots of excellent ideas and gags but as soon as we are introduced to Biff, his persona and his ultimate goal (to win the heart of his girl, played by Lola Albright), the film moves awkwardly into a murder plot. This, of course was the formula for most 40s comedies, as if merely presenting an amusing character being funny wasn’t enough for an audience. It occurred to me that Harold Lloyd (for example) could have made a whole film about an ice cream seller trying to win the heart of a girl. In fact he pretty much made a whole career very successfully using that basic simple formula. What happened to comedy films in the 40s that simply exploring comic situations wasn’t enough? But I digress…

The Good Humor Man starts out looking like it is going to be one of those old style comedies with some rather well observed gags as we establish Carson’s character as he goes about his daily rounds. There’s a nice moment where a cute dog approaches him and begs for an ice cream. When he gets it, the dog runs off and we pan to a large pack of different sized doggies all waiting for their free ice cream too (cue double take!). Carson is shown not only being kind to (and exasperated by) animals, he also helps a kid out with some money and in case we don't believe his good intentions, is shown picking up litter! He then meets up with the local kids and their Captain Marvel fan club in their meeting hut, all decked out in capes and cool club t shirts that would doubtless go for an absolute fortune on Ebay these days. Carson uses his membership of the club to get close to the kid brother of his sweetheart, and the young lad, seeing a kindred spirit sympathizes with his plight. Ironically the cad that is stopping this love match is played by none other than George Reeves, giving in retrospect a little bit of a Captain Marvel versus Superman vibe (if Superman had turned evil, that is)

The film perfectly sets up the premise and the main character, and in true old school fashion, goes on to show a little vignette of the life of a Good Humor man. This involves Carson having to bring an ice cream to a man working at a furnace. Of course the ice cream keeps melting, and to add to the problems, Carson needs to keep his uniform pristine for a big date after work. The situation of worked out wonderfully with perfect timing from Carson, with his big eyes and bendy mouth constantly looking to the viewer for help as he gets further and further into trouble. It’s a lovely scene expertly written by Frank Tashlin, the sort that as previously mentioned was becoming quite a rarity by 1950 (except perhaps in Tashlin’s own films). Carson gets stuck inside his own van and when released has been turned into a human Popsicle. In a rather absurd pay off to the scene the six-foot iceman is then floats away and is promptly washed down a storm drain. Why? Who knows?

From here on, the murder mystery kicks in and the rather charming comedic episodes come crashing to a halt in favour of a second rate film noir pastiche. That’s not to say that the film loses it’s way, as luckily the characters (and Jack Carson’s central performance) are drawn so well that they remain engaging. It’s just that it’s all been done before (mostly by Bob Hope) and for the most part done better. What potential the movie had a comic vehicle is somewhat hampered until the climax. Carson still manages some nice moments though, in particular his discomfort at being seduced by the film’s femme fatale. When asked if he reads comic books, his innocent yet triumphant “Of course I do, everybody does!” is a rallying call to all young at heart dreamers.

The final scene takes place in a school and features a big showdown between Carson with his Captain Marvel fan club and a bunch of mobsters. On its own the scene is a tour de force example of the work of Frank Tashlin with its manic energy, silly visual gags, ridiculous props and camera tricks. It’s simultaneously very funny and really rather irritating unless I’d imagine you are a big fan of Tashlin’s work (I can take him in small doses). However, there are some great ideas as the fight works it’s way through the different rooms of the schoolhouse. The music room sees trombones, harps and cymbals being used as weapons (again, this scene is probably something Lloyd and his contemporaries could have developed into a couple of reels). In shop class Carson fights off the mobsters with saws and rulers until inexplicably an unruly buzz saw escapes and chases people round the swimming pool like a shark! The kids arrive to save the day (and in a nice touch, so does the ice cream loving doggie from the beginning!) and chant the Captain Marvel code word as they dispatch the villains.

Naturally the whole thing ends up with a massive custard pie fight (what else?) and much speeded up camera work. Proceedings are enlivened by the appearance of a donkey in a Captain Marvel outfit and more of the ice cream loving dogs. Come on, who can't resist a donkey in a cape?! By the end there is so much going on and the music has reached such a frantic crescendo that I felt like I needed a quiet sit down in a darkened room to recover from it all. It’s certainly a well built sequence but sadly very far removed from the gentle character comedy of the opening scenes. However, it was 1950, so what else could you expect? The film is certainly a mish-mash of ideas and styles, but luckily it’s all firmly held together by Jack Carson playing perhaps his quintessential comic role.

I always wondered if The Good Humor Man was ever considered a pilot for a series of Jack Carson films. Certainly, his unique comic persona was arguably never distilled better, and a series of vocational comedies exploiting this character (even written by Frank Tashlin) could have been very interesting and probably funny too. Sadly, it was not to be, but Jack Carson continued on with his career after The Good Humor Man and enjoyed many, many great moments, both comic and dramatic until his untimely death in 1963. I hopefully will continue to catch him unexpectedly in films, lending an air of assured quality to each production and despite often playing the bad guy, remaining one of the screen’s undeniably likeable personas. And by the way, don’t forget your Captain Marvel fan club secret code word – “Niatpac Levram!”

Life with Father

2011-04-06T16:16:00.000-07:00

I’m back from my (slightly longer than anticipated) sabbatical, and if you’ll just indulge me for a short moment, I’m in a reminiscing mood. A while back I mentioned that were it not for Stan Laurel and his films, that I would not be writing these words right now and that I would not have the interest in classic movies that I hold today. Though essentially true, the real catalyst for my love of film has been and continues to be my dad and his enthusiasm for all things cinematic. Whether it was our constant trips to the cinema, or seemingly endless nights watching television together, my foremost memories of growing up involved a mostly small, and sometimes large flickering screen. It was there that I encountered the stars of the golden age; it’s heroes, villains, clowns and monsters. To this concoction we add in the Star Wars phenomenon, a pile of Betamax tapes from the video store and the works of Peter Sellers and there, dear reader, you have my childhood in a nutshell. I spent hour upon hour watching and thinking about films, both old and new, and would listen to my dad talk at length about his favourite scenes from his favourite movies. To this day I feel like I know the whole script from Algiers but still have never seen it.

Growing up I would always ask my dad questions about the films he liked and in particular about the movies he watched when he was young. This was because it mostly involved tales of watching Laurel and Hardy and I really think that like me, his early connection with their films paved the way for a lifetime of viewing. He once told me that when he was young his aged great grandfather confessed that he had never actually seen a film, so my dad immediately took him out to the local fleapit to see Bonnie Scotland starring his favourite stars. The elderly man spent the entire picture howling with laughter and my dad asked if he wanted to go again the next week. He replied that no, he had seen a film once and felt no need to go again. I always thought that an odd anecdote, with the concept of cinema being an experience akin to seeing the Great Pyramid: something to be experienced once then filed away as a treasured memory.

Despite this, film played a big part in his early life – he had an uncle who looked like Edgar Kennedy (which resulted in me being probably the only ten year old at school to actually know who he was) and as a baby was often bounced on the knee of Sir Harry Lauder, a friend of his grandfather. Later he traveled to the big city and joined the local Film Guild where he discovered a love of the ‘art house’ cinema of the day and directors such as Tati, Fellini, Herzog and Kurosawa. He met Burt Lancaster, Julie Christie and James Robertson Justice and on several occasions went out drinking with Montgomery Clift. I always doubted that particular anecdote but years ago I got him to put all his memories of Clift on tape and the level of detail he gave me convinced me that the meetings actually happened. Perhaps I'll dig them out and write it up for a future blog entry. Not surprisingly, my own tastes from this era point in the same direction as his. All children need to be exposed to the genius of Henri-Georges Clouzot at an early age!

In terms of his tastes, apart from the greats of 50s and 60s world cinema, my dad seemed drawn to the fringes of popular film. He liked the short subjects, the cartoons and the genre pictures of the golden age – the westerns, science fiction and gangster pictures. Looking back, I realize that virtually all my tastes have derived from those years sat in front of the television set watching the films that my dad had chosen to watch. As a result, alongside being a junior Edgar Kennedy expert I was also introduced to the likes of Joe McDoakes, Pete Smith Specialties, Crime Does Not Pay, Clark and McCullough and Benny Rubin. Whatever obscure treasure turned up on TV, my dad could tell me a little about it and whet my appetite enough to look for more. He didn’t have much interest in stars, with the exception of a handful of western actors like John Wayne and Randolph Scott or larger than life screen characters such as Peter Lorre or Boris Karloff. When I asked him his opinion of my new favourite, Ronald Colman, his one word reply was “insipid”. I was crushed, but we agreed to disagree. More exciting to him were the ‘real’ stars of the screen, King Kong, Frankenstein’s Monster, the Creature from the Black Lagoon and even Robbie the Robot. Being young and a card carrying Star Wars fan, this was music to my ears.

When the video revolution of the mid 80s came it suddenly dawned on me that all these films were increasingly being used as a babysitting tool and that in reality I had no choice whatsoever in what came back from the video shop. By this time my parents had split up and my dad had to baby-sit me while my mother worked nights. Luckily, due to our now shared love of genre cinema and the influence of Star Wars, my nights were filled with a plethora of (mostly Italian) rip offs of Conan the Barbarian, Mad Max, Raiders of the Lost Ark and the aforementioned George Lucas epic. Ah, the glory years of 80s exploitation! Again, this area of cinema history is one that I’ve kept with me, and which keeps me entertained to this day though I’d do anything to go back in time and write down all the films I saw, as the memories are slightly fuzzy. Looking back I was exposed to an awful lot of violence (and some occasional nudity) but never gore and horror, which didn't appeal to him. As a result, until fairly recently it didn't appeal to me either, though I'm currently trying to make up for lost time...

In more recent years we kept going to the cinema, but mostly to see the latest blockbusters. I found that my dad had less and less time for the classic films, finding them hokey and old fashioned, instead being impressed by modern special effects and editing (though still complaining that there were no new stories). We’d still go out of our way to see a revived classic though mostly it was me dragging him, and he was always interested in whatever new epic was coming out of the Far East. Sadly, other than that I remained disappointed that he liked nothing better than watching a Steven Seagal movie on late night television. In a way, it was at least refreshing that he chose to embrace the present and the future rather than clinging to memories of the past. It's something I still try to keep in mind when I get too wrapped up and dogmatic about certain eras or artists.

As I said at the start, please forgive my rambling reminiscence but I felt that it needed to be said. My dad sadly passed away a couple of weeks ago and despite my mixed up emotions and memories and his flaws as a person and as a parent, I’ve been thinking long and hard about his influence on my life. I’ve come to the conclusion that my love of films, and especially classic films is really his lasting gift to me. I also realize now that my golden childhood was far from golden. I have happy memories of our times together as a child, but as an adult I now understand that the television was only being used as a baby sitting tool, as a mere pacifier. In all the time watching television and going to the cinema, the choices were always his and my opinions meant little. The films were an excuse to avoid his parenting duties and talk to me.

Regardless of his real motivations, it was still time we spent together and it gave me a chance to soak up his enthusiasm and knowledge for something he enjoyed. I know now that a television is a bad parenting tool and that as great as movies are, they can’t take the place of actually having a proper relationship with your father. Despite all this, I still loved him, and I knew that he meant well. Perhaps he found it difficult to know how to relate to me, or perhaps he really was selfish and not interested in my opinions. The truth, as usual is probably somewhere in the middle, but without ever realizing it he gave me a life long interest that continues to give me huge pleasure. So in a way, he will still always have an influence on me, albeit an unintended one. And as the years go on, I hope wherever he is, he realizes that each time I step into the company of Mr. Laurel and Mr. Hardy, despite everything, I will think fondly of him.

Normal service will be resumed next time.

Screen Snapshots is Taking an Enforced Holiday...

2011-02-09T10:13:00.000-08:00

Well, not so much a holiday, more an exile.

Screen Snapshots will be temporarily bowing out due to the unholy stresses of moving house. No one should have to put up with the joint and limb destroying effort of having to carry endless boxes of videos, DVDs and LPs down three flights of stairs and into a van, only to have to unpack them all over again. Okay, they are my endless boxes and people say it's my fault for collecting so much junk but that's not the point. It's not junk, it's an archive...

Anyway, all plans for this blog are shelved until the middle of March. This is not so much because of the move but due to the fact that our new internet and phone providers can't connect us up until March 9th!

I think the European Court of Human Rights need to be contacted as I will have been without a phone and (more importantly) internet for over six weeks. Six weeks!? In this day and age surely there is a law against that? Never mind that I'm currently writing this from a ridiculously overpriced internet cafe, but things have gotten bad.

So, sadly I bid you adieu for the time being. Thank you to everyone who reads this for your continued support and nice comments. I'll be back soon with a ton of things to do, like updating my links to include a lot of new blogs I like. I also need to investigate the blogs of all the lovely people who recently became followers of this blog as I'm a bit behind with that too. Oh, and I'd better start watching some movies so that I've got something to talk about.

Happy Trails until next month!

Hooray for Joan Leslie!

2011-01-26T16:10:00.000-08:00

Thankfully, I have the honour of penning a short tribute to one of my favourite Hollywood actresses who is very much still with us and alive and well. Time unfortunately marches on but thankfully there are still a few people around to tell the story of the movie capital in its prime, and one of them is the delightful Miss Joan Leslie.

She was another of those 40s actresses that were predominately cast as the relatively faceless female lead to an established star, or more often than not the junior female lead under the two main stars. I've previously written about my admiration for Priscilla Lane in such roles, and Joan Leslie fits into these parts in the same way. Like Miss Lane she always took a usually thankless part and managed to shine despite the often overpowering presence of the main star.

I think I first noticed her in High Sierra, which was her breakout role in Hollywood. It was also probably the film that made me a fan of Humphrey Bogart but though the film ultimately belongs to Bogart and Ida Lupino, Joan Leslie made herself known in the junior female lead. She had much more luck with James Cagney in Yankee Doodle Dandy as the proper female lead and did a great job in that she didn't let herself be in any way upstaged by Cagney's barnstorming and Oscar winning performance in the lead. I found her a very sympathetic character in an often stagy movie and upon watching her performance realised that she was a very skilled screen actress. Of course, Cagney is great in the movie, but it's Joan Leslie that holds it together.

She also gives sterling support in The Hard Way (a really underrated film by the way - I don't understand why it's not seen as a classic) and The Male Animal, as well as doing her bit for the war effort in Thank Your Lucky Stars. As I said, she generally exceeds the expectations of the part in every role I've seen her in, which makes me think that she could have been a truly great star if given the correct exposure. However, it wasn't to be as she had all but retired from movies by the early 50s to raise a family and only acted sporadically since then, mostly on television.

Despite her relatively short career, Joan Leslie is one of the few people around who can still tell us about life in Hollywood in the 40s and acting with the likes of Bogart, Cagney, Crawford and Fonda. Of course, that is not to the detriment of her own stellar career but voices like hers are few and far between theses days and should be supported and treasured by all film fans. So, to this end may I wish Miss Leslie a happy and healthy birthday, with many more to come.

Happy Birthday Kay Francis!

2011-01-13T17:20:00.000-08:00

Well, I’m back from my short festive break and lo and behold, it’s Kay Francis’ birthday! I’ve long been fascinated by Miss Francis and her work and I doubt that I’ll be the only person today penning a tribute to her. It’s strange that she’s a star that is relatively unknown these days to the general public, but who nonetheless has such a strong (I don’t want to use the word cult, but it’s almost that) following amongst classic movie fans. I find it reassuring yet odd that there are numerous blogs and websites around that track her career and plenty of information about her out there, which is something that can’t be said for say, Myrna Loy who is a much better remembered star.

So what is it about Kay Francis that stirs such ardent fandom? Personally, I’m not entirely sure as I’ve always found it very hard to explain her to friends what exactly it is that makes her special. In fact, such an explanation usually results in blank looks and and impression that they feel a bit sorry for me. After all, she was a good but not great dramatic actress, only a handful of her films are remembered or revered today (Trouble in Paradise and at a push In Name Only), her image is that of a clothes horse, with its implication of style over substance, and her fame was comparatively brief (and included a few years of decline). Yet there is something about her that makes her special.

Of course, she had a striking look that although not traditionally ‘pretty’ gave her an instantly recognisable, iconic image. Additionally, her ability to project elegance and sophistication through her wardrobe not only struck a chord with contemporary audiences and continues to set her apart from her peers today. For example, show anyone a studio picture of her from the 30s and the reaction is usually 'wow!'. But there’s still something more to her than her image and look. Any number of 30s actresses could take a good photo or effortlessly wear the latest Adrian creation (though arguably only Kay Francis could get away with some of the more outlandish 30s fashions – and especially the hats!).

For me, discovering Kay Francis was a slow, cumulative process. It was by chance that she appeared in a succession of films that I watched on television, in the days when such things used to be on regularly. Jewel Robbery was followed by Raffles and Cynara, and then finally the penny dropped when I watched One Way Passage. This strange dark haired woman with the air of tragedy was oddly mesmerising. I found myself not watching the likes of William Powell and Ronald Colman (the reasons I was watching the aforementioned films in the first place) and rather, wanting to see more of their mysterious co-star. The next film happened to be Mandalay, and finally I had a Kay Francis film where she was the focus (though Ricardo Cortez was pretty good too).

Now, many years later, I have all but one of her films (Anyone out there got Illusion?) and have seen many more of her performances, from the early villainous parts to the gold diggers, nurses, society women and First Ladies of her more famous later pictures. Each time I see her she projects that special aura that only the great stars do (despite the poor quality of a lot of her later roles). Yet she doesn’t initially blow you away the way that Joan Crawford or Bette Davis might, rather her softly spoken manner and her aloof elegance sort of creep up on you like a warming fog.

Off the top of my head, my personal Kay Francis highlights include:

Her very, very under rated partnership with William Powell. They have such an easy chemistry that seems to bring out a much darker and serious side to Powell’s character. All there films together are worth watching but One Way Passage is their masterpiece as a team. Nobody but nobody does ‘two weeks to live’ tragedy like Kay Francis!

I love the fact that she’s so evil in her early roles, and it’s something that I wish she would have had the chance to continue later on. I’ve previously written at length about her deliciously camp man-eater turn in A Notorious Affair, but one should also seek out Dangerous Curves purely for the preposterous idea of casting Kay Francis as a trapeze artist, resplendent in sequins and tiara. What’s more, she’s an evil trapeze artist!

She always worked well with Ronald Colman and shows some real depth as the wronged wife in Cynara. It’s probably a precursor to many of her later ‘women’s’ picture roles and she plays it very well. This was definitely the part that grabbed my attention when I first started to watch her films. She has a great skill in holding your attention without diverting any of the focus from the story or her co-stars.

Sadly her later films don’t always make the best use of her talents but The Feminine Touch shows her as a fairly adept light comedienne, with some really good interplay with co-stars Van Heflin and Don Ameche. Another favourite from this period is The Man Who Lost Himself, an unfairly forgotten minor classic with Brian Aherne. Though no longer the focus of her films, she still brings style and glamour to each part as well as an easy charm. In many ways she was the perfect actress for the glamorous 30s studio style and often fits uncomfortably into the starchy 40s. However in the above two film the warmth and wit of the old days just about survives intact.

Again I find that this brief sketch doesn’t adequately sum up Kay Francis’ charms. To me she represents much of what I like in a female movie star with her shimmering, elusive and unpredictable persona. Though recognisable as a glamorous and beautiful film star, her performances don’t pigeonhole her into a particular type the way many others do. For this reason, the main appeal of Kay Francis lies in watching her films. At the very beginning of my blog I mentioned that I find the lesser lights in the filmography of a star the most illuminating and important, as they reveal the small details and transitions in an actor’s style and career. So it goes for Kay Francis; rather that a handful of overplayed, iconic performances, we are left with dozens of smaller films, each interesting and each different, and in turn each able to add a small part to the jigsaw of her career. For me the jigsaw may never be complete and to be honest I’m no further forward in explaining her appeal. She’s just a wonderful, entertaining, stylish and endlessly fascinating star. I guess I’ll have to get used to the blank looks.

Merry Christmas!

2010-12-24T11:45:00.000-08:00

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to everyone out there, may all your Christmas wishes come true!

Random Thoughts # 2 - November Round-Up featuring George Sanders and Bob Hope

2010-12-11T17:36:00.000-08:00

November was a kind of quiet month for me movie wise, but nonetheless follow me as I dissect the film watching part of my brain to uncover last month’s highlights…

Movie of the month was a film that I (shock!) actually watched on broadcast television! The fact that this surprises me shows you the state of classic movie watching on regular TV these days (I’m really looking forward to Christmas and the annual repeats of Casablanca and the like). The movie in question was The Strange Affair of Uncle Harry from 1945 starring the ever-wonderful George Sanders. I’m always drawn to George Sanders due to his world weary, sardonic screen persona (which by all accounts spilled over into real life too). He could take fairly everyday roles and imbue them with a charming cynicism that was really quite subversive. Obvious examples include his turns in All About Eve and The Picture of Dorian Grey, and less obviously his starring role in Albert Lewin’s rather brilliant The Private Affairs of Bel Ami. Sanders was a unique actor in that he often gave the impression of being above it all and at times even terribly bored to be on screen. Though they were childhood favourites, looking now I can see that he is virtually sleepwalking through the Saint and Falcon series (and the films are possibly all the better for it).

However, The Strange Affair of Uncle Harry is one of his non-cad roles and as such he brings a laid back, almost vulnerable quality to his role as the mild mannered clothes designer who is dominated by his overbearing, possessive younger sister. Technically the movie is classed as ‘film noir’ (to be honest not one of my favourite genres) in that Harry is motivated to take revenge on his sister when she breaks up his one and only love affair. Nevertheless, most of the film is taken up with a well-observed study of the lonely life Harry lives, constantly trying to make his sister happy and to keep the peace between her and their older sister. This in itself would have made an interesting film since it is so sensitively played by the cast, with Geraldine Fitzgerald as the younger sister being particularly excellent. The revenge plot takes the film into altogether darker territory and initially results in what we are led to think is a rather bleak ending. This development is interesting as Harry is not your typical ‘noir’ protagonist, almost being an innocent who is forced into making a tough moral decision. That is, until the twist is revealed! I can’t tell you the twist because the film told me not to with a “please do not disclose the ending” title card. However, suffice it say, Les Diabolique it is not!

Anyway, George Sanders is always a fascinating actor who can always be relied on to brighten any screen, and here it was good to see him in an atypical part so well written. The ending, however, is not to most people’s tastes but in a strange way reflects Sanders own perverse and contrary sense of humour. But more importantly I saw this film on television! In 2010, who would have thought?

Other Movie highlights in November –

Quiet Please! (1933) – A fantastic Edgar Kennedy RKO short directed by George Stevens which sees the characters of the “Average Man” series begin to take shape. Here we find Edgar receiving a stroke of luck while on a train journey only for the family to ruin it all. There’s a nice reworking of Laurel and Hardy’s bunk beds sequence from Berth Marks and Kennedy is so good with his deadpan looks to camera that you really feel for him when it all goes wrong. So far two volumes of these shorts have been released by Alpha Video and here’s hoping for more!

So Goes My Love (1946) – A Fairly entertaining Myrna Loy drama with Don Ameche doing his best William Powell impression as her eccentric inventor husband. What I found odd is that it features one of those typically ‘Hollywood’ pregnancies. After Myrna has told her husband that she is expecting, we flash forward a while to a scene where she has to chase away the family dog. She collapses from exhaustion and the next day the baby is delivered! At no time did she show the slightest sign of being pregnant. They must have had good corsets in those days…

Lost in a Harem (1944) – I know the received wisdom states that Abbott and Costello were on the wane by 1944 but I really enjoyed this one (I’ve been watching them all in order and this has probably been my second favourite after It Ain’t Hay). It was slick, well made entertainment with some funny gags to boot. Of course it has the famous “Pokomoko” routine (or did the Three Stooges do it first? I can never remember) with Murray Leonard as the raving madman with the broken heart. Incidentally, they did the routine a decade later on the Colgate Comedy Hour with a grizzled Errol Flynn in the Leonard role which is worth seeing for the oddity value if nothing else. I really like Abbott and Costello. I don’t love them, but I really like them.

Old Time Radio highlight of the month –

This month I’ve been listening to a lot of Bob Hope radio shows. The collection I have also includes many of his guest appearances on other shows and it really helps to get a sense of Hope in the context of the period. There don’t seem to be a whole lot of his shows left compared to Jack Benny for instance, but what does exist is very interesting and as I mentioned back in May, show a side to Bob that many forget.

In November I reached 1944, and by this time Hope has firmly established himself as the forces favourite with his tireless campaigning and entertaining. Although he was famous before the war started, it really seems to be this side of his career that establishes him as a massively popular star and showbiz fixture. He’s just so confident in front of the G.I. crowds, with expertly written and delivered monologues and a loose style that uses ad-libs in the right places to give the impression (whether true or not) that he’s relaxed and having fun out there. And the response from the troops is often deafening, it’s a crowd that sorely needs to be entertained.

Strangely though, it’s his appearances on other shows that display his skills the best. Shows like Command Performance and G.I. Journal where he hosts alongside other stars allow him to interplay with others in a really funny way (you know, the way that makes you imagine that the stars are all part of one big showbiz family, living an big house together). Of course, this works supremely well when he’s teamed with Bing Crosby. Good examples of their patter occur on Command Performance from June 3rd and December 15th 1944 (the first one also has a great routine involving Bing, Judy Garland and Frank Sinatra). The absolute best Bob and Bing routine I’ve ever heard is from Crosby’s Kraft Music Hall, dated October 12th 1944. Crosby had just returned from entertaining the troops overseas and appears from New York while Bing’s cast and Bob are in Los Angeles. What’s lovely about the skit is that the real affection between the two is immediately apparent. You can tell that Bob is really pleased to hear from his friend after time away, and the insults fly thick and fast, and are seemingly ad-libbed at times. Despite not being a ‘proper’ double act, I’ve no doubt that Hope and Crosby could improvise together at the drop of a hat, and that’s what is so good about them. They are a team, yet not a team and united in a real friendship. Anyway, my month’s listening has really made me realize how important to the war effort Bob Hope (and Bing Crosby) were and when Hope sums up at the end of his shows with a message to the people at home, while it’s easy to be cynical in this day and age, I truly believe that he was being sincere, and in essence that is what made him so popular with troops the world over.

And that folks, was November. Don’t expect any Christmas movies next month as I can’t ever think of any good ones to watch and I really think we all need to give It’s a Wonderful Life a rest for a few years…

The Crimes of Stephen Hawke (1936) - Tod Slaughter Tells Us About His Latest Murder

2010-12-02T15:59:00.000-08:00

I once read an article that declared that everyone owed it to themselves to see at least one Tod Slaughter film during the course of their film going life. While I would hesitate at the idea of seeing only one (why stop there?) I agree whole heartedly with the sentiment. Once you’ve seen Tod Slaughter “polish them off” it’s difficult to view classic horror movies in the same light. Such is the sheer gusto and enthusiasm he displays for his fictional vocation that one really can’t help but to cheer him on to ever more extravagant depravities. And if ever a horror star had a more apt name…

By the time Tod Slaughter made his first feature film appearance in 1935 he had accrued a lifetime of experience on the British stage. He specialized in revivals of Victorian melodramas, his so-called “new old melodramas” These plays gave him the opportunity to revel in all the grotesque grand guignol of favourites such as Maria Marten, or The Murder in the Red Barn and his signature role, that of Sweeney Todd, The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (Incidentally the roles chosen for his first two film appearances). Melodrama, essentially is the struggle of good versus evil, and in playing the most outrageous, dastardly villains with such vigor and aplomb, Slaughter became a theatrical legend in his own time. His screen appearances are essentially filmed version of his plays, with even movies that originated as screenplays rather than stage plays following the same formula, both thematically and visually. Into this set up thunders Slaughter with his distinctly energetic and theatrical style. He has little concept of subtlety, preferring to hold the audience’s attention with sweeping gesture and (expertly delivered) lurid dialogue.

The Crimes of Stephen Hawke was Slaughter’s third film, and the immediate follow up to the success of Sweeney Todd, The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. He plays the titular Stephen Hawke, a kindly moneylender by day who stalks the countryside wreaking havoc by night as the nightmarish “ Spine Breaker”. However, before we get to that it must be noted that the picture has one the most off beat and unusual beginning for a film (especially a horror film) that you are ever likely to see. After the credits, the camera pans out on a radio microphone and we are treated to a topical song by the comic musical duo Mr. Flotsam and Mr. Jetsam. Both in tuxedos and with Mr Flotsam playing the piano they are terribly “British” in the Noel Coward sort of way (although Mr Jetsam was actually Australian but I digress) and sadly have absolutely nothing to do with the film. Next up we hear from a Henry Hopkins, London’s last cat meat seller (that’s meat for cats not the meat of cats - I was worried for a moment) He tells us about how business isn’t what it used to be and…has absolutely nothing to do with the film.

Finally, the doubtlessly puzzled audience, lest they walk out of the theatre thinking they’ve wandered into the wrong film are introduced to the noted actor Tod Slaughter. When asked to introduce himself he immediately admits that “In my career I’ve murdered hundreds and hundreds of people”. The announcer asks rather sheepishly whether he has any favourite method of murder, to which Slaughter replies that “I keep a perfectly open mind on the matter”. Uh, we are still talking about fictional murders aren’t we? Aren’t we? He enthusiastically tells us about murdering Maria Marten and his grisly exploits as Sweeney Todd before introducing his new killing spree, The Crimes of Stephen Hawke. It’s a very odd start to the film that unwittingly makes you question where the real Tod Slaughter ends and the fictional one begins. To this day I’ve still got a lurking suspicion that he probably got mixed up sometimes and killed a few people for real. If nothing else the man certainly seems to take his work home with him.

However, the strangeness of the prologue merely serves to make us ill prepared for the opening scene of the movie. It starts with Slaughter skulking in some bushes (in an enormous hat) in the grounds of a country estate. A podgy yet adorably cute little boy comes over and asks him what he’s doing. “Can’t I look at a nice little boy’s garden?” he spits ominously. He beckons the boy over to show him a flower and the camera then quickly cuts to the boy’s nanny as we hear a piercing scream. A crowd gathers round the dead boy (the body is just out of shot) and people fearfully mutter about “the Spine Breaker!” It truly is a shocking beginning, as even in American pre code movies we wouldn’t expect to see a toddler brutally murdered by a predatory serial killer (especially in the opening scene!). Stephen Hawke (for it is he) is next seen galloping away by horse complaining that “my artistic ability was not appreciated”, before crackling evilly. Yes, actual cackling. The contrast of sadistic child murder and hokey melodrama couldn’t be sharper.

We then meet the kindly daytime version of Stephen Hawke, alongside his adopted daughter Julia and her would be beau Matthew (confidently played here by a young Eric Portman. It’s not often that Slaughter’s co-stars leave an impression but he does very well). They trust and love Stephen Hawke though unbeknownst to them he lives a double life. In true melodramatic fashion, Hawke uses his status to infiltrate the local rich families’ good graces in order to steal from them then finish them off as “the Spike Breaker”. However, this being a Tod Slaughter film things have to be taken to a few extremes. True to his villainous nature, Stephen Hawke has a deformed sidekick who does his bidding (I think there’s a law about it somewhere). In a normal film the sidekick would be a hunchback, or have a wooden leg, or perhaps wear an eye patch. Not for Tod Slaughter, oh no! His sidekick has all three at once! Take that Boris Karloff!

Despite it being noted that Stephen Hawke's hands “have sinews of steel” (he accidentally breaks a statue when he gets angry) and that he is insanely jealous of any man that goes near his daughter, no one seems to notice that kindly Stephen is the dreaded "Spine Breaker" (you’d think hanging around with a shifty hunchbacked, peg-legged, one eyed man might tip then off). The real reason for this is actually Slaughter’s remarkable transformation as he slips between the dual facets of Hawke’s life. Tod Slaughter, the actor was a deceptively large man (certainly over six foot tall) but in playing the kindly Stephen he shrinks down to an almost unrecognizably shriveled old man. The contrast between the body language of this performance and the dynamic fury of his murderous alter ego is amazing and obviously comes from Slaughter’s years of experience with quick changes on the stage. In this respect he is reminiscent of Lon Chaney, albeit only really being able to play the one character type.

At the end of the day, what all Tod Slaughter fans come to see is some gruesome murders. Or rather, Slaughter’s insane, eye rolling, gurning expressions as he revels in the sheer ecstasy and pleasure of his job (or hobby, take your pick). Luckily, The Crimes of Stephen Hawke does not disappoint, as he goes on a back breaking spree. In one fantastic scene, Hawke arrives by night at the home of his oldest friend to (obviously) murder him. Resplendent in a velvet cape that wouldn’t look out of place on Coffin Joe, he hovers over the hapless friend as we get a close up of his face, grinning and smiling as he breaks the poor man’s spine. In true Tod Slaughter fashion he exits giggling endlessly to himself like a child at Christmas, pleased as ever at an honest night’s work. A later scene sees him framed in shadow, almost Max Schreck-like as he creeps into another darkened room. No stealth for Slaughter, the man always makes an entrance.

Although his characters invariably are insane, it’s the over abundant sense of enthusiasm that makes Tod Slaughter such a great film star. Its as though he inherently understands the ridiculous nature of not only the scripts but of the genre itself (both horror and melodrama) and is thus determined to give the audience what they paid to see, not only first rate entertainment but grisly murder and lots of it. While the films generally aren’t explicit in the way of modern horror, his reveling in the process and detail of murder gives them a real vein of dark humour and a sense of (or at least a hint of) visceral depravity. Inevitably, as in The Crimes of Stephen Hawke, when the hero gets closer to uncovering the truth, Slaughter in turn ramps up the performance level and crashes and burns in a demented display of theatrics.

In this case, as Matthew unmasks Hawke as the villain and the officers of the law close in, Slaughter gets his big finale, proclaiming to the world gleefully “You’re right! I am the Spine Breaker! So many I’ve come to grips with!” before disappearing onto a rooftop for his inevitable fall. However, in a master class of true villainy he saves the best for last. He turns to the heroes, shakes his fists and cries, “You haven’t caught me yet, curse you! Hee! Hee! Hee!” before promptly falling off the roof. The quote itself doesn’t really do the unhinged nature of the performance justice. He’s every cliché of the mustache-twirling, cape wearing Victorian scoundrel, but in a style so outrageous that he tramples on these clichés and reinvents them for himself with his own mad rules. As I said at the start, you owe it to yourself to experience Tod Slaughter first hand. Finally, as he lies dying, he tries for redemption by, er…telling his daughter that she’s adopted. Thanks dad. Rather wonderfully, as the camera leaves the scene, the daughter looks distinctly unmoved as the thrice-deformed sidekick breaks down and starts to cry. And if all that is too much to take in we’re whisked back to the radio studio to see the announcer fast asleep! Well if The Crimes of Stephen Hawke didn’t keep him awake, I don’t know what will. Tod Slaughter looks on, rather bemused the wanders off as the credits roll.

These days he is often derogatorily labeled a “barnstormer”, or even worse “camp” for his scenery chewing acting style, but to see Slaughter in this way is to miss the dynamic, manic energy that he brings to each film. He positively steamrolls his way through each picture, rendering the supporting cast mere bystanders. Although melodrama is intended as the struggle of good and evil, it is only for Slaughter’s villains that we unashamedly root for. It is difficult to think of another film actor who consistently played villains, and more importantly whose villains become the focal point and raison d’etre of their films. And for all the talk of his theatrical acting style, it may be slightly unusual (and scarily, probably a considerably toned down version of his stage technique) but it never quite becomes over the top. Slaughter effortlessly pitches his performances to reach its pinnacle of madness at precisely the right moment, when all hell breaks loose. Up until the villain is caught out, Slaughter cackles and grins with a knowing wink to the audience, reeling them in to his diabolical schemes. It’s this ability to become the absolute focal point of the films, the one actor whom it is impossible to take your eyes off that is Tod Slaughter’s great skill. And of course, once mesmerized and under his spell, we too revel in his fiendish crimes.

It really is a shame that Tod Slaughter is not remembered in the same breath as the likes of Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi or Peter Lorre in the canon of classic horror. What’s also a shame is that for many people, British film horror started with Hammer in the 50s, rather than enjoying a healthy lease of life in the 30s and 40s due to Tod Slaughter. While hardly forgotten today, and with a sizable cult following, Tod Slaughter and his films have been nonetheless sidelined and unjustly derided by history. In his day he was more evil, more deranged and more sadistic than Karloff or Lugosi ever were, and he made films that even today can often startle but will always entertain. The Crimes of Stephen Hawke, while not quite his best or most remembered is still a potent mix of dark humour and chilling horror. However, it’s Tod Slaughter that brings the “new old melodrama” to life with an energy that puts his contemporaries to shame.

King of the Zombies (1941) - Mantan Moreland Saves the Day, and the Movie...

2010-11-18T17:18:00.000-08:00

There are two movies running in parallel during King of the Zombies. One is a piece of straight up mystery in which heroic Dick Purcell and John Archer crash land on a strange island of the undead and do battle with a nefarious mad European doctor played by Henry Victor. The other movie involves Mantan Moreland having some goofy fun as he tries unsuccessfully to avoid becoming a zombie and to escape the aforementioned spooky island. On their own, each has its moments, but when the two films intersect – well, the movie is only big enough for one and the comic hi-jinks easily win out. It’s interesting that in a film where the black and the white characters are separated by class and by the stairs of a house, that despite (I’d imagine) the intentions of the writer the below stairs action proves to be by far the more exciting, funny and vital of the two. They are the flip sides to two very different films and two very different social outlooks and experiences.

Basically, if you take Mantan Moreland out if this picture you are left with a competent poverty row cash-in to the Universal horror cycle and nothing more. With him involved, King of the Zombies is not exactly a classic but nonetheless a fondly remembered and much revived movie (it also helps that it seems to be in the public domain). Monogram obviously saw the worth of Moreland as although he is billed third in the opening titles, interestingly his name is in a bigger typeface than his co-stars Dick Purcell and Joan Woodbury. In King of the Zombies, he steals every scene he’s in and acts everyone in the cast off the screen to such a ridiculous level that it’s not even funny. The man is and was a star performer of the highest order.

Despite his towering presence, it’s a shame that the viewers have to endure the same old tired “color” jokes. There’s about three in the opening 5 minutes, along the lines of (for example) “I thought I was a little off color to be a ghost”. I know it was 1941 but you’d hope that gag was lame even by then. Thankfully, as soon as Mantan gets to do his thing, the movie picks up greatly. When I reviewed Law of the Jungle a few months ago I made the point of defending Moreland’s big eyed scaredy-cat shtick, saying that in effect his comic reactions and double takes were no different to that of Lou Costello in a similar situation. However, it’s unfortunate that this type of character for a black actor has a particularly nasty cinematic baggage to go with it, but Moreland is such a talented comedian that I feel that he really does transcend such stereotyping. And anyway, what’s the alternative, should he be acting a little more “white”? No thank you. King of the Zombies is, if nothing else a movie that shows him to be an effective and hugely talented comic leading man. It’s pretty amazing to see a black actor effectively starring in a mainstream movie from this period, and I don’t believe for a moment that anyone who went to see the film did so due to the lure of Dick Purcell and the rest of the cast (except the zombies).

Anyway, the plots regarding a missing Admiral, a sinister doctor and some zombies are pure hokum and really only there for window dressing. What’s really fascinating is how the movie essentially starts by playing off the usual casual racism of the time and finds itself (intentionally?) being subverted from within by Moreland’s charisma and vitality. The crux of the first third of the movie is that Moreland is subservient to his two companions played by Purcell and Archer. It seems to be a relationship with a modicum of respect but not much else. Although Moreland’s role as servant to the other two is not explicitly defined, a key moment early on is when the mad doctor played by Henry Victor offers his guests a drink yet misses Moreland’s glass out when pouring. The crestfallen look on his face is a picture of disappointment that is made worse when he is told he can’t have a room to sleep in with the others as he should be in the servant’s quarters otherwise it would “set a bad example”. Heroic Dick Purcell is vaguely apologetic but basically tells him to put up with it. Of course, once he goes downstairs and discovers the zombies, Purcell and Archer accuse him of dreaming it or even worse, of being drunk. Some friends they are, now we know where they stand! This immediately sets up Moreland as the unlikely hero of the film rather than the comic sidekick. It’s almost as if the movie set out to be a horror but in rehearsals they saw how good he was and decided to play it for laughs and switch the focus of the plot.

No matter, luckily downstairs in the servant’s quarters is where all the fun happens! Mantan quickly hooks up with pretty kitchen maid Samantha, played by the delightful Marguerite Whitten who tells him of the strange voodoo rituals and of the “dead folk what run around”. Between the two of them, Moreland and Whitten really keep the picture afloat and in some alternate reality I‘m sure they went on to make dozens of movies together as they have a natural chemistry sadly lacking from the rest of the wooden cast. After wisecracking himself though the usual haunted house comic shenanigans, in which he even manages to get a laugh out of the line “the tropics sure give a man a color!” when looking in the mirror (no mean feat), Moreland eventually falls afoul of the denizens of the undead.

The highlight of the film then arrives as Mantan is hypnotized into thinking he is a zombie. The evil doctor tells him to repeat, “I am dead” and “I am a zombie” which gets the incredulous reply “I am a zombie…I am…I is??” When the hypnotism is complete and he has chanted, “I am a zombie” enough he stops, then looks at the zombies and deadpans “Move over boys, I’m one of the gang now!” Soon he’s convinced he’s a zombie and has taken over as their leader and is drilling them like an army (“Company halt! Gangway for king zom!”) He also finds that the zombies don’t eat much so ends up getting all the food to himself as Marguerite Whitten plays along suspiciously. In a funny exchange he says to her “Don’t you bother me woman, can’t you see I’m a has been?” When she tells him that zombies can’t talk he snaps back “Can I help it if I’m loquacious?” He’s then he’s told that if he puts salt on his food that he’ll dry up and die again so replies “This bein’ a zombie sure is a drawback!” before taking some salt and finally snapping out of the spell with a scream of “How do I look? How do I look?” He runs to a mirror and laughs with relief when he realizes he’s not a zombie, then with split second timing remembers to be scared again and runs for his life! Moreland’s turn as the hypnotized zombie and his interplay with Whitten are easily the best parts of the film and come across as so fresh, spontaneous and natural that the rest of the cast and the movie as a whole don’t really stand a chance in comparison.

That’s not to say that the rest of the (white) cast are uniformly bad. Henry Victor is suitable creepy as the mad doctor in a role purportedly intended for Bela Lugosi. He really makes the most out of lines like “She lives, yet walks in the land of those...beyond!" Sadly others like Dick Purcell and John Archer just stand around and say their lines. However, it’s the African American members of the cast that really shine. Aside from the aforementioned Marguerite Whitten, Leigh Whipper really impresses as the incredibly creepy and definitely psychopathic butler and there is a nice cameo for Laurence Criner as an educated doctor. And some of the extras definitely give the impression that they served as technical advisers for the witchcraft scenes! All this really proves to me is that there was an embarrassment of riches in terms of working black actors in Hollywood in the 40s and that I really need to investigate some Harlem cinema.

In the end Mantan was right about the zombies but his stupid friends are still stupid. They thought they had an adventure of their own and were probably blissfully unaware of the fun he and his friends had below the stairs. I understand fully that Mantan Moreland and other actors in his position were just doing their best to get work within the Hollywood system but when I see the way he so effortlessly commands the screen when given the opportunity it’s obvious that he was a man out of time. If he were around in these more enlightened times, he would be a massive star, no doubt about it. Someone with the gifts for comic timing, reaction and delivery just wouldn’t have gone to waste. However, I look forward to the next movie I can find where Mantan Moreland gets sufficient screen time (any suggestions out there?) because I can’t think of a more dynamic talent in 40’s screen comedy.

As for King of the Zombies, it’s a superior Monogram picture despite not exactly being a comedy or horror classic, but it is strangely subversive. When it comes down to it, by the end of the movie the status quo is completely reversed and the fool becomes the hero. The aloof European doctor which the lead characters are initially so in thrall of is shown to be a (thinly disguised) Nazi who is toppled not by the square jawed heroics of Dick Purcell but by the permanently scared bumbling of his ‘servant’ Mantan Moreland. Most importantly the conventions of the horror movie are turned on the their head by Moreland, who makes the viewer realize just how contrived and ridiculous the whole set up is by his barrage of Woody Allen-esque one-liners. At the end he emerges once again as the only real person in the cast and the only character in which we can find an emotional connection. He may be scared of everything he sees but he’s the most human character in the movie, and that’s including zombie and non-zombie alike. He sums up the situation perfectly with the last line of the movie, “If there’s one thing I wouldn’t want to be twice, zombies is both of them!”

Smarty (1934) - Joan Blondell and the Funny Side of Domestic Violence

2010-11-13T17:55:00.000-08:00

It seems that if you look hard enough at classic movies you find that times, tastes and morals haven’t really changed all that much in the intervening years. We can still recognize most of the staple characters of 30s melodrama - the gangsters, the gold diggers, the hen-pecked husband and the ambitious career woman all still exist in some form or other in contemporary popular culture. Even though the politics and morals of our time have changed, we retain an affinity for these situations because on some basic level they are still recognizable to us. Obviously not all social mores are the same, given that the representation and treatment of minorities, though rarely hateful still leaves us with a sense of unease and the assumption and or hope that society, has in some way moved on. Smarty falls firmly into the category of belonging to a (hopefully) bygone age in so much as it is a rip roaring comedy about the hilarious subject of, er… domestic violence.

It’s an odd choice for a comedy to say the least, and the result is bewildering clash of high drama and low gags. As usual for a Warner Brothers production of the mid-thirties it has an excellent cast, a sharp script, and a fine (and under rated) director packed into a brisk 65 minute length. It starts with bickering couple Joan Blondell and Warren William well…bickering. She teases and belittles him in a frankly nasty way until he becomes “impotent with rage”. An innocent night of bridge with friends Claire Dodd, Edward Everett Horton and Frank McHugh (playing their usual screen characters: Dodd is acid tongued, Horton is jittery and polite and McHugh is a bumbling simpleton) descends into fight night when Joan pulls the trigger with the words “diced carrots!” and Warren William is pushed about as far as a man can be pushed. He smacks her full on the face and seethes with his no longer impotent rage as she runs away in terror. All well and good for the start of a comedy, as you would expect.

If smacking around your back-talking wife wasn’t bad enough, the reaction to the deed is what really labels the film as a "period piece". Horton is outraged and shocked but is told by Claire Dodd that it’s only because he’s being too “virtuous and noble” because, uh... that’s a bad thing I guess. She continues with the immortal, only in the pre-code thirties line “A good sock in the eye is something every woman needs. At least once in her life” While Horton, and the modern audience pick their collective jaws up off the floor, McHugh (up until now the comic relief) chimes in that “there’s a lot in what she says” With that sagely advice, the motion is carried two to one, she deserved it.

Cut to poor Joan Blondell who is well, not really that upset about the whole episode. She claims, rather half-heartedly that she “won’t live with a man that hits me” and demands a divorce. You mean to say that the punch heard round the world was just a comedy plot device to get us to a divorce scenario? As this point I was trying, really trying to put myself in the mindset of a 1934 viewer but I was beginning to struggle somewhat. Let me get this right - she gets hit (and not a comedy slap, a real sock in the face), everyone thinks it’s okay and it’s played for laughs so that she can use it to her advantage in a plot to win back her soon to be divorced husband. It’s almost as if the writers knew the Production Code was coming in a few months and decided to see what they could get away with.

But it gets worse. After a cutting remark about Claire Dodd’s promiscuity, (On being asked to keep Joan company she says “I don’t mind strange beds” which gets the come back from Blondell of “If I’m not mistaken it’s a preference”) poor misguided Joan then laments the fact that the spark has disappeared from her marriage (hence the divorce). The reason? “If he really loved me, he’d have hit me long ago” Okay, I’ll admit, she’s an incredibly annoying character but I think I’d just turn to drink to get over my problems. Or maybe that’s just me being “modern” again.

To her credit, despite being so annoying Joan Blondell has perhaps never been lovelier or funnier than in Smarty. The whole film seems designed to show off her shapely form, from the opening shot of her legs to the ridiculously revealing backless dress that causes so many problems later in the movie. Her delivery of the lines, despite being tonally dubious (but that’s a problem with the film as a whole) have a distinct air of the Myrna Loys about them, with cheeky darting eyes and playful inflections. Her courtroom scene, in which she is granted her divorce, is a short master class in comedy as she plays up being a supposed innocent to win over the judge. She is all big eyes and teeth, as only Joan Blondell can do, but with subtle little moments of comic business, like briefly holding up the wrong hand when asked to swear on a bible. It’s a beautifully played scene that is designed to enable her to shine.

We fast forward a year and Miss “Smarty” is now married to Edward Everett Horton and is seemingly having fun tormenting and belittling him in her usual irritating fashion. He doesn’t want her to wear a backless dress so she goes ahead and wears it anyway then invites ex husband Warren William along to the party. She wastes no time in trying to seduce him but it initially doesn’t work out (he thinks the dress is like “lipstick on a child of eleven”) Before long she’s back to her old ways, telling him “I’ve been going to the movies quite a lot recently. There the girls are quite different. They get kicked ‘round and pushed in the face…with grapefruit…and they love it” It may be a funny and knowing wink to The Public Enemy (which also features Blondell – what did she make of seeing her doppelganger on screen, or is that just getting too meta-textual?) but clearly, the girl needs therapy.

Having been spurned by the ex-husband she tries to get the usually unflappable Horton to hit her and, one would assume become a real man. She taunts and dares him, knowing that he won’t do it until he too snaps and slaps her in the face. Somehow, this doesn’t have the desired effect and divorce is on the cards again. She didn’t seem to enjoy it much, perhaps he just didn’t hit her hard enough. No pain, no gain, right? In the end Blondell and William are reunited and Horton is sent on his way (he gets a lucky escape if you ask me). She immediately gets back in the groove and gets smart with William but this time he knows exactly what to do. He tears her dress off, holds her hair back tight and hits her again whilst telling her to shut up. They collapse onto a sofa as he says “If you don’t watch your step, I swear I’ll hit you hard”. As they kiss and disappear out of view she replies, “Tony dear, hit me again”

If we briefly ignore the complete and utter wrongness of the central premise, Smarty is a smart little film. The thing is, to a modern audience the central premise just can’t be ignored. Surely most people, even in 1934 couldn’t have thought that all women deserve to be slapped around a bit and that a man wasn’t a man until he did so? And what for me makes the movie all the more unnerving is that this frankly insane idea is played for laughs. Laughs? Okay, I’ll admit that the threat of domestic violence has been used for laughs before, such as in the Honeymooners, but Ralph never actually hit Alice did he? Throwing custard pies, plates or shoes at a woman may be funny, but throwing fists is not (and actually seeing the blows is even worse). Comic violence of this sort traditionally always happened off screen to the sound of bangs and crashes. Maybe I was being rather modern about it all but who on earth decided to green light this thing?! Or maybe I’ve just grabbed the wrong end of the stick entirely and like Edward Everett Horton’s character I’m being too prudish and thus missing the feminist subtext. Or maybe not.

As previously mentioned, sometimes times change for the better. Domestic violence is wrong folks, and even when played so enticingly by a top notch cast of beloved Hollywood icons. In the UK, the movie was called Hit Me Again, which in a true British manner, rather gets straight to the point and hopefully would alert viewers to the horrors ahead. That said, when it’s not being completely morally insane, Smarty is almost a great little movie but sadly also a very, very wrong one. Ultimately it probably says more about male film industry attitudes in the thirties than that of the average man or woman on the street. Despite this, I think several books deserve to be written about whatever issues Joan Blondell’s character has in the movie. Did she get on with her father? Was she hit as a child? Does she feel undervalued as a person? We need to know these things and give her all the help she deserves. Maybe she just needed a cuddle. Actually, I’m not sure I want to know, to be honest.

Random Thoughts # 1 - October Round-Up

2010-11-04T18:13:00.000-07:00

Since I’m proving to be incapable of writing such a thing as a short blog entry, and since real life seems to be conspiring to prevent me from writing regular film reviews and profiles, I thought that I would start each month with a brief review of my thoughts, viewings and listenings throughout the previous four weeks. So here’s how I spent my October...

The most newsworthy event in October for me was the death of Norman Wisdom aged 95. Though he stopped making regular film appearances in the 60s (and stopped making decent films in the 50s!) he became a bit of a national treasure in Britain due to his ability to seemingly never age (he was still falling off ladders well into his 80s) and his regular television appearances. He was someone that I grew up with and who, for a brief period in my teens was my favourite film star. I do mourn his passing but have mixed feelings, as I haven’t watched one of his films in years and I’m not entirely sure that I’ll still find his mawkish form of slapstick particularly funny. I really meant to watch The Bulldog Breed, Man of the Moment or Up in the World in tribute to him but I never got round to it. I still have good memories of him and though at times he fell in to the Chaplinesque trap of being overly sentimental, he was an excellent physical comedian with tons of charm and a real survivor, entertaining audiences for over 60 years. Despite his flaws and patchy filmography, he’s a uniquely British comedian (though inexplicably a national hero in Albania) and it’s sad that another part of my childhood has disappeared into the ether. For a rather nice tribute to Sir Norman, please click here.

Film highlight of the month was a rare big screen showing of the 1945 British thriller Murder in Reverse? Starring William Hartnell. Though essentially a B picture this was a tautly directed tale of a man innocently sent down for murder and who, upon his release sets out to clear his name. It went by at a cracking pace and Hartnell, as ever was excellent. He really is a most under rated actor and I would really like to see more of his work. Whilst best know today for Doctor Who, he was a juvenile lead in British films of the 30s (as Billy Hartnell) eventually graduating to character parts in films such as The Bells Go Down, The Way Ahead and Odd Man Out.

Murder in Reverse? was one of several attempts to establish him as a leading man in thrillers and crime films, in the mould of Bogart, Robinson or Cagney. It didn’t quite work out but at least he got the chance to show his skill as an actor in films such as this. In Murder in Reverse? his character emerges from prison half way through the narrative after fifteen years inside and Hartnell excels at subtly showing the effects of what he has endured. He’s a broken man but a man with a pent up rage to even the score, despite being physically spent. In many ways, Hartnell is almost a method actor in his use of mannerisms and body language to emphasize details about his characters, both major and minor. Perhaps his greatest and most accomplished attempt at this approach is his portrayal of Dallow in Brighton Rock where it’s the details such as chewing on a matchstick or cleaning his nails that help to establish depth to the character. It’s a testament to his ability as an actor that Hartnell never lets his performance be swamped by Richard Attenborough’s blisteringly intense star turn.

For me another Hartnell highlight is to see him tussle with Patrick McGoohan in the climatic moments of Hell Drivers. To see these two icons of 60s television share screen time (and try to kill each other) is a real treat. Though it seems that a DVD release of Murder in Reverse? is not on the horizon, I’d implore anyone with an interest in British movies of the 40s and 50s to search out a film featuring William Hartnell. I just wish there were more of them available, including the elusive and awesomely titled comedy I’m An Explosive. If anyone has a copy, well my right arm is yours….

Other Movie highlights in October –

The Grass is Greener (1960) – One of my favourite Cary Grant films from back in the day still held up, much to my relief. It’s a lovely, underplayed film (sometimes too underplayed though) with a great cast, especially the demure and elegant Deborah Kerr.

Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe (1940) – I Finally made it through all 12 chapters of possibly my all time favourite movie serial. I know a lot of people prefer the first two but this one, with its stirring music and impressively epic scale gets my vote. If only all serials were so consistently exciting. Next up is The Mystery Squadron, my first Mascot serial, hooray!

It’s a Boy (1933) – British farce starring Leslie Henson and Edward Everett Horton about a man finding out he has an illegitimate child on the eve of his wedding. It’s suprisingly racy for it’s time with several innuendo-laden lines and a scene where Horton and Henson have to explain what sex is!

Old Mother Riley’s Circus (1941) – This is one of the better Arthur Lucan films featuring the character that practically wrote the book on lowbrow humour. I’m going to write a profile on the Old Mother Riley films once I’ve watched a few more but the character is certainly…an acquired taste. It’s very difficult to explain in a few sentences so I’d encourage anyone reading to get hold of one of the films. You may be confused at first, but trust me they grow on you.

Old Time Radio highlight of the Month -

I listened to an excellent edition of the Lux Radio Theater from September 26th 1938 where Jack Benny and Mary Livingston appear in a production of Seven Keys to Baldpate. What makes this one so good aside from having Jack and Mary playing themselves is that the usual host, Cecil B. DeMille also appears as himself. In the story, Jack Benny is constantly pestering DeMille to let him appear in and write one his films, so C. B lets him stay in one of his (haunted) properties in order to write the script. The whole thing is ridiculous but you can tell that the cast are having a great deal of fun, and DeMille, who really can’t act to save himself is pretty amusing. I know that there are about three million episodes of the Lux Radio Theater but this one is definitely worth digging up.

And there you have it - that was October. All this and no mention of time traveling Chaplin extras! Not from me, no sir. Next month…November!

Mitzi Green - Pre Teen Flapper of the Screen!

2010-10-22T18:14:00.000-07:00

It must have been a tough life being a child star. Regardless of the loss of a carefree childhood, the minute you start to grow up you instantly lose precisely the appeal that made you loved by millions in the first place. Even worse, in years to come all people will want to talk to you about is the work you did as a five year old that you can probably barely remember. Of course some child actors managed to reinvent themselves as fully-fledged stars as adults (mostly by starting as a teenager rather than a child it seems), though a magic formula for success in the transition was continually elusive. However, the vast majority did not make the transition, and once they reached a certain age, packed their bags and returned to civilian life, returning perhaps only for a short lived comeback as a young adult. Mitzi Green followed that pattern as far as her career in movies went, but luckily her talent was such that she crossed over to the bright lights of Broadway and continued to wow crowds throughout those ‘difficult’ years.

Mitzi Green, who would have turned 90 today, was a rather unusual child star in that despite being only nine years old on her screen debut appeared too grown up for a stint in Our Gang yet refreshingly dispensed with the sickly sweet sentiment associated with the Shirley Temples of the world. Miss Green appeared to be that rarity in the land of child actors: the child actor that isn’t precociously annoying. I mean that as no disrespect to the considerable talents of the likes of Jackie Coogan, Jackie Cooper and Shirley Temple but Mitzi Green created a screen persona that was the antithesis to the cliché of the Hollywood child star. She was worldly-wise, self aware, cheeky, manipulative, decidedly annoying (to other characters) and most of all, supremely talented for her age.

Though I’ve currently only seen a handful of her screen appearances (and I’m trying to get hold of more of her films as I speak!), from what I’ve seen she shows confidence, timing, poise and excellent physical and facial reactions. Of course, upon reading about her background this is no surprise. She was born in 1920 to a couple of vaudevillians and appeared in their act from the age of 3 or 4. Her natural talent was for mimicry and impressions and combined with her abilities in song and dance must have brought the house down on a regular basis. This translated very well to pictures and she made her screen debut in 1929’s The Marriage Playground. From her first moment on screen she looks at ease with the new medium.

The Marriage Playground is an interesting early talkie with an excellent cast including Mary Brian, Fredric March, Kay Francis, Lilyan Tashman and Anita Louise. Mitzi plays one of the children in a large family that are going to be split up due to the actions of their selfish socializing parents. With her round face and bobbed hair Mitzi Green stands out from the group of kids (almost a nine year old flapper!) and establishes herself as the brat of the family, cheekily asking everyone she meets for a present. She insults wayward mother Kay Francis about her “rotten taste in jewelry” (the pearls given for a present weren’t big enough it seems) and then puts her foppish boyfriend through his paces by riding him like a horse round the house (saying “Giddup you old nag!”) Later in the movie she dispenses marriage advice to lovelorn Mary Brian due to the fact that she once listened to Kay Francis’ character getting proposed to behind a door. Brian asks her what happened and Mitzi acts it out then innocently adds that after that “I couldn’t hear a thing for the looongest time!”

What’s interesting about her character in The Marriage Playground is that despite the wise cracking, know it all attitude she succeeds in making her character very funny and very appealing. Whether it’s chastising Fredric March’s (thirty-something) wife that “You gotta realize, you’ve lived your life!” or taking her little handbag with her as she shakes her fist at the characters to give them a piece of her mind like a middle aged warhorse wife, she makes every scene memorable and above all likeable. Of course, it helped that she paused to ask for presents first. It’s just astonishing to think that this fully formed little character was only nine and able to seemingly evoke so many reactions from an audience in just her first screen appearance.

Fast forward a few years and the twelve year old Mitzi Green is starring with Wheeler and Woolsey in Girl Crazy. I’ve already talked at length about the wonders of this film here, so I won’t go into much detail but in this picture we see Mitzi near the end of her career and seemingly in the movie for one reason only, to do her much vaunted imitations. In fact from her first appearance in the movie (as Bert Wheeler’s bratty kid sister) she asks everyone she meets “Would you like to hear my imitations?” The answer is a firm ‘no’, but in the meantime she at least gets to sing and dance a little, annoy the heck out of people and once again dispense advice to the lovelorn. She eventually breaks down thie defences and she gets to do her imitations, though we have to wait until almost and hour into the picture for the pleasure.

Without having seen the appearances in between, it seems that by this time her screen persona had perfectly gelled into a well rounded, singing and dancing version of the 1929 one. Her timing, particularly in the bits of comic business she does with Bert Wheeler is excellent and her mannerisms get the most out of the material while also convincing the viewer that there is a real bond between her and her on-screen brother. Despite annoying him, she is always subtly looking out for him, whether fixing his love life, advising him what to do or trying to get him his money from scheming Robert Woolsey.

However, the real highlight of Girl Crazy is Mitzi Green’s famous imitations. Her routine is truly amazing and presents itself as a sort of bizarre and surreal late night cabaret act. The idea is basically the Gershwin tune “But Not For Me” as sung by a number of celebrities. Firstly, Bing Crosby ‘buh-buh-buh-buh’s through it, (only for Mitzi to comically run out of breath to follow up with the trademark whistle) Next up is a stuttering Roscoe Ates, which was pretty funny, but she tops it with her spot on and truly unsettling George Arliss (complete with what looks like an onion ring monocle!) The way her whole body and face change to actually ‘become’ Arliss is amazing and slightly terrifying! Finally we are given another picture perfect imitation of Edna Mae Oliver, complete with all the eye rolling and fussing one associates with her. The whole performance lasts only a minute or two but is a jaw dropping musical and comic tour de force. Disappointingly, she threatens a Maurice Chevalier impression earlier in the film but doesn't actually get to do it. It’s scenes like this that set her so far apart from her child star contemporaries. No need for scene stealing or sentiment, Mitzi was a truly unique talent, but sadly one with a definite shelf life in the movies.

Mitzi only had a few more film appearances before she packed her bags and left for Broadway. It was clear that she had an amazing combination of natural talent and it was not surprising that she found much success there. A movie and television comeback in the early fifties was short lived and she retired to raise her family. Sadly, she died of cancer aged only 48. Had she lived longer, I wonder how much she would have remembered of her days in Hollywood as a child star. Strangely though, seeing how confident and in command of her own talents she seemed on screen, I would like to have thought that it was a clear and hopefully pleasant memory for her. She certainly stood out from all the other child stars and presented a character that while no angel was just smart and sweet enough to win over audiences despite her sometimes beastly behaviour. More importantly, she achieved all this without resorting to the scene stealing, heart string pulling shenanigans of the curly haired brigade. No, Mitzi Green had far too much talent for all that.

House of Errors (1942) - Harry Langdon on Poverty Row

2010-10-10T17:14:00.000-07:00

I read a fascinating article years ago that theorized what could have happened to Laurel and Hardy had they chosen to join a studio other than Fox in 1940. Ideas were put forward as to the artistic and financial merits of signing with Columbia, Universal or even poverty row studios such as Monogram or Republic. Obviously Stan Laurel thought he could convince the big studios to let him exercise some creative control over his pictures, but ultimately it didn’t work out that way and years of artistic frustration were to follow. However, other comedians of the silent era down on their luck didn’t have the box office power of Laurel and Hardy and had no option other than to find a home with the likes of Educational or Pathe. It stands to reason that in a non-corporate, low budget setting the likes of Buster Keaton and Harry Langdon would be given more creative control in which to create their brand of comedy. I mean, surely a small time operator would bend over backwards to have a bona fide star (albeit a faded one) headline one of their productions?

Sadly, in Harry Langdon’s case, the freedom of a small studio did not equal a funnier, more creative film. Sure, some of his Educational shorts are very funny, but like Keaton he’s mostly just an actor rather than a creator. Perhaps in Langdon’s case it was just too late in the game for him to put himself heart and soul into the making of a new picture. Perhaps his reputation in the industry by the 1940s was such that producers merely saw him as a jobbing actor and not an artist. Perhaps he himself just saw movie work as a paycheck and was pleased to have income, no matter the quality of the material. Most likely he found, like his peers that the business model of the movie industry had changed since the 20s and that producers now called the shots.

This all brings us to House of Errors, a 1942 comedy starring Langdon for the Producers Releasing Corporation, a poverty row company mostly known for westerns. The movie is cheap and mostly cheerful, but what makes it interesting is the pairing of Langdon with former Laurel and Hardy gag man and director, Charley Rogers. The two had previously teamed up in Monogram’s Double Trouble in 1941 and the result must have garnered enough interest to warrant a second go. The pair work brilliantly together and despite the movie being slightly below par, they really come across as a double act with real chemistry. Harry Langdon by this time had evolved his “man-child form Mars” routine into a sort of permanently confused Hugh Herbert or Frank McHugh type of character, which played especially well off Charley Rogers’ fast talking, scheming Englishman. In fact, Rogers is so good at the character that I think he really missed his calling by not returning to his native land after the war, as he would have fitted in perfectly with the cast of music hall comedians making films in Britain in the late 40s and early 50s.

The plot of the film concerns wannabe reporters Langdon and Rogers (interestingly named Bert and Alf, the names of Stan and Ollie’s alter egos in Our Relations, a movie which Rogers had a big hand in writing) disguising themselves as home help for reclusive inventor in order to get a scoop on his latest idea, a new machine gun. Luckily, The Producers Releasing Corporation seemed to have had some faith in Harry Langdon as he is credited with the film’s story, and although it’s difficult to say with authority which bits were his, there is definitely an air of familiar Langdon-esque whimsy in the paper-thin plot.

What is really nice about the film is the little moments of comic business. Most of these come from the perfect timing and reactions of Langdon and Rogers. Langdon at times comes across a little like Stan Laurel but with the added layer of punch drunk buffoonery one associates with him (especially in sound). There’s lots of the usual vacuous blinking, bleary eye rolling, inept pointing, and inability to use limbs as nature intended, which due to Langdon’s advancing years (he was 57 when he made the film) make the whole childlike act all the more bizarre and incongruous. He also has an odd way of talking which involves saying…a lot of his lines…with…funny pauses. All in all he’s wonderfully entertaining and when paired with the fast talking Rogers, with his expert timing they produce a real winning combination.

The movie also has a number of quite charming visual gags which you have to assume were the work of Langdon, but which sadly never get the chance to evolve. On a side note, I’ve always found it interesting that Laurel and Hardy could easily pack a fully-fledged plot and a ton of well-worked gags into a 65 minute feature whereas movies like this at the same length collapse under the boredom of an inconsequential story interspersed with half formed routines. House of Errors (and its ilk) seems to take forever to end but Sons of the Desert does twice as much, ten times as good in less time. It raises the question, why did 40’s comedy producers feel the need to sideline comedians? Watching House of Errors, I could not care less about the nominal lead and his budding romance, and this goes for every Abbott and Costello or Ritz Brothers movie too. But I digress…

The aforementioned gags include Langdon’s heart beating out of his chest only to be moved by him to his other side (the accompanying line "I think he's got heart trouble", a sly mention of Langdon's final silent?), Langdon and Rogers doing housework and pushing air from a vacuum cleaner all the way under a carpet as well as playing a tune on a kettle. Also, in a flophouse the pair get involved with a flea circus (a nice cameo from Monte Collins) and Langdon traps his hand then does some ridiculous pantomiming as he tries to fix a crooked painting. All these situations are lovely while they last but unfortunately are brushed aside in favour of reporters, spies and plans for guns.

However there is a bit of redemption at the end where Langdon fires the new gun accidentally and in hitting some stock footage appears (I think) to kill the obnoxious hero! This done, the girl neatly falls into Harry’s lap, where being Harry he kisses her with his fingers then uses them to “eat her nose”! She seems a bit surprised as the credits roll…

House of Errors is by no means a good film, in fact it’s pretty terrible and sadly Harry Langdon is actually hardly in it. What makes in interesting is watching a former great in reduced circumstances, and regardless of the reasons for being there we can see tiny little glimpses of genius. I’d like to think that if Laurel and Hardy had ended up at the Producers Releasing Corporation that their films would have been just as awful too, yet similarly filled with glimmers of hope. In fact, anything they made for a poverty row studio would’ve been an improvement artistically over their 40s output at Fox and MGM.

The other interesting and unrealized part of the film is the pairing of Langdon and Rogers. It’s a more traditional double act than Langdon’s long-standing partnership with Vernon Dent (as good as that was) and really deserved more screen time. If only Columbia had seen the double act and decided to incorporate them into Harry’s then current series of shorts, it might have reached a degree of potential. As it is, all we have are a couple of films and a whole load of what ifs. But then again, Harry Langdon was probably pleased to get the work and a script credit and after all he had been through in his career perhaps that was more than enough.

Erich von Stroheim - The Man You Love to Hate

2010-09-22T17:59:00.000-07:00

Erich von Stroheim is a man of many myths. From the myth of his aristocratic background to the myth surrounding his lost movies, he has certainly had his ups and downs at the hands of critics, writers and historians. It’s been interesting to watch over the years as his reputation rose, primarily based on the tantalizing thought of those just out of reach missing masterpieces, only to dip as the restored (or as near restored as possible) versions of his films became more easily viewable. Tastes change also, and his seemingly adult viewpoint in the twenties seemed starkly realistic to sixties critics, but those same viewpoints have been overtaken by the supposed deeper sophistication of contemporaries such as Lubitsch and Murnau. In fact, the consensus thought as far as I can gather these days is that he was an arrogant and foolish man with dreams bigger than his abilities and who was quite possibly a bit mad.

Though I run the risk of being thought a simpleton for my views and I fully understand any objections, I firmly believe that Erich von Stroheim was quite simply the greatest director that ever lived. Better than Welles, Ford, Hitchcock, Lubitsch and all those other ones who currently find favour with the smart set. Though undoubtedly in terms of consistency, longevity or popularity he cannot stand up to any comparison, in terms of his passion, obsession, vision and forward thinking he stands head and shoulders from the crowd. Of all his contemporaries he is the most modern, both aesthetically and philosophically.

Like all great directors, he really only has a handful of things to say. Indeed, his pictures are littered with the same symbols, characters, times and places. What sets him out from his contemporaries is his incredibly adult approach to his material. While Cecil B. DeMille undoubtedly started the cycle of social realism in silent cinema, it is Stroheim that takes the concept and shows it in all its harsh, grotesque glory. His oft quoted comparison of himself with Ernst Lubitsch that, “he (Lubitsch) shows you the king on his throne and then he shows the king in his bedroom. I show the king in his bedroom first. In that way, when you see him on the throne, you’ve no illusions about him” holds true and perfectly highlights his thinking about the inner corruption and depravity that exist in the world as he saw it.

I could go on to give endless examples of this in his films but the point is that no one else in the twenties was thinking this way. No one else was so actively defying the morals of the time in the name of art and no one else thought to attempt to expose not just the seedier side of life and social classes, but while doing so to expose the corruption and disintegration of the post war society around him. By cleverly transplanting most of these situations to post or pre war aristocratic Europe, Stroheim was given free will to shape a world of his own choosing and to strip away the artifice of the very people around him in Hollywood.

However, what marks Stroheim, as a director of the very highest caliber is his all encompassing, obsessive worldview. On one hand this exhibits itself in all aspects of the film making process, not just in writing, directing and starring in his own productions but to his minute, compulsive attention to the details of set dressing, costuming and even the casting of extras. To some, the stories of footwear being bought at great cost for banquet scenes in which they are never even seen may seem ridiculous and unnecessary, but to me they strike me as the work of a man driven by his art. Stroheim also pioneered the use of real locations for films, used character actors in starring roles and used untrained extras in an attempt to put the microscope of the camera up as close to real life as was possible with scant regard to commerce. Others doing this would be applauded but it seems Stroheim isn’t in that select club.

Of course, as a director Stroheim is famous for two things. Firstly it is as the blueprint for every parody of the mad, tyrannical and aristocratic film director. This is perhaps justified, due to his habit of putting his cast and crew in danger in the name of a good take. From the swelteringly dangerous heat of Death Valley in Greed where he almost killed his actors in an attempt to get them to convey pure hatred and blood lust, to the use of real prostitutes to play prostitutes in orgy scenes (not to mention getting his extras drunk and filming it), his quest for the realest of the real was at the expense of all else. Once again, others (for example Werner Herzog) are mostly lauded for this life or death obsession with art, but Stroheim, it seems is just labeled crazy.

The second thing that he is famous for as a director is for probably being the only person that Hollywood effectively “banned” from directing films. In 1933, after being pulled from what would have been his first sound feature, Walking Down Broadway, Stroheim was never to direct again. His arrogance and excess finally ensured that no one wanted to work with him or employ him to be in charge of a film. In the space of a year, Stroheim went from being the infamous director of scandalous films, to being the subject of a begging letter sent round the MGM stars by a friend so that he and his family could eat at Christmas. In the end the money was raised but Stroheim was so ashamed that he threatened to kill himself that Christmas Eve. He was the living embodiment of the phrase “You’re only as good as your last picture”

I think only Buster Keaton had a similarly spectacular fall from grace. Of course both their declines involve Louis B. Mayer and Irving Thalberg and highlight the then growing power of the producer in Hollywood over the artist. Those that couldn’t play ball with the big studios just had to find somewhere else to work. In the cases of both Keaton and Stoheim, they had families to feed so just had to take whatever work was available. Both ended up playing bit parts in poor films and having a stint in the MGM script department brushing up scripts unworthy of their talents. Similarly, both would eventually find their reputations restored in Europe before the end of their lives.

One of the most admirable traits of Stroheim was his inability to entirely give up on his art. Even though he spent the remainder of his life as a jobbing actor he still had the strength of will to impose his unique character and obsessions on each of his parts. Sometimes this meant subtle rewriting of scripts and sometimes it meant challenging the director to a battle of wills but in each time his part and usually the film benefited greatly from his input. His acting appearances are littered with aristocrats, disability, deformity, orthopedic braces, white gloves, religious imagery (Christian and voodoo), insanely detailed set dressing and sly references to Christmas and geraniums (a Stroheim signature). He even wrote a couple of pot boiling novels that neatly synthesized all his obsessions into pulpy, trashy episodes. In short, his dreams had been taken from him but he never gave up.

In the end the myths endure. Stroheim is a director who only made ten films, the vast majority of which were never released as he intended and which now exist (if they exist at all) in mutilated versions. What other director is held in such high regard with such little evidence available? I believe that his reputation goes beyond tales of the grail-like uncut version of Greed, or the anecdotes of insane extravagance and is due to his unique understanding of the motion picture as a medium of boundless potential, one that has no need to justify itself as art and which can and should peek behind the veil of lies that life presents. His obsessional need to explore this world, crumbling as it was, in any medium that would have him, marks him out as not only a great director but as an exceptional artist. That petty minded studio bosses ultimately curtailed the reputation, genius and development of such a dynamic and unusual talent is one of the great tragedies in film history.

The Locked Door (1929) - Barbara Stanwyck's Secret Shame

2010-09-15T17:17:00.000-07:00

Barbara Stanwyck is probably my 4th favourite actress. Her charm, beauty and intelligence shine through in each of her performances and she is undoubtedly a star in the upper echelon of Hollywood with a resume filled full of movie classics. Unfortunately, and I realize that to some people merely admitting this is utter heresy, I kind of lose interest in her work around 1936. For the rest of the 30s there are many films of hers that I really enjoy watching, but for the most part the magic of the early years is gone. Going into the 40s and beyond, while always watchable and entertaining, her movies just don’t push my buttons in the same way. Even later team ups with the likes of Errol Flynn and James Cagney leave me kind of cold. And all those westerns in the 50s (and hell, even co-starring with Elvis) don’t do it for me either. For me, the Barbara Stanwyck of Night Nurse, Ten Cents a Dance and Shopworn is the one that I want to watch, and while she arguable evolved into a much better, and certainly more famous actress I still think of her as the plucky Depression era girl trying to make good in a bad world.

Now that I’ve outed myself as a part time Stanwyck fan and earned your eternal distrust and revulsion, I’ll continue. I just needed to get that out in the open. I feel like a weight has lifted off my shoulders…

The Locked Door is yet another example of the stagy melodrama so prevalent in early sound films, and a movie generally considered by most (including Stanwyck herself) as being, well not the best example of the art form. To my alarm, during the first couple of moments I tended to agree with the critics. The opening scene sees Barbara wined and dined by bad boy Rod La Rocque on an illegal drinking cruise. The acting by both of them (but especially La Rocque) is just awful with stagnant dialoque and wooden delivery of the highest order. The horrible scene is only saved by the assured and subtle comedy of Harry Stubbs as a incompetent waiter. His appearance imediately shows both of them up and luckily deflects most of the pain.

From there (and 18 months later) the plot concerns Stanwyck’s attempt to split up the affair her sister-in-law is having with La Rocque while also trying to hide the shame of her own past with him to her new husband. You know, the usual fare for the early sound era: scandalous pasts and secret shames. The locked door of the title is the door behind which Stanwyck hides as her husband (played by William ‘Stage’ Boyd) scuffles with La Rocque and accidentally kills him. She confesses to the murder for the good of the family name and drama ensues, as you would expect.

In Rod La Rocque I thought that I’d finally found a silent star that just couldn’t act in sound if his life depended on it. I’ve no way of knowing if the film was shot in sequence but it certainly seems like it as it’s almost as if you see him grow in confidence as the movie goes on. The terribly wooden actor of the first scene is gradually replaced by a swaggering, slimy lothario played with a good attention to character. He makes you hate him but lets the veil slip every so often to see a cracked soul behind the charade. Rod La Rocque’s career wasn’t exactly stellar in the sound era but from this outing he certainly should have been given more of a chance to play villains as he seems well suited to playing the heel. I think I need to see more of his work.

There’s a quite charming relationship played out throughout the film between La Rocque and his butler, played by George Bunny. The implication is that many secrets have been shared (and covered up) between the two and although of differing characters and backgrounds, there emerges some real but unspoken affection for each other. As La Rocque sits idly in his room he puts away the photo of a woman on his desk and replaces it with the new flame, mentioning the oncoming “fresh flower” to his life. Bunny wistfully says to him “You’d be such a nice man if there weren’t any ladies in the world”, to which La Rocque’s equally wistful reply is “But it wouldn’t be such a nice world…” He may be a serial womanizer, wrecker of marriages and all round cad, but underneath it all perhaps he just wants to be loved. Or perhaps he just has fun doing it.

With the high melodrama of the murder comes one of the film’s other highlights in the shape of the wonderful Zasu Pitts. She plays the bored telephone operator at the apartment block where La Rocque lives. As the police arrive she gets more and more excited until she pleads with her boss (played by Keystone great Mack Swain) to be allowed to go up and watch the action, saying, “Oh let me go up, I may never see a murder!” Later, the police call for her to give evidence. As they open the door she falls in, having obviously been listening. She totters around, almost falls over then regains her balance all in one swift movement with a triumphant cry of “I’m in!” It’s a simple but beautifully played piece of comic business and is in fact the highlight of the whole movie. More movies need Zasu Pitts to liven them up.

Of course, none of the aforementioned chatter has really mentioned Miss Stanwyck and her performance. Well, she’s really not too bad. In fact, for her first sound appearance she gives the impression that she’d been at it for years, She has a tendency to shout a little too loud but having just listened to her reprise Stella Dallas on the Lux Radio Theater, that’s not something she got over very quickly (my advice: turn the volume down for that episode). With some minor tweaking, it’s almost as if she arrives on the screen fully formed as the (early) Barbara Stanwyck we all know and love. Her pairing with La Rocque, though starting off on shaky ground, develops into a confident showing for both of them despite the creaky melodrama of the plot and its characters.

And you know what? I’ve just realized that I started out wanting to talk about Barbara Stanwyck and ended up becoming a new fan of Rod La Rocque (my Stanwyck fan credentials just slipped even lower). I think really that says it all about The Locked Door. Barbara Stanwyck is good but she’s far from the most interesting thing on show. However, she’d have her day. Well, until 1936 if you're me.

A Notorious Affair (1930) - Kay Francis, Man-eater!!

2010-09-06T14:53:00.000-07:00

A Notorious Affair is another of those films dealing with the lives and loves of the English aristocracy, a common subject in the early 30s for some reason. This time it is all about pretty English rose Billie Dove and her ill-fated marriage to Italian violinist Basil Rathbone. On one hand this is due to that eternal problem of the ruling classes, that she married beneath her station (I mean, a musician? What would the neighbours say?), and on the other hand that the aforementioned husband has the bad fortune to fall into the man-hungry gaze of a certain Countess Olga Balakireff, played here with relish by Kay Francis.

To say that Kay Francis steals the film would be a vast Titanic sized understatement to say the least. She gets the best lines, the most striking close ups, the most shimmering lighting and the swankiest of fashions. Best of all, you can tell that she knows she has a choice role as she is absolutely, jaw-droppingly outrageous in the movie. As a vamp, she about the closest to a hungry eyed, drooling she-wolf you are ever likely to see. Despite not really being in much of the film, she completely eclipses our nominal star, the rather lovely Billie Dove. It’s not that Dove isn’t good, because she does very well but her saintly heroine just can’t compete against Francis’ vulpine sexual predator.

The movie starts by showing a fox hunting expedition returning to the stables. A group of aristocratic gents with moustaches immediately let us know we are in jolly old England by saying “Wonderful!”, “Topping!” and “Rather!” to each other. No seriously, they actually say this. And what exactly is the object of their upper class clichés? Why, it’s Kay Francis, returning from the hunt and resplendent in top hat (we later find out that she’s “London’s most daring horsewoman”).

Upon dismounting her horse, she suddenly stops in her tracks having spied a youthful stable hand. We get a shot of her face with the most unbelievable look of lust in her eyes. She then checks that the coast is clear, and we see the stable door slowly close. There is a brief pause then the door reopens. Kay and the stable boy are readjusting themselves as she asks his age. He is 28. She replies, “I thought you were a lot older”, as he wipes the lipstick from his face. Satisfied, she walks out and immediately spies the kennel boy. There is another look of predatory lust, this time with a callous smirk. New conquests!

Although the scene is far from subtle (returning from the hunt, now where could we find a metaphor in that?) in a mere minute or two of audacious behaviour Kay Francis has already stolen the picture. In the next scene, Billie Dove declares that she doesn’t hunt foxes but “hunts ideals”. Bah! Who wants that? Miss Dove, you may be pretty with your big eyes but what we really want to see is Kay Francis having her wicked way with a succession of servants and orderlies. In a top hat.

Later, Billie Dove introduces polite society to her new husband, played by an impossibly young Basil Rathbone. Though he plays the part very well, he is lumbered with a ridiculous accent. I think it’s meant to be Italian but it could equally be French or Dutch. I suppose he was just starting out in pictures but it seems utterly mind-boggling to take away one of his biggest assets, his wonderfully rich voice. However, it speaks well for his ability as an actor that he gives a decent amount of depth to the role despite this handicap. Despite the having vocal stylings of Andy Kaufman’s Foreign Man (he has an absurd speech about pushing a horse in a canal “before he bite me”), he is a solid and pleasingly unsympathetic lead.

As for Billie Dove, I refuse to adhere to the received wisdom that a large percentage of successful silent stars were unsuited to sound pictures. In fact I’ve yet to see the sound films of any big silent star that would give that impression regardless of their eventual success or failure in sound (but that’s a subject for another day). Dove is really very good in the film considering the competition she had on screen. In the few close ups that she is given (and this is a problem as Kay Francis is given all the important close ups), she shows much of the charisma she exuded in silent pictures, with her big eyes aglow. Despite working so much better as an actress in scenes needing facial emotions over dialogue, her voice and delivery are fine and she certainly looks lovely. It’s just that in this film, it’s so difficult to cheer on the hero…

Speaking of which, we next see Kay at the party where Basil Rathbone and his accent make their social debut. She looks stunning in a figure hugging sparkly dress, fashionably short cropped hair and long cigarette. Once again her eyes light up when she sees a man (Rathbone) and we know straight away that poor Billie Dove’s marriage is going to be ruined. He tells her about his occupation as a violinist, which gets the sharp retort of “Oh, how awful!” This gets him under her spell, and they part with her promise that “I hope to see you again…very soon”. This line is delivered with a cool puff on her cigarette, and in such a blatantly evil way that frankly all she needs is a velvet cape and a moustache to twirl and we’ve wandered into a Tod Slaughter film. Rathbone remarks that he expected the Countess to talk about horse riding but she talked of nothing but music. Billie Dove’s character retorts that it’s not surprising as “The Countess is very…versatile”. Well, that’s a word for it, I suppose.

Probably the apex of the man-eating comes shortly after the party scene, where we find her in her boudoir after a liaison with her latest conquest, the kennel hand from the start of the film, Higgins. As she (once again) starts to readjust herself after some bedroom gymnastics she looks at the poor man and says, “Higgins, I never knew you had pale blue eyes. I hate pale blue eyes. I never noticed it before…I think I’ll send you back to the kennels where you belong, Higgins” It’s all said with such detached arrogance that right there and then she just invents every single soap opera uber-bitch that would follow. Poor Higgins, he never really had a chance. He replies “Thank you, madame” and it’s back to the kennels for him.

She then moves onto Rathbone’s character and so begins their notorious affair, the details of which I won’t bore you with. Suffice to say it all works out okay in the end (Kay gets annoyed with his violin playing, he gets tired of her constant nymphomania. Well you would, wouldn’t you?). Kay Francis only has a few more scenes but she makes the best of them and the sheer outrageousness of her performance lights up the screen with its incendiary sexuality . It’s a scene-stealing, star making performance on a par with Myrna Loy in Love Me Tonight.

A Notorious Affair is typical of early sound films in that it’s essentially a creaky old melodrama, spiced up with some hints of moral indiscretion. If you take Kay Francis’ Countess character out of the script, then it’s a well-played but rather ordinary film. However, the combination of Francis’ sheer gusto in delivering the most audacious of lines and the director Lloyd Bacon’s obvious interest in shining the spotlight on a rising star lifts the film out of the average. Of course, Kay Francis would go on to become a bigger star and create a believable and popular screen persona but it’s really a shame that she didn’t go on to do more villainous roles. Her aloof, effortless glamour matched with her strikingly dark good looks mark her out as a natural vamp. I don’t think anyone can hold a cigarette holder with as much disdain as Kay Francis. Her early films, much like those of Myrna Loy show a window into a path not taken. And while commercially it was for the best, the occasional dress-up in the top hat would have been a rather fun and diverting change for her and the viewer.

Remembering Rudolph Valentino

2010-08-23T14:29:00.000-07:00

Today marks the 84th anniversary of Valentino's passing and though I can't profess to be his biggest or most fervent fan, I've always had a certain fascination for the man in both life and in death. While he wasn't the first big movie star to die before his time, the sudden nature of his death provided the burgeoning movie fan scene with an icon to mourn over in a scale not seen since the days of the romantic poets. The chaos that his death provoked alone should have been enough to make him a legendary figure but with an already fully cultivated air of mystery around him Hollywood, not surprisingly went into fan meltdown. If it had existed then, today in 1926 the internet would have ground to a halt.

That his mystique has endured despite the advancement of film technology and our short attention span culture is a credit to his appeal and to the magnetism he exudes on the screen. He is one of a select group of cultural figures that only require to be known by a one word name and for which that name has become a byword for a whole set of behaviours and characteristics.

Like most people I grew up as a film fan fully aware who Rudolph Valentino was, but it wasn't until I saw him on the big screen in Blood and Sand that I realised what all the fuss was about. Of course with hindsight it is easy to ascribe his posthumous mystique and cult to his screen performances but I have to admit that there is an indefinable spark of magic in the way he interacts with the camera (the male equivalent of the "Garbo stare" perhaps). I even find it difficult to describe, but he exhibits at his best a sort of supremely animal like charisma that few have ever replicated. I greatly enjoy the work of his contemporaries such as Douglas Fairbanks, Wallace Reid or Ramon Navarro but while many were better actors, none matched him for innate cinematic sparkle. As I said, a lot of this must be due to hindsight, as it is when judging any celebrity that dies young. With Valentino the cult is strong and at times difficult to overcome. Sadly, his death is just such an important part of his story.

I remember when I was a bit younger I was at a book sale and bought an almost complete run of Anthony Slide's silent movie fanzine of the late '60s and early '70s, The Silent Picture. It was a great magazine as he tracked down all sorts of still living silent artistes for correspondence and short interviews. He also received communications from the still running silent star fan clubs such as the one for Valentino, proudly proclaiming 40 plus years of service to his memory. I imagined a group of elderly women with tear stained photographs of the late star, determined to keep going through their eternal grief. I'd like to hope that somewhere the fan club is still running despite the lack of people still around who saw him in his prime.

If not, I can guarantee that there will be a veritable swarm of Women in Black today tripping over each other to place a rose on his crypt in the Hollywood Forever Cemetery. Despite the circus that the ceremony has descended into, it shows that he continues to remain a living part of our film culture and memory. The first time I visited Los Angeles, the first thing I wanted to do was to see Valentino's grave. I don't really know why but I felt a compulsive urge to see it. Eighty years after his death I travelled half way round the world to see some engraved marble. I guess that's the sort of pull he has on people.

Three Men on a Horse (1936) - '30s Dialogue and the Decline of Joan Blondell

2010-08-17T15:56:00.000-07:00

Three Men on a Horse seems to be a fairly well regarded film but I found it on the whole, a bit puzzling. Not really for anything contained within the film itself but for the things it made me think about while I was watching it. The movie is an adaptation of a popular play and stars Frank McHugh, in a rare starring role as the hapless Erwin Trowbridge, a simple man with a knack of picking winning racehorses. The only problem being that he does it for fun and doesn’t believe in betting. When he falls in with some gamblers they try to befriend him in order to make their fortunes. This snappy premise is ably milked by the talented cast of character actors to showcase their considerable, and usually overlooked wares. And in the middle of it all, in a secondary role is one Joan Blondell, who at this point in her career definitely is not a character actor, and whose presence is, well…a bit odd.

From the beginning you can tell that the movie is essentially a filmed stage play. The sets are sparsely decorated and large, the cast is small, the script is dialogue heavy, there is virtually no location work and much of the action happens off screen. Of course there is nothing wrong with this approach, and despite the fact that the production screams “B-picture” the basic set up allows the experienced cast to flex their acting muscles in ways that I’d imagine many of them had rarely had the opportunity to do.

Despite all this, as the dialogue went whizzing by between the fast talking characters, all I could think was that in the last few years my mind had really become subconsciously attuned to Pre-Code movies. The dialogue in Three Men on a Horse is sharp and frequently amusing, but I think I’ve just become accustomed to there being a bit more bite in my ‘30s wordplay. It made me realize that the Hays Code for the most part really delayed the progress of movies as a form of entertainment to be enjoyed by adults. A lot of people hear so much about Pre-Code movies that when they finally see some examples they are vaguely disappointed by a perceived lack of scandal or overt sexuality. For me this is missing the point. Early sound films are so enjoyable because of their sense of freedom. The lack of any heavy censorship wasn’t a free pass to push taste boundaries, rather it made sure that dialogue could be written to not only better reflect life but to represent the viewers’ and the writers’ often varied tastes.

In contrast, late '30s movies like Three Men on a Horse seemed to develop a ‘wise guy’ patter that gives the impression of street level talk in its pitch, speed and rhythm, but in actual fact ends up saying nothing. Of course, this in itself was all part of Hollywood’s ‘re-branding’ in the post-Depression years, as the studio product got slicker and the stars became vehicles to push the glamour and prestige of film making. The point is, despite the witty script, it gets to a point where it’s just a group of men loudly talking at each other. In 1931, it would have been a different story. Perhaps not as well filmed and acted, but certainly a different story.

The cast in itself is mostly excellent. Frank McHugh is mesmerizing in the lead, tripping through the movie in a sort of naïve daze. His bleary eyed look gives the impression of a man out of step with the world and who has to put up with suburbia and a nagging wife in order to have a hobby that gives him enjoyment. The gamblers, played by Allen Jenkins, Teddy Hart and Sam Levene are impressive in that typical Warners way and hugely energetic but sadly hampered by really stagey accents. In fact everyone in the movie seems to have a really annoying thick Brooklyn accent of the ’I’ll moider ya’ and ‘you goys got a noive' variety. In fact Sam Levene’s accent as the dimmest of the three hoodlums doesn’t just verge on caricature, it practically throws caricature off the cliff then sets fire to it. Now, if all this is meant as some warped parody of the Warner Brothers gangster cycle then all is well and good, but I really doubt that was the intention. It may be a result of the script’s stage bound beginnings giving it a sense of heightened reality, but for a mostly stage bound movie it just becomes distracting. At times (and especially in the bar scenes) it really is as if the director Mervyn LeRoy just decided to do a performance of the play and film it for posterity.

Of course all this criticism is overlooking the good points of the film. The rest of the cast is really excellent, with Edgar Kennedy restraining the slow burn as a bartender, Carol Hughes (a childhood favourite of mine for her turn as Dale Arden in Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe) as Mc Hugh’s eternally crying wife, Guy Kibbee as McHugh’s blustering boss and a brief, funny appearance from a pre-Jack Benny Eddie Anderson. As noted, it’s an excellent cast, but the approach just doesn’t work as a film and the accents are exactly what you hear in modern dramas when they do some awful pastiche of 1930s Broadway. Which brings us to Joan Blondell…

Unfortunately Joan Blondell succumbs to the theatrics of the play and sports a heavy, heavy Brooklyn accent, a la Judy Holliday in Born Yesterday but with none of the subtlety and charm. The accent is so thick that her character, the girlfriend of gambler Teddy Hart who has pretensions of a quiet life in the suburbs, can't avoid becoming caricature rather than character. Strangely enough I’ve just listened to a Lux Radio Theater production of She Loves Me Not from 1937 where she does exactly the same accent and it’s equally distracting and ridiculous (kind of like a lower pitched and more worldly wise Dorothy Lee). So the accent must have been her idea and a favourite to boot. Anyway, accent aside she really doesn’t do enough to merit her second from top billing, which begs the question, what was she doing in the picture in the first place? It’s clearly a B picture populated with character actors in featured roles, so why is she, the biggest star in the film, reduced to a minor supporting part?

Part of the answer may be down to Joan’s own lack of ambition and her then recent marriage to Dick Powell. She was known to just want to keep working and looking after her family rather than play studio politics so it’s likely that she was offered the script and chose to do it based on the strength of the writing and relative fame of the play. However, her appearance in the movie could also be a sign that her star was beginning to slip. Her screen appearances in 1936 give some hints as to this, despite three pictures teaming her with Dick Powell. In Sons O’ Guns she is lumbered with (and smothered by) Joe E. Brown as a leading man, and while Bullets for Ballots gives her a choice role with Edward G. Robinson, it is really just as the featured female lead in a 100% Robinson movie.

This was a pattern she would fall into more often than not in the years to come: the bright dependable leading lady to be paired up with A-list featured male stars (with Errol Flynn in The Perfect Specimen, Leslie Howard in Stand In and Bing Crosby in East Side of Heaven to name a few). In the late ‘30s and beyond there seemed to fewer and fewer opportunities for an equal pairing with her co-stars, with Dick Powell and Pat O’Brien being notable exceptions. Three Men on a Horse, silly accent aside may be one of the first indications that Joan was an actress to be slotted in to brighten up a movie, rather than a featured star in her own right. Of course, Joan being Joan, she didn’t fight it, choosing rather to get on with the work at hand. Perhaps if, like Bette Davis and Myrna Loy she had stood up against the quality of her parts it would have made a difference to her career. On the other hand, perhaps the example of the then fading Kay Francis at Warners was enough to make anyone forget such ideas.

I don’t know, but I can’t help but think that Joan Blondell is wasted in Three Men on a Horse, though ultimately she lends some class and real star power to a pretty cheap B-picture (Paul Harvey even fluffs a line and it stays in the film!). It’s not a perfect movie by any means but it is entertaining (in a 1936 sort of way) and features a generous spotlight on a number of actors more used to smaller roles. For my tastes however, it raises too many problems to make it a classic. And those accents…ugh. Did people in Brooklyn ever speak like that?

Lux Radio Theater # 2 - So You Want to Be a Movie Star?

2010-08-03T15:52:00.000-07:00

Make Me a Star (1932)

One of the underlying themes of the Lux Radio Theater is that of Hollywood as a shaper of dreams. As well as selling cakes of soap, the program makers are also selling the idea of Hollywood as the place to look towards for glamour, fashion, fame and fortune. Even the adverts for Lux throughout the show take the form of the weekly adventures of some unnamed starlets on the studio back lot discussing why they don’t have skin as smooth as Carole Lombard’s (Hint: it’s got something to do with Lux). The various Hollywood experts and insiders that appear on the show not only give a glimpse behind the curtain but also give advice, on everything from next season’s fashions to, in this case how to break into acting.

So, if you’ve ever wanted to find out whether you would have had what it took to become a star in the Hollywood of 1936, here’s your chance…

On the July 27th episode (Chained starring Joan Crawford and Franchot Tone), host Cecil B. DeMille interviews the dramatic coach for MGM studios, Oliver Hinsdale and asks the immortal question, “How can I get into the movies?”

Mr Hinsdale starts off by advising the prospective starlet to get some theater experience and to “live without food” in the quest to give your all to the dramatic arts. He then gives his formula for success in movie acting:

An actor should have “imagination, idealism, sincerity, knowledge of life, a true love of mankind and a good appearance”. He goes on:

“The aspiring actor must have a broad vision and understanding, a cultivated mind, he should know of history, literature, painting, sculpture, music. He should know his Bible. His body must be healthy, active and respond to his bidding. (He should have) a fine clear complexion which denotes health and vitality.”

He then plugs Lux (well, it was in his contract) then continues:

“You do not need to be beautiful. Marie Dressler and Wally Beery never won beauty contests. If you are beautiful don’t be misled into thinking that is all that is required to get into movies. The ranks of Hollywood’s unemployed are full of those with nothing but beauty. I’ve tested at least 100,000 young men and women for the screen…of these only 17 made the grade. Among them are Jean Parker, Robert Taylor, Irene Hervey, Martha Sleeper, Mary Carlisle, Robert Young, Betty Furness, Michael Whalen and Virginia Bruce.”

He ends by apologizing if his advice has been overly negative but adds, “We always need talent. Your chance will come when you are ready and only then. Good luck”

And with that the hopes and dreams of thousands of aspiring stars where forever crushed. The cries of “What, you mean it involves hard work!?” were at that moment heard throughout America and the collective youth of 1936 heaved a resigned sigh and went back to reading the stories about how Kay Francis wears her hats in Photoplay.

It's interesting to think of how many actual stars in 1936 fitted the description given. I doubt John Barrymore or Errol Flynn had healthy bodies that responded to their bidding. And as for being well versed in the arts, well...

So if you think you’ve got the qualifications to make in mid ‘30s Hollywood and have a time machine handy, be sure to read these words, and for goodness sake make sure you pack some Lux!

Happy Birthday William Powell!

2010-07-29T16:17:00.000-07:00

I’ve always found William Powell to be hugely entertaining to watch, with a screen persona that matched elegance, wit and sophistication with a self-effacing and genial charm. I realize that he is still very popular with the classic movie crowd but it’s such a shame that he has not been remembered as much by the media and general public. Of course, the Thin Man films have had an enduring appeal and for him probably amount to the closest to cinematic immortality that he is likely to get, but there is really so much more to his career than just Nick and Nora.

I have to admit, much to my eternal shame, that I haven’t seen any of his silent films. I can’t comment on him as a silent actor though he had obviously established himself as a fairly big star by the time sound was introduced. Like Ronald Colman, it’s a testament to his immediate success in sound that his silent triumphs have been virtually forgotten but Powell had a voice that perfectly matched his persona and he seems to have taken to the new technology straight away.

It’s really his Paramount and Warner Brothers films that I find most rewarding to watch. Here, his screen character is a shade darker and more serious and he shows his ability to he a compelling and confident leading man. This, combined with his criminally overlooked partnership with Kay Francis (six films in total) set him out as a heavyweight star of dramas and romances. And if anyone out there hasn’t seen One Way Passage, stop what you are doing and go and watch it NOW! Beg, borrow and steal to get hold of it because it needs to be seen!

Of course, the eventual move to MGM propelled him into the upper echelon of stars and resulted in one of the best screen partnerships in film history so it’s not like it was a step down. The Powell-Loy partnership really is cinematic gold and one of the reasons why I’m proud to be a fan of classic movies. Regardless of entertainment value they also show Powell’s range and amazing gift for light (and sometimes quite bizarre) comedy.

Unfortunately I find that his late ‘30s and ‘40s films without Loy lack a certain ‘something’. Often it’s the fault of the film itself (the uninspiring Crossroads for example) and other times it’s due to his co-star merely being a Myrna Loy surrogate because she wasn’t available for the film (The Ex-Mrs. Bradford take a bow). Despite this I must admit to a fondness for Mr Peabody and the Mermaid and its threadbare charm and heartily recommend it.

In the end, though teaming with Loy was a great career move, it ultimately worked out better for her. She continued to be a star in her own right whereas Powell started to become defined primarily by the partnership and the character he developed with her. Their films may well be cinematic gold but they started to limit his career and the types of roles given to him. Of course, another explanation for his career lull could be the unfortunate death of Jean Harlow and his own later health problems. However, on the whole he has a filmography to be proud of, and unlike a lot of his contemporaries, he knew when to quit and managed to go out on top and in a dignified manner.

However, the best thing about William Powell is the emotions he evokes. He’s one of those stars that always bring a smile to my face and for whom I like so many others, hold real affection for. There’s something very genuine in him and his performances, a real and infectious sense of fun and enjoyment. As I find myself saying all too often, he is one of those stars that make it look all so effortless and easy, but this just shows what a huge talent he was. Like all great film stars, besides being a good actor he represents an ideal and an aspiration, and to me he represents warmth, sophistication and good humour (as well as tuxedos, cocktails and crime solving but that goes without saying). In fact, most importantly he represents everything I enjoy about Hollywood films in the 1930s.

Lux Radio Theater - The All-American Beauty Team 1917-1937

2010-07-23T15:52:00.000-07:00

I’ve recently been preparing an article on the Lux Radio Theater, the long running radio anthology that ran from 1934 to 1955 hosted for much of the run by Cecil B. DeMille. Specifically I’ve been listening to a lot of the early episodes (the ones available anyway) and recently came across an interesting piece of Hollywood fluff from the opening episode of the 1937/38 season, their adaptation of A Star is Born. As was usual on the show, Cecil B.DeMille would interview all manner of Hollywood insiders and back stagers on life in the movie colony, as a way of breaking up the drama into commercial friendly segments. As a result, all manner of people are interviewed: glove makers, talent scouts, continuity experts, historical researchers and gossip columnists to name a few.

On this particular episode, DeMille interviews John LeRoy Johnston, the managing editor of Hollywood and Screen Book magazines. On a side note, these were apparently on the cheaper end of the magazine market and indulged in all manner of gossip and fabrication, and it’s quite surprising that they get a free plug on the show. Anyway, Mr Johnston decides to talk about his views on beauty and “the most beautiful women in motion pictures in twenty years (sic)”.

He decides to list his all time favourites and when asked his basis and criteria for the list he replies,

The typical American conception of beauty, by this I mean normal, charming finely chiseled features, clear expressive eyes, intelligence, poise, well…to be honest, loveliness.

DeMille asks him what is best, the “old fashioned type of yesteryear or the athletic type of today?” He answers,

I don’t think the American ideal of beauty has or will ever change. I think every man admires the lovely dainty feminine woman. If she’s truly beautiful she’ll look beautiful in crinoline or slacks.

He then goes on to name his most beautiful women of the screen from 1917 to 1937, the “All American Team”. And without further ado, and in mostly chronological order, here they are...

Alice Joyce

Corinne Griffith

Clara Kimball Young

Billie Dove

Mary Nolan

Joan Crawford

Janet Gaynor

Jeanette MacDonald

Dolores Del Rio

Norma Shearer

Madeleine Carroll

After that he names his 2nd Team as: Anne Harding, Carole Lombard, Joan Bennett, Anita Louise, Madge Bellamy, Virginia Bruce, Mary Astor, Gloria Stuart, Olivia de Havilland, Mary Brian and Marla Shelton.

Obviously the 2nd team is full of then-current actresses and is interesting in itself, (I had to look up Marla Shelton as I’d never heard of her) but the 1st team is a pretty fair survey of the previous twenty years from a guy close to the business. Perhaps the only person who perhaps shouldn’t normally be on the list is Janet Gaynor, not for a lack of beauty, but only because she was the star of the night’s play and Johnston probably felt she had to be on the list to avoid her losing face. Either that or it's an awfully lucky coincidence.

It’s also an interesting list based on the ideals of beauty at the time, notably with DeMille’s mention of the current “athletic” look. At the time, and throughout the Lux show, they seem to be taking great pains to convince the listener that the stars of the day are fit and healthy, as they constantly detail the exercise regime every star has to go through daily. It comes across as one of many efforts to legitimize movie acting, and to attempt to convince people that Hollywood is no longer "Sin City". Johnston’s description of the American ideal of feminine beauty is also vaguely amusing, as the way he mentions clear eyes and poise he could as well be judging at a dog show…

The list is also notable for who it misses out, but ultimately it’s one man’s opinion, and a brave one at that. Predictably Cecil B.DeMille wouldn’t be drawn as to his opinions of the choices, and personally I think I’ll keep most of mine to myself too...

Hold 'Em Jail (1932) - Wheeler and Woolsey Beat The Marx Brothers at Their Own Game (Almost)

2010-07-15T16:06:00.001-07:00

I’m unashamedly becoming an enormous fan of Wheeler and Woolsey and I’m finding that in watching their films in order they seem to just get better and better. Of course, I know that the Hays Code and studio apathy towards comedy eventually ends their run of good pictures but with Hold ‘Em Jail, their eleventh feature together, one can see a comedy double act at the height of their powers. Of course, for a lot of people the main point of interest is in the contribution of writer S. J. Perelman, one of the Marx Brothers most lauded scriptwriters. In this case the interest lies in the similarity between elements of this film, and Perelman’s previous effort, the Marx Brothers’ Horse Feathers. Both pictures concern college football and end with a climactic, gag filled football match. Without knowing the background to the writing of the two films, the similarity is odd and suggests either a startling coincidence or an even more startling lack of ideas. Whatever the reason, the Wheeler and Woolsey version, whilst not as well known, certainly pulls its weight in the comedy stakes and in some ways *whisper* is the funnier of the two films.

Hold ‘Em Jail manages to poke fun at two different genres, the football picture and the prison picture, and by combining them does so in a rather unique way. The film is set in probably the world’s most incompetently run prison, which also happens to have the worst prison football team. The warden is being laughed at by the other wardens and risks being thrown out of the prison football league if he loses the upcoming derby (he also stands to lose all his money due to a bet he’s put on). In a desperate measure he hires a mobster to recruit for “the old alma mater”. The substitution of a college for a prison is a clever one as it highlights the lack of difference between the two. The football game is more important than running the prison as indeed the game is always more important than academic achievement of a college. The “recruit at all costs” idea also gives the plot a lot more comic mileage as career criminals are convinced to get arrested “just for the football season”.

Of course, the satire takes a back seat to our stars, the irrepressible Wheeler and Woolsey. The pair play a couple of joke salesmen who get framed for a hold up and then, once in prison get mistaken for star football players. Along the way we get the familiar romantic pairings, (Bert Wheeler gets the young pretty girl, Robert Woolsey hooks up with the Margaret Dumont substitute) fast talking, lowbrow gags and the knockabout humour which regularly made up the successful Wheeler and Woolsey formula. However, where Hold ‘Em Jail really shines is in its excellent casting and in its polished script.

A fantastic cast is assembled for the film, full of familiar faces and comedy veterans, but perhaps the most inspired casting is of Edgar Kennedy as the prison warden. The film even opens with a variation of the famous Kennedy slow burn and throughout the film he positively sizzles with pent up frustration and rage. His first scene with Wheeler and Woolsey, in which they try to sell him novelties (they shower him with confetti, horns, balloons and lock him in a Chinese finger puzzle) is a breathtaking set piece of back and forth talking and constant subtle comic business. Such is the pace that I can’t imagine how long they spent rehearsing the scene but the end result looks utterly natural and smooth with each performer making the other two really work to keep up the pace. Kennedy really holds the picture together in his scenes and it reminded me how good he was as a straight man who could react against others to get his own laughs (a very difficult skill). It’s in scenes like this that the S.J. Perelman influence can really be seen, especially in Robert Woolsey’s cigar smoking wise guy routine (even down to his seduction of a frumpy older woman). Although this had been established as his character in most of the previous films, he is especially Groucho-like in this film, though in this case he manages to stamp his own personality on the familiar situations.

Speaking of frumpy older women, if you can’t get Margaret Dumont, the next best choice has to be Edna Mae Oliver, in her third film with the double act and clearly having a great time. She plays Kennedy’s sister who constantly feigns a prim and proper exterior, only to reveal her slightly more liberal and cheeky ways at the drop of a hat. It’s a really clever and assured performance from her and she wrings every bit of innuendo out of her comic exchanges, showing great chemistry with Woolsey. Memorably she declares that she learnt to sing after “I spent four years in Paris, though of course I’m not virtuoso”. Woolsey fires back, “Not after four years in Paris, no”. With a raise of the eyebrow she stops playing the piano and responds, “I trust we’re both talking about the same thing?”

The rest of the cast is just as well chosen, with appearances from Roscoe Ates, Robert Armstrong, Warren Hymer and comedy veterans Stanley Blystone, Monty Banks, Monte Collins and the ever-wonderful Charlie Hall. The only disappointing member of the cast is a very young Betty Grable as the love interest for Bert Wheeler. While she is fine in the role and does very well, it’s really the part traditionally taken by Dorothy Lee in these pictures and a Wheeler and Woolsey film without her just doesn’t feel right.

Along the way there is lots of very silly comedy. After all, audiences did not expect sophistication from this team. There is a brilliant bit of business where the boys try to get Roscoe Ates’ ball and chain removed by sticking his leg in a fire. As his whole leg goes up in flames, Ates sheepishly notes, “I think my foot is burning”. Wheeler looks at it and replies, “Yes, looks like it is…it’s burning” There’s a long pause while the three men vacantly stare at the burning leg. This vein of absurd humour showcases itself well in the climactic football match at the end of the film. While it’s not as polished as the similar game from Horse Feathers, it certainly has a knockabout charm and at times looks positively under rehearsed. They do all the usual stuff like running the wrong way, physical pile ups (puny Wheeler getting crushed by the burly opposing team), using decoys and hiding the ball, all to good comic effect, though you have to wonder what the response from the public would be, with Hold ‘Em Jail being released only a month after Horse Feathers.

However, some nice gags are dug up in between, such as an amusing scene where Wheeler’s pants get ripped off while running away, leading to some embarrassed looks (and Edna May Oliver remarking “I didn’t know football was so interesting!”) as a towel is put up while he changes. Generally Bert Wheeler’s physical skills make the whole football sequence worthwhile as he clowns and pantomimes his way through the final reel and its rough and ready climax. His staggering towards the line to score the winning touchdown is just so over the top and stupid that you can’t help but cheer as he somehow manages to win the game for his team. Whereas the Marx Brothers try to subvert the rules of football, Wheeler and Woolsey are just lucky to survive, such is their lack of smarts. Remember, no highbrow stuff here.

While the dialogue generally isn’t as pre-code and racy as in some of their previous films, the writing in Hold ‘Em Jail is particularly sharp and Wheeler and Woolsey carry it off with impeccable quick fire timing worthy of the Marx Brothers at their best. The confidence and exuberance shown in this film and the few before it show a team that is really getting into its stride. Wheeler and Woolsey aren’t the most likeable comedy team in film history, but they exude the brash Depression era spirit that makes us root for them. No team in film comedy is so much of their own time, these are two guys cut from the same cloth as Joan Blondell, Glenda Farrell and all their Warner Brothers ilk.

Of course, Horse Feathers is undoubtedly the better film, but Hold ‘Em Jail is by far the more enjoyable of the two. Whether S.J. Perelman used some of his left over ideas for the script remains a mystery to me, but it seems, whatever his eventual contribution to the script that Hold Em Jail, unshackled by high expectations rewards in a far more carefree and endearing manner.

Parachute Jumper (1933) - Not Enough Parachute Jumping and Not Enough Bette Davis

2010-07-01T17:21:00.000-07:00

“She’s got a southern accent like I’ve got a southern accent”

Just like Sunset Blvd decided to stick the knife into the corpse of Queen Kelly, almost as if to thumb its nose at a relic of a bygone age (and in full view of an uncomfortable Erich von Stroheim), so too did Parachute Jumper receive a posthumous kicking almost thirty years later in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? As a result, and perhaps a little out of embarrassment, Bette Davis would for years mention how awful the movie and her performance in it were. I really didn’t know what to expect when I finally saw it, and although it’s actually a pretty decent movie, it turns out that the 30s producer character in Baby Jane was right about the accent but very wrong about the acting and the film.

Sadly, Bette Davis doesn’t really have a whole lot to do in the picture, as the story really belongs to Douglas Fairbanks Jr. He’s surprisingly good here, and does everything right but I always feel with him that no matter how respectable his career was, that possibly more than anyone in Hollywood he’s just someone who can’t escape the shadow of his last name. He’s always charming and never less than competent but he’s just not the larger than life character that you expect from the name Fairbanks.

Anyway, the story concerns Fairbanks and his pal Frank McHugh who are a pair of ex Marines looking for work in the Depression. They find a friend in Bette Davis and quickly decide to set up home with her for reasons not entirely explained or plausible. From there Fairbanks does whatever he can to earn money, becoming a parachute jumper (to justify the incredibly bland title), a chauffeur, a bodyguard and eventually a smuggler. That’s really it for the plot, but the fun comes from the colourful details as the film gallops through its breakneck running time of just over an hour. The film positively reeks of the Depression, with numerous episodes devoted to the survive-at-all-costs attitude, combined with some rather salacious pre-code fun.

Fairbanks shows quite a loose and playful acting style from the outset as he firstly staggers around drunk in a cantina (the tongue in cheek opening shot is of a rumba-ing bottom which pans out to show Doug cavorting with a dancing senorita while supposedly on duty with the Marines) then later while getting dressed in his apartment (he shares clothes with McHugh to save money) mincing around using a camp showgirl voice complete with exaggerated hand gestures (“Say listen dearie…”). It’s certainly not the image one expects from him but it’s so disarming and...unusual that he just about pulls it off.

Enter Bette Davis and her southern accent that veers from Dixieland drawl to Mae West impersonation then occasionally just reverts to her regular accent. Well, at least she tries. Doug and Bette bond over stealing from the local diner, then in the most heinous action I’ve ever seen in a movie, they steal a fish right from the mouth of a poor starving kitty cat. The confused little thing just blankly meows as if in shock then licks the sidewalk as if to convince itself that it will eat tonight, and it will feed it's poor starving kittens. Our heroes walk away laughing smugly to themselves. Animal cruelty is fun, isn’t it? No Mr Fairbanks, no it's not.

They move in together after just meeting, though in a platonic sense – she can do the cooking and housework for him. However, on the first night Doug walks into her room in the middle of the night, the cad. When Davis kicks him out he apologises with “It’s not going to happen again, at least not while I’m sober”. She replies, “Well, I’ll take a chance”. Either things were really bad during the Depression or she’s very easily convinced. Similarly, all Doug has to do to get his first job as a…(wait for it) parachute jumper, is tell the pilots that he has some experience in flying. That is it, no questions asked and before you know it he’s flinging himself out of a biplane and onto the tracks of an oncoming train. Again, either people were really gullible in the 30s or the Depression really thinned out the talent pool.

After this, the whole parachute jumper angle is dropped and we get to the real plot (you’d almost think that they had some footage of someone jumping out of a plane and they couldn’t find the right film to put in) where Fairbanks is hired by socialite Claire Dodd to be her chauffeur. His interview is hilarious as Dodd, who almost steals the picture channels the spirit of Lady Chatterley as she sees what he’s made of. Basically the interview consists of Doug taking his jacket off as Dodd feels his muscles and remarks “You seem to be a very well built young man!” You’re hired!

Later she turns on the charm again after he delivers her home. After noting that he’s earned himself a drink she notes that he’s “not just an ordinary chauffeur” and that the job will include “considerable night work”. Finally, in case we didn’t understand what she was getting at she mentions that her previous chauffeurs were all Frenchmen because they are “more versatile”. And just how much were you paying?

After such pre code hi jinks the film reverts to a kind of dull smuggling plot that is only enlivened by the revelation that Fairbanks and McHugh were not smuggling alcohol across the border but dope! Just due to its relative rarity as a plot devise, the admission that the bad guy is a drug baron is pretty shocking. Leo Carrillo (later to achieve a kind of immortality playing Pancho in The Cisco Kid on TV and in numerous other westerns) plays the villain of the piece with a smooth menace. He’s particularly good in an early scene when he kicks out Claire Dodd (shouting “don’t come back you bag!”) and later when he hires Bette Davis (yes, the writers find something for her to do) to be his stenographer. In the scene used to show how awful Baby Jane was as a juvenile lead, Davis doesn’t do too badly, using her not inconsiderable feminine wiles to get the job. It goes to show that context is everything, just like when they show clips of silent films in adverts for laughs. In it’s place it’s a pretty good scene. Twenty-nine years later in another film, it looks a little ropey.

After some thrilling aerial stunt scenes, and a possibly quite raucous gag where Frank McHugh gives the finger to a passing motorist (I watched the scene over a few times and he seems to raise his index finger but we’re clearly meant to thing it’s his middle one) we to get the final scene where Fairbanks runs through an office block looking for Davis, saying “I’m going to go through this building like a dose of…” before being cut off by the closing of the elevator door. He runs from office to office, barging in on a number of scenes, one of which involves a rather fey man taking notes. Doug puts on his showgirl voice again and briefly camps it up to apologise in an unexpected piece of 30s homophobia. In the end we never find out what office Davis was in, as he snatches her away from something unimportant (like you know, getting a job in the poverty stricken Depression) so that they can go back to his life of kissing predatory socialites, the hilarity of petty theft, being vaguely homophobic and getting enjoyment from watching animals starve to death. Life is fun if you are a parachute jumper!

When it comes down to it Parachute Jumper is a grubby little slice of life on the street level of the early 30s. I wouldn’t say Douglas Fairbanks Jr is charming as the hero but he’s certainly got some nerve and goes all out in the role. It’s a shame that Bette Davis wasn’t used better but, wobbly accent aside she does some good work when given screen time. However, I’d say that Parachute Jumper must rate with Lawyer Man as one of the most generic titles that Warners ever came up with. Yes, it’s technically correct but really, with a title like that I would expect…well, some more parachute jumping for a start.

Hot Saturday (1932) - Cary Grant Needs to Work on his Cary Grant-ness...

2010-06-27T16:06:00.000-07:00

For years, Cary Grant was my favourite film star and one of the idols of my formative years. I watched all his movies that appeared on television and feverishly read any biographies I could get my hands on. After a while the new films to watch dried up so I rested him for a few years and moved on in other directions. Recently I’ve returned to him, filled all the gaps in my collection and then watched a number of his films only to find that…well it’s not the same. For reasons that I haven’t yet fully understood, I’m not enjoying his movies as much as I used to and most of the ones I’ve viewed lately, whether they were good films or bad have left me a little disappointed by his performance (for the record these films have been When You’re in Love, Kiss Them for Me, Wedding Present, I’m No Angel, Only Angels Have Wings, Holiday and Indiscreet). While Cary Grant is still the benchmark in my life when it comes to sartorial elegance and gentlemanly conduct, I’m finding that there’s just something missing when I watch my former favourite on the screen. He’s just not matching my memories from when I was younger. What’s wrong with me, am I ill?

Which brings me to Hot Saturday, currently the earliest performance of Cary Grant that I’ve seen (actually I’ve watched Singapore Sue but that doesn’t really count). Though top billed, he’s not really the star as that honour belongs to Nancy Carroll. She plays Ruth Brock, a pretty girl in the sleepy small town of Marysville who regularly has to fight off the attention of the bored young men at the bank where she works. She meets local playboy Romer Sheffield (Grant) who invites everyone down to his house for a party, the ‘Hot Saturday’ of the title. From there we get the usual melodrama of love affairs and misunderstandings with the main message being the petty-mindedness of small town gossips as Ruth becomes a scarlet woman due to her carefree attitudes. There’s quite a lot to talk about in the film (short version: Nancy Carroll does a ridiculous Lillian Gish impression, lots of underwear on show gratuitously, Randolph Scott undressing an unconscious woman in a cave and a hilarious turn from Grady Sutton) but just this once I’m going to ignore all that and talk about one aspect, the aforementioned Mr. Grant.

Cary Grant’s character in Hot Saturday is interesting as not only is it his first leading role but possibly his first excursion playing the “Cary Grant” character that he would go on to perfect, both on and off screen. Here he hasn’t quite figured out the formula. As Sheffield he is charming and romantic but with an altogether harder heart. For example, at the start of the film he pulls up outside the bank with his current girlfriend, who is promptly dispatched with once Nancy Carroll becomes the new object of his affections (complete with monetary pay off). When he asks his servant if she has left a message for him, the reply is “..she said you can go to h...the devil”. Sheffield is obviously a worldly-wise character with a long line of female conquests to his name.

You get the feeling with Grant in this picture that he is still finding his way in this sort of role, still piecing together his screen alter ego. At his party he’s decked out in boating whites and blazer, and walks around with an almost Gatsbyesque air of bored detachment (everybody is enjoying the food and drink except him). When trying to woo Nancy Carroll the words sound lovely but the delivery is hesitant and at times empty. He also has that strangely toothy and feminine smile that he only seems to have in early portrait pictures. It’s almost as if he hasn’t even grown into his face either. He’s not helped by a lack of close ups and some bad continuity throughout the film as he sports a healthy and deep tan in some scenes, only to have the white pancake makeup on in the next. It’s an altogether stuttering start for the local lothario.

Despite these teething troubles, his character certainly shows the suave arrogance of a true cad to match his detachment. After trying his best pick up lines on Carroll at the party, he emerges hand in hand with her in full view of her current beau as if to highlight that he is used to women falling into his lap regardless of their existing relationships. Later in the film when Carroll appears at his house late at night we find the young playboy lounging about on his porch in his smoking jacket. He seems unsurprised to see her and admits that when he saw her he knew he had to have her. When Carroll talks marriage he replies “Marriage…ownership...dreadful thought isn’t it?” He has the casual attitude of a bored playboy who is used to living his life the way he wants and used to getting what he wants, and usually through money. This is scripted without a trace of emptiness on his part - up to this point money has bought him happiness. Though it’s early days, this embryonic version of the ‘Cary Grant’ character is with hindsight quite troubling. After all, Cary Grant without a heart, without a sense of compromise, without the ability to be ridiculous and self depreciating is, well…you can fill in the name of your least favourite leading man if you want to be cruel.

Luckily by the final reel Cary has a sudden change of heart and starts to really look a bit more familiar to our modern eyes. When informed that Nancy Carroll is due to marry longtime friend Randolph Scott he accepts the news with disappointment but also grace and gallantry (and all while impeccably dressed in a tuxedo). It’s an unexpected admission for a man who gets everything he wants that he has lost for the first time in his life. However, this in turn leads to the frankly unbelievable ending where Carroll decides to run off with Grant and get married. Yes, faced with scandal and ruin, she sides with the home wrecking cad. Worse still, he goes along with it - what happened to all that dreadful ownership stuff?

Hot Saturday is interesting for what could have been had this character emerged as the template for Cary Grant’s screen persona. Though his character had a somewhat ambiguous morality, I can’t say I enjoyed his performance and I wouldn’t say that it is in any way a star making turn, though these days it’s impossible to put yourself in the shoes of a viewer seeing Cary Grant for the first time. I’m afraid that for me the movie continued the run of under whelming performances by Grant. What’s interesting is that the suave playboy he portrays in Hot Saturday certainly lacks ‘something’, with his empty words and arrogance. Of course, that ‘something’ is the special magic that Cary Grant eventually brought to his roles as a star, that unique charm that made him stand out from the crowd and made him my favourite actor for so many years. It’s strange watching him in the process of finding that magic and seeing him misjudge a few steps on his way to creating one of the most enduring and popular characters in film history. I guess I’ll have to find a way to reconnect with Cary Grant with the next film I watch…

Girls About Town (1931) - Kay Francis and Lilyan Tashman Check Their Morals at the Door

2010-06-21T16:41:00.001-07:00

Girls About Town is one of those pre code films that deal with a somewhat undefined sense of morality. The girls in question are Kay Francis and Lilyan Tashman, and the town is well, any town though strangely they spend a lot of the film on a boat. The two stars play a couple of gold diggers who spend each night taking out wealthy businessmen to show them a good time on the town. For giving the men this service they get well paid by the mysterious “Jerry”, their agent of sorts (well that’s a polite word for it). Unsurprisingly this set up is never called into question, and “Jerry”, if indeed that is his real name, manages to sleep well at night, his conscience untroubled. The two girls live together in their plush apartment on the money they earn for their “services” and the “gifts” they procure from the various middle aged men they have wrapped round their little fingers. They sleep during the day, go out at night in their finest clothes, party the night away, only to return early the next morning to bed for the cycle to begin again. Of course this being the 1930s the question of sex is never mentioned, and in this case never even hinted at, but their lifestyle was certainly something that wasn’t going make the Catholic Legion of Decency too happy.

The basic theme of the movie is how far you can take the gold digger lifestyle and whether it truly buys you happiness. Of the two girls Marie (Tashman) is more concerned with wealth and what she can get from people, but Wanda (Francis) is beginning to have doubts and wants to settle down. From there we get the usual twists and turns of melodrama, action and comedy with a fairly sharp script from silent film star and soon to be successful producer Raymond Griffith.

The film, directed by George Cukor begins at a breakneck speed with a clever title sequence that has the stars’ names in neon lights over city scenes of buildings, bright lights and merriment. We then get a dizzying montage of the girls taking out some clients, with fast cuts to the faces as the girls pretend to look interested and the men get more and more drunk, while champagne bottles pop their corks over the picture. As far as setting a scene and getting you straight into the story and its characters it’s about as effective as you will ever see and highlights the great economy of script and scene used in the films of this era (the film itself is a snappy 69 minutes). After this a tracking shot of the girls’ bedroom showing the effects of the night before brings the action up to date. I’ve never been a huge fan of Cukor but it’s an impressive start.

The girls get the call from Jerry and go to a boat for their next assignment, entertaining a businessman and his assistant, played by Eugene Pallette and Joel McCrea respectively. From here Tashman pairs up with Pallette to milk him of his money and Francis falls in love with McCrea. Although the film starts promisingly, it soon starts to get a bit patchy, mostly because it doesn’t know whether it’s a light comedy or a full blown Kay Francis style melodrama. Both are good in their own way, but sandwiched here side by side they don’t quite add up.

On the comedy side we get Lilyan Tashman’s exploits as she tries to get practical joker (and skinflint) Pallette to part with his money and jewels. Eugene Pallette is particularly good as the annoying prankster (and since this is the earliest of his films I’ve seen is considerably thinner and less raspy throated than I’m used to) who regales everyone with stories of the awful jokes he’s pulled, especially savouring the poor woman who “got such a surprise she fell and hit her head on a chair”. Tashman goes all out to get the money, eventually involving his wife, a bit of blackmail and a sort of happy ending. This plot line possibly could have supported the movie on its own with plenty opportunities for Tashman to swindle the money and get one over on the stingy businessman.

However, we also have the Kay Francis storyline to deal with. Kay looks wonderful throughout the film, positively glowing with glamour (though as usual perhaps just a little too much eye make up). Her story involves her love affair with Joel McCrea (who really doesn’t do much to stand out in this movie) and the sudden revelation that “I haven’t lived the prettiest life in the world” and that shock! she’s already married! and that shock! her husband is also married! This bigamy (and subsequent blackmail) sub plot just comes out of nowhere and isn’t in the least bit convincing. However, it is introduced in a very subtle and clever manner. Kay phones her estranged husband, and as they talk we slowly see a woman’s leg in the background hanging off the edge of a bed. After the call the brief conversation between the two lets the viewer in on the secret shame. The sad thing is that Kay levels this announcement on poor Joel while at the zoo. They had been happily poking the rather circus like cages full of sad looking bears and monkeys, and he had even bought her a nice balloon, before getting slapped in the teeth with the “but I’m married!” speech. The moral: never go on a date with Kay Francis. you'll buy her a balloon and this is how it will end.

So the trick of the film is to draw these two plots together and sadly it just doesn’t quite work. The other problem with the film is that of Lilyan Tashman. While she is undoubtedly very good and very funny in the movie, she is seen only in contrast to Kay Francis’ gold digger with a heart character. It’s almost as if she has decided to harden her character to differentiate herself and the result is at times too severe. Even though she helps get a marriage back together at the end, she is still too mercenary (and unrepentant) to be wholly sympathetic. Perhaps it’s her face, which is better suited to portraying frosty other women or society dames (as she did wonderfully in The Marriage Playground). An actress like Glenda Farrell would have been more suitable for the role and able to bring some more warmth to a funny but potentially unlikable character. However it’s only a minor quibble as Tashman, regardless of how she plays the role is full of energy and her contribution to the film is far more interesting than the drippy melodrama of the Kay Francis story.

That said Kay Francis is also excellent in her role. She seems most at ease with the comedy and gives the impression (at least at the start) of being a happy and carefree girl about town, resplendent in shiny gowns and fur coats. As expected the bigamy subplot all works out in the end and we get our usual pre code cop out on any truly scandalous behaviour. What is worth mentioning however is the film’s one real pre code moment where, fresh from a dip in the sea Miss Francis proceeds to do a scene with McCrea in her soaking wet and completely see through white top. I was actually shocked that they left the scene in and didn’t think to cover her up, for her own modesty as much as anything. I guess it helped to sell tickets, in fact I’m sure it did.

Essentially the film is all good clean fun under the pretense of being a bit risqué. It’s unusual that these sorts of morally dubious female characters frequently haunt films of the pre code era, and more so that their lifestyles are usually held up to be something to aspire to or at least sympathize with. The popularity of the “gold digger” character shows that the audiences of the Depression wanted to see women claw their way up the rungs of society by using their sex appeal and street smarts to their advantage. Whether it’s exploitative or empowering is difficult to say but the sheer style of the string of actresses who played these characters at least makes it entertaining and palatable regardless of morality and after 1934 it would quite a while before women would get to enjoy themselves as much on screen.

Girls About Town is an interesting and engaging movie that nonetheless leaves the viewer uneasy as to where their sympathies should lie. Should we applaud Lilyan Tashman’s character for living the high life and getting what she can out of others with no guilt or remorse? Or, as Kay Francis notes as she tries to seduce an unwilling Joel McCrea, is it all okay if it’s only pretend? The movie is certainly amusing and full of life but the hard edge of the girls’ essential selfishness left much of the film and its characters in a moral fog. Of course this in itself is quite refreshing as there is little outright moralizing (other than that of the sanctity of marriage) but the tone just doesn’t fit the action. And what’s more, we never did find out who Jerry was or why he’s not been arrested because I'm sure what he's doing is illegal…

Errol Flynn - Underneath the Iceberg

2010-06-20T15:59:00.000-07:00

Another day, another birthday and this time the occasion is for Errol Flynn, born 101 years today. To me, Errol Flynn remains one of the most fascinating characters to populate Hollywood in its Golden Age not just because of his contribution to the cinema but due to his uncanny ability to live life to its fullest. Yet acting was just one of the many strings to his bow, and you only need to read a biography of the man to realize that there was a lot, lot more to him than the cinematic on and off screen Casanova of modern legend.

Two things happened to make me interested in Errol Flynn. Firstly I read his autobiography “My Wicked, Wicked Ways”. The second thing was that I found out it was ghost written and was mostly a pack of lies.The fact that I had been hoodwinked brought on a compulsive need to find out more. Since then, it seems that every new biography of Flynn that comes out has a new angle or opinion on his life. Was he a Nazi spy? Was he bisexual? Was he a drug addict? It shows that even today, Errol’s extraordinary story still continues to fascinate and confound and I could guarantee that wherever he is, Flynn is having a jolly good laugh at it all. (As an aside, Myrna Loy said of the Nazi allegations, “My God! He was never sober long enough” )

To me his appeal lies in the mass of contradictions that marked his personality and deeds. Writer Earl Conrad, who ghost wrote Flynn’s autobiography and who wrote a memoir of his time with the star sums up the different versions of Errol Flynn thus:

“the philosophically curious man, the frustrated writer, the congenial seeker after monogamy who could live only promiscuously, …a wanderer over seas and lands…, a seeker after elemental meanings that have eluded the whole of mankind as well as himself, a man tormented with the acquisition of the wrong image, a figure of human contradiction whose thoughts and acts were caricatures of caricature itself”

He paints Errol Flynn as a Quixotic figure, endlessly seeking and wandering, partly tortured by life but always railing against his creator. In the end he decides that the best word to describe Flynn is “elemental”. This is an appropriate description as there is something in his worldliness that is almost wild and untamed that sets him apart from this contemporaries in Hollywood, as if he knew that it wasn't really his home and that for him it was just a means to an end. Also there certainly seems a great deal of depth behind the man, and he did indeed grow to loathe the public image he had created for himself, preferring to be sailing on his boat and near to his beloved ocean. There is also a contradiction between his need to take something as far as he could, be it alcohol consumption, drug taking or womanising and a loneliness that could only be satiated by returning to the sea and its exploration, free from the trappings of hedonism.

However, the side of Flynn I find most interesting is his contrary sense of fun, his need to point out the absurdities of life, to upend the social order and to offend all that is good and self satisfied. Flynn seemed to have a compulsion to bend society’s rules, to laugh at life and death,not really to bring about any change but rather just for the hell of it, as if to stave off boredom. For most of his life he adopted the question mark as his personal symbol, a potent reminder to him not only of his mission to constantly reach out and ask more of life but also of the uncertainty of existence and the need to understand his own actions.

This brief sketch leaves out a lot of the fascinating minor moments of his life such as his two novels, his journalism, his lost plays, his time in repertory theater in Northampton, his sojourn to the Spanish Civil War which ended up with him fighting for both sides, his astonishing drug and alcohol intake, his real and imaginary links to the Nazis and his exploits as an amateur scientist and oceanographer. With all the colour of his life it’s amazing that he felt he had to embellish it with made up incidents. What’s even more amazing is that you don’t even have to talk about his career as an actor to find him compulsively interesting. Earl Conrad said of him “ the first half of the twentieth century was lived by him perhaps as wholly and completely as by anyone”. Well, in terms of enjoying yourself I think that’s true, and luckily when he died in 1959 Frank Sinatra was there to take on his mantle…

I think my favourite Flynn story is when he got involved in the Cuban revolution. He arrived there to lend a hand with Castro’s side not really due to any deep seated political leanings (though he did sympathize with the revolution and the people’s plight to a degree) but in a desperate race to find Fidel Castro and get his picture taken with him before fellow Cuban darling Ernest Hemingway (he managed it to his endless glee). This demonstrates Flynn's talent for finding the absurd in the ordinary, for playing the trickster, a person of no sides, or both sides depending on his whim. Due to his unique philosophy and his unique individuality he made the world a far, far more interesting place. Oh, and he made some movies too.

Stan Laurel - 120 Years Young!

2010-06-16T14:58:00.000-07:00

Today marks the occasion of the 120th anniversary of Stan Laurel's birth. It's strange that we've got to a point in time that most of the stars I grew up with on television are now passing out of living memory (and also fading away from our television screens). Sadly, when anniversaries start getting beyond a hundred years they really become part of history rather than culture. I remember the big celebration for Stan's 100th anniversary (and also for Chaplin, Lloyd, Keaton etc), but now that milestone looks to have been the final party for the cinema pioneers. When the final veteran of the Somme died recently people mourned not just the man, but the final passing of an era into history. Perhaps we should have done the same for Anita Page? Time marches on...

Anyway, I just wanted to mention Stan because he's basically the reason I'm here writing this. His films didn't just get me into classic movies, they got me into movies. Because of this, I've always gone through life assuming that everyone likes Laurel and Hardy, and though I've found that increasingly not to be the case (and honestly it's something I struggle to understand in other people), any one of their films can instantly lighten my mood and make me laugh without fail no matter how many times I've seen it.

Of course, Stan is nothing without Ollie and vise versa, but on his own Stan Laurel's creative drive and control over the making of his films has always inspired me. I honestly think that there was no one working in Hollywood in the Golden Age who understood instinctively the mechanics of how comic situations worked than Laurel. Keaton was close, but he cared too much about the big picture. Stan's attention was to the tiny details and that instantly made his humour more real and more human. You only have to watch any of his later pictures where he had no creative control to see how badly his unique mind was missed. He had no ambition to be a great auteur, just to come up with funny and unusual situations for Laurel and Hardy to battle against. You can see this attention to details in everything he does and it's one of the reasons why his films are so endearingly popular.

Anyway, I've no intention to go on about his virtues as a performer as I think they go without saying. At the end of the day if I hadn't been exposed to Laurel and Hardy at an early age I doubt I would have grown up to have an appreciation for all things "classic", be they films, records, or books. It was the starting block that shaped all my tastes and opinions. Without Laurel and Hardy, I may have got there in the end but things would have worked out in an entirely different and possibly alien way. I might be a Chaplin fan! Perish the thought...*shudder*

Nope, it all started with Stan. A genius, a gentleman and my hero since childhood. My life would have been infinitely poorer without him.

Champagne for Caesar (1950) - Ronald Colman, Drunken Parrots and Phonecalls from Einstein

2010-06-15T15:02:00.000-07:00

In 1948 Ronald Colman won the Academy Award for Best Actor for the previous year’s A Double Life. His performance as the tortured Shakespearean actor Anthony John was a triumph that rounded off a superlative career as a consistently popular, well loved and highly regarded actor. After winning the Oscar (and the Golden Globe), Colman seemed in no hurry to follow it up, instead concentrating mostly on radio work. In fact, it wasn’t until 1950 that he made his next film, the very funny but nonetheless lightweight Champagne for Caesar. I don’t know enough about his personal life to know exactly what he did in the intervening three years, or indeed why he waited so long to follow up A Double Life, but I’ve always found it odd that this was the vehicle he chose, especially since it proved to be his final role as a leading man. After Champagne for Caesar, he only made a further two screen appearances, firstly a wonderfully symbolic cameo in Around the World in Eighty Days and finally as the top billed performer in the all star mess that is The Story of Mankind.

The basic premise of Champagne for Caesar didn’t seem too promising at first: a satire of television quiz shows where a polymath tries to bankrupt the quiz sponsor as revenge for not giving him a job. It’s a plot that seemed a bit dated and forced and given the film’s reputation as a bit average my expectations were a somewhat low. Though a Ronald Colman performance is never less than entertaining, the film seemed in retrospect to be an afterthought to a career that had already reached its happy ending. In fact, I would suspect that many critics tend to overlook Colman’s final screen moments for precisely this reason, like a retired Hall of Fame sportsman coming back for one last ill-advised season.

In the movie, Colman plays the unfortunately named Beauregard Bottomley, the man who “knows everything except how to make money”. What’s immediately impressive is that Colman makes this know-it-all character so likeable and sympathetic, never once letting his vast intelligence turn into something that would alienate the viewer. Even when chastising characters on their lack of education, he’s never less than charming in his use of his expressions, gestures and of course his soothing voice. How can you not trust the owner of that voice? This likeability factor is one of the hallmarks of Ronald Colman's screen persona, and one that ensured that he remained a firm favourite of audiences for decades despite changes in fashions and film stars.

The film starts off rather oddly, with a purposefully irrelevant opening scene and constant jaunty comedy music that sounds like the linking music on a radio show where someone is going shopping somewhere busy. This combined with the silly character name makes one fear that the words “zany” and “madcap” may be needed to describe the action. Luckily after a shaky start establishing the character, things pick up as Colman attempts to get a job at a soap company run by none other than Vincent Price (with an office designed by Jean Cocteau by the looks of it).

Vincent Price is laugh out loud funny in this film, a real revelation. At this point in his career he had outgrown the secondary dramatic leads of his youth but was yet to find his niche in horror and surprisingly here displays an as yet largely unseen talent for comedy. It is strange watching him with hindsight because his performance is exactly what you would expect from the Price of the Corman era and beyond with over the top exclamations and scenery chewing, except it’s happening in 1950. He starts off the proceedings by enthusing about his new idea, a soap for teeth then decides to not hire Colman because “I loathe humor, and you are humorous”. Finally he promptly disappears off into a trance mid conversation to visit the astral plane. By later standards of his performance, it's a restrained debut.

Our hero sees that the soap company sponsors a television quiz show and is horrified by the lack of education needed to win a prize, saying (with scary prescience) “If it is noteworthy and rewarding to know that 2 and 2 make 4 to the accompaniment of deafening applause and prizes, then 2 and 2 making 4 will become the top level of learning.” I think he safely managed to predict the future, and not just in game shows. Though it’s really only a small part of the film, the satirical point being made about prime time entertainment's lack of intellectual value on television is something that is even more relevant today. Nevertheless, the point isn't heavily laboured, possibly lest the audience felt they were being accused of anything. It does however let the movie industry have a well-aimed dig at the young upstart that was beginning to eat into its profits.

Without giving away the whole plot, our genius takes on the sponsor in a double your money quiz show and keeps going until he stands to win the net worth of the company. Along the way, Vincent Price devises more and more elaborate ways to sabotage his progress, including hiring a femme fatale (played by Celeste Holm) to cloud his judgement with thoughts of love. As the story picks up so do the laughs, especially from Colman and Price who work wonderfully together. Ronald Colman’s understated, gentle way of delivering his lines (even though they include some quite cruel put downs) only serves to up the tempo of Vincent Price’s theatrics. There’s a very funny scene where Colman is at the soap factory and bending over a large vat of soap. Price sees this and then suddenly a devil appears on his shoulder. Without missing a beat he says to his evil side “I’m way ahead of you” (sadly he is stopped by an unexplained indoor flash of lightning!). As the drama of the final quiz question unfolds, Price is hilarious as he cackles maniacally when he thinks he is winning, only to do a ridiculous double take before collapsing into a heap due to an outrageous last minute intervention from none other than Albert Einstein (just watch the film, it makes sense, trust me).

Of course it’s a clichéd formula, as we wait for the hero to answer the final question to get his revenge on the evil (and loopy) executive, but it really works. Naturally there are some twists along the way but I don’t want to spoil them for anyone. And predictably there is a happy ending as everyone pairs up, even Vincent Price who finds out that Colman’s alcoholic parrot (one of the more bizarre sub-plots involves Colman's search for the man who introduced the bird to booze) was his roommate and drinking buddy at college!

It's difficult to put into words how good Ronald Colman is in this film because he’s really no different from the wonderful, charming, graceful character he plays in all his pictures. The main criticism leveled at Colman is usually that he’s too mannered, or too perfect in his delivery, but if anyone in movie history had a real twinkle in his eye and just consistently projected an air of honest integrity, it’s him. In a way, Ronald Colman is not so important for his performances but for what he represents, but that’s an argument for another day. In Champagne for Caesar he looks like he could do this sort of film in his sleep, and although I overuse the term "effortless" for actors of this era, it really does look that way. Of course in reality the opposite is true as he works very hard to judge his performance of, on paper, a possibly unlikeable character and make it rather endearing.

Of the rest of the cast, the standout is Celeste Holm as the Mata Hari hired to woo Colman and throw him off his game. For a largely treacherous character (mainly due to the fact that she is pitted against such a sympathetic man in Colman) she is a constantly smiling, effervescent presence. She plays the femme fatal with gusto (and given her character’s name, Flame O’Neill, she had better!) and the script gives her plenty of opportunity to milk the situational back stabbing and wooing. In a way she’s perfectly cast, looking vulnerable yet glamorous (and always smiling!) though in the end when she recants her evil ways I didn’t quite buy it – I think she looked like she was enjoying being bad a bit too much. Interestingly, though billed second, she doesn't actually turn up until about 50 minutes into the film, but she certainly makes an impact once she arrives.

Other cast members are variable. Barbara Britton is excellent as Colman’s prim sister though unfortunately doesn’t get much to do other than engage in an unlikely romance with Art Linkletter as the obnoxious quiz show host. He’s good as the host (and I’d be worried if he wasn’t given his background) but is a bit of a dud when shoehorned into the romantic sub plot. Britton does get to call him “the forerunner of intellectual destruction in America” which was pretty funny. The only other casting of note is that of Mel Blanc as the parrot (the Caesar of the title), pretty much reprising his role from Jack Benny’s radio show.

All in all there is a lot to enjoy from Champagne for Caesar. Sure, it’s no Oscar winner, but it’s sharp, clever and expertly performed. I honestly don’t know why it’s not more highly regarded, especially amongst Vincent Price fans as he steals the film and establishes himself perhaps for the first time as a master of the ridiculous. However, when it came to the star my fears were for naught and it can safely sit proud in the Colman canon. It’s a film that doesn’t take anything away from his previous award winning performance and gives Colman the opportunity to play the affable and suave character he is associated with one last time. In fact, with Ronald Colman moving more and more into radio and television in the 1950’s, a clever satire of these mediums seems an appropriate taster to his new (and ultimately very successful) career.

Happy Birthday Priscilla Lane!

2010-06-12T17:15:00.000-07:00

I thought I’d make a quick mention of Priscilla Lane on the occasion of the anniversary of her birth. When I first got into classic movies she was one of my early favourites, and while I haven’t watched one of her movies in a while, nor managed to come across any of the ones I’ve yet to see, I still have fond memories of her. She always struck me as someone who could have achieved a lot more with the right studio or directorial support but who nonetheless gave her best in all the (usually second rate) roles she was given.

During her comparatively brief career (1937 – 1948 with 22 screen appearances) she starred alongside Cary Grant, Humphrey Bogart, James Cagney and John Garfield and worked with directors such as Alfred Hitchcock, Michael Curtiz, Raoul Walsh and Frank Capra. That’s a pretty impressive resume and for most people that would guarantee at least some recognition but sadly these days she’s been relegated to the list of contract actresses who were there just to make up the numbers.

Part of this is obviously because of the sudden end to her career. It seems, like Kay Francis she got on the wrong side of Jack Warner and lo and behold, the decent roles suddenly dried up. Personally, I’ve always thought that her good looks, particularly her girl next door wholesomeness held her back from the roles that weren’t marked “junior lead”. Sometimes she looks like she was born to be the sappy love interest for the nominal lead in an Abbott and Costello picture. She just looks like one of those pretty girls whose sub plot gets in the way of what everyone actually paid money to see (does anyone ever pay attention or care in the slightest about these parts in comedy films?). Anyway, she has that unique wartime “Forces Sweetheart” look that belied her real ability and range as an actress.

Despite not having watched one of her movies in a while, her charm, sparkle and gift for light comedy made a lasting impression on me. When she’s in a picture with something for her to do she’s very good, such as in the excellent Dust Be My Destiny with John Garfield or Blues in the Night with Jack Carson. However, in pictures where she’s really just there as the “Generic Female Lead” she more than holds her own with the likes of Bogart, Benny and Cagney. Though I haven’t seen it in many years I remember particularly enjoying her in the early Bogart obscurity Men are Such Fools. It’s not a great movie but she really brings a bit of life to an otherwise dull (and slightly odd) film. In fact that’s generally what she did throughout her career.

Though most people agree that Arsenic and Old Lace with Cary Grant is her best role (and ironically her last major film appearance), I was never too fond of it (both the film and her part in it). Perhaps I was overpowered by everything else going on, and reading the recent reviews tells me it’s possibly worth another look. Strangely enough, I’ve been disappointed by Cary Grant in the few of his films I’ve watched lately and my once favourite star has seen his stock drop quite a bit, so now perhaps is the time to give the film another go and view it through less star struck eyes.

All in all, Priscilla Lane isn’t the most memorable actress in the galaxy of stars but I always found her to exceed expectations. Her good looks let you think that she’s going to make little impression but she always does something, a look, an eye role, a smile that draws you in and makes you realize that there is a great deal of subtlety and talent behind the make up. As I said, her look was perhaps what held her back, but with a suitably interested director I think a lot of depth could have been coaxed out of her. Apparently Hitchcock wasn’t too pleased with her casting in Saboteur so the opportunity to dig beneath her surface was largely lost there. If only she had stayed around a little longer as I think she would have fitted in perfectly in the era of film noir. It would have been an opportunity to put her good looks and wholesome charm to use while concealing all sorts of sinister thoughts and deeds!

She was one of the first stars I started to follow, and writing this has put me in a mind to go and watch one of her films again. For anyone who feels like celebrating her birthday I’d recommend Dust Be My Destiny because she worked so well with John Garfield. I’ve never been disappointed by any of her performances that I’ve seen, and I can’t say that about too many other film stars. Happy Birthday Miss Lane!

Lawyer Man (1932) - William Powell Goes to Court, Joan Blondell Throws Stuff Around...

2010-06-07T14:25:00.000-07:00

I had been looking forward to watching Lawyer Man for a long, long time. The reason? Because it features the one time only teaming of two of my tip-top favourite screen stars, William Powell and Joan Blondell. Successful screen partnerships are always a tricky business. On paper, having two favourite stars together always looks like an exciting proposition, but in reality a number of factors can enable the venture to fizzle away into 90 minutes of forced love scenes and passionless kisses (think Errol Flynn and Bette Davis). A good script helps, as does a capable director and supporting artistes, but when it comes down to it you either have chemistry together or you don't. William Powell had it in spades with Myrna Loy, and before that with Kay Francis. Joan Blondell obviously had it with Dick Powell and also with James Cagney. But put the two of them together and would it work?

To be honest, having just watched Lawyer Man I'm none the wiser.

The movie, directed by William Dieterle is one of those fast paced, star laden Warner pre-code gems that the studio managed to churn out so effortlessly in the early 30's. The story concerns the ups and downs of lawyer Anton "Tony" Adam (Powell) as he goes from struggling East Side councillor for the needy to Assistant District Attorney and right back again. In between he gets mixed up with a crooked D.A, a shady doctor and his scheming gold digging gal. The constant in Powell's rise and fall is his no nonsense secretary Olga (Blondell) who acts as his personal organiser and conscience, all the time holding a secret love for her boss.

I've said this before and I'll say it again, in a movie like this the plot is (obviously) necessary but ultimately just window dressing for the stars to do their thing, and here is no different. The story is engaging and brisk, though moving from each new set of situations and characters rather quickly with little time for much characterisation or detail. As it typical of the era, the tone mixes the light with the dark, segueing from broad comedy and pathos to the serious inner workings of the courts and the corruption of City Hall and the racketeers. This backdrop is all standard fare but never less than exciting.

A lot of the fun to be had in Lawyer Man is by spotting the familiar faces in the cast, not all of twhom are listed in the credits. Allen Jenkins and Jack La Rue play a couple of hoodlums lured into the pay of William Powell by the offer of maple layer cake; Claire Dodd once again excels in having dubious morals as the film's bad girl; Roscoe Karns shows up unannounced as a reporter; and Laurel and Hardy fans like myself will spot Tom Kennedy, Wilfred Lucas, Henry Hall, Dorothy Christy and Max Davidson in (sadly) minor roles. Finally, in the pre-code moment of the whole movie Sterling Holloway pops up as a drunk in a bar while poor Joan Blondell mopes around over Powell. As she looks off into middle distance all sad he declares that "you're in love with your boss and he won't give you a tumble". That she doesn't disagree with him is one reason why we all love pre-code films.

However, when it comes down to it this is a William Powell picture. He gets the top (and only) billing on the title card and everyone else is reduced to support (Blondell does get a fairly prominent mention in most of the advertising). As usual he is fantastic, giving an assured performance typical of this pre-Nick Charles period in his career. Powell's films with Warner and Paramount are always good value even though he essentially plays the same character in most of them, as he reigns in his comedic tendencies and and allows himself to be slightly unsympathetic when need be. In this era (before Manhattan Melodrama) he's a real leading man and one who doesn't need a female co-star to help carry a picture. I always felt that as good as he was with Myrna Loy (and he was very good) he always got tagged as a part of a double act once they got established and in all his appearances after The Thin Man producers felt they couldn't put him in a movie without a Loy surrogate. Interestingly Myrna Loy didn't suffer from this as she continued to carry movies whilst slipping back into the Loy-Powell partnership when needed.

As I said, this is Powell's film, so sadly we don't get to see the real potential of a Powell-Blondell partnership as Joan and indeed all the other stars are relegated to mere support. It's strange that Blondell doesn't get more to do as even though she was yet to hit her Gold Diggers of 1933 peak, she still had such popular hits as Blonde Crazy and Miss Pinkerton behind her. It could be argued that she wasn't seen at the level of William Powell at that time as her appearances to this point had been as love interest to stars such as Cagney, or sharing the top slot with other female leads (such as in The Greeks Had a Word for Them). By 1932 she was just beginning to get top billing in a few films and probably this was another step towards establishing herself as a star in her own right.

Despite her lack of screen time with Powell, Joan Blondell makes the most of her scenes. The theme of her relationship with him is the phrase"I told you so!" (so much so that it's the last line of the film) as she arches her eyebrows and screws up her face each time her boss is led astray by another woman or hopeless court case. She acts as the conscience of Powell's character and when she doesn't get her own way has a nice line in slamming doors and throwing files around the office. At one point, when Powell is about to go to lunch with his colleague's sister, Blondell glares at him while menacingly snipping a pair of scissors. What could she be implying?

Of course, regardless of threats she's in love with him. What's unusual about the film is that despite this the love goes unrequited in the end. During the film, Powell is even confronted with her attractiveness when he spots a shapely pair of legs at a shoe shine stand, only to look up and realise they are those of his secretary. In the end, back on the Est Side, the two take a stroll arm in arm, with no final kiss just two friends talking. It's quite disappointing since the film subtly leads up to a romantic conclusion after Powell's bad luck with bad women. It's also quite charming as we can imagine further legal adventures for the pair and perhaps romance now that the boss is listening to his secretary.

In the end, it is Powell's film and the point being made is about the practice of law, not the practise of love. Sadly, because of this the dream pairing of William Powell and Joan Blondell never has the chance to blossom as they are never the focus of the picture. The small hints given of their chemistry show Powell at his suave and subtly humorous best and Blondell doing her trademark pouty looks with added bursts of violence towards stationery and furniture. All in all, they make a sweet couple and given another pairing in a more standard type of vehicle (for example the usual Blondell plot of being the neglected wife of a reporter, detective etc, or of competing with said man in said occupation) they could have been very entertaining. As it is, Lawyer Man is a great film full of memorable moments but sadly only fleeting moments of greatness from two of my favourite stars together.

His First Flame (1927) - Harry Langdon Drops in from Another Planet...

2010-06-01T14:41:00.000-07:00

Poor old Harry Langdon. Forever destined to be the distant 4th in the pantheon of silent comedy immortals. And if that wasn't bad enough, for many his position as 4th clown is really a temporary measure while they wait for critics and historians to trot out their theories and decide who should really be in his place. Who is it this week? Charley Bowers? Lloyd Hamilton? Well, enough of this nonsense, Harry Langdon deserves his spot and created enough of a legacy in silent cinema that his place, while still firmly in 4th is rock solid.

Even then, that's not enough for some people. Despite a string of excellent shorts, some of the most innovative and sophisticated of their time, his legacy all comes down to the involvement of the supposed creative force behind his success, Arthur Ripley and Frank Capra. Without them, the story goes, he was a directionless mannequin lacking in ideas or any real understanding of his own character. This idea took hold due to a couple of situations, the first being that Harry died in 1944 and when the silent revival hit in the early 60's he wasn't around to promote his own work (funnily enough, pretty much every one who is now accepted as an important comedian from that era was). Harry Langdon, like Raymond Griffith, Charley Chase and many others had to wait another few decades before their work was reappraised. Of course, being dead has other disadvantages (other than the obvious one) in that those who worked with you and who are still alive can exaggerate or misappropriate their part in your story. Leo McCarey and Hal Roach tried it after Stan Laurel died, and so did Frank Capra and others when Harry died. Luckily in recent years a backlash to this way of thinking has started and Harry is getting his due as a legitimate creative force under his own talents.

The historical truth to his story is as usual, a mix of both sides. Langdon was a gifted and innovative physical comedian with extensive success in vaudeville who excelled from the minute he set foot on the screen. When Capra and Ripley got involved Langdon had already developed his character (he did that on the vaudeville stage years before he came to Hollywood) and was comfortably ironing out the details. What they did was to add to what he had already created by giving more structure and shading. When they left, from all accounts Langdon's features still did well, though it was felt that his popularity had peaked. In reality though he worked hard he wasn't best suited to being a film auteur and he probably did shoot himself in the foot by trying to do much too soon. Capra would have moved on no matter what his relationship with Langdon was because his talent was taking him different places. Due to his later and much more lasting fame, Capra's time with Langdon was always written as a parable of the student outgrowing the master. When all was said and done, the importance of Capra in Harry Langdon's career has been greatly over stated.

A big problem was that Langdon perhaps came to the party too late. When he debuted in 1924 he was already middle aged and comedy and indeed movies were rapidly growing up, with tastes and fads quickly changing. Rather than having years and years to hone his craft like Chaplin, Lloyd and others, Harry stepped in at the deep end and found that his style of comedy, though cutting edge for a time, rapidly fell out of favour as the world hurtled towards the end of the 20's and the coming of sound. Also it didn't help that he was so unusual that audiences and critics often found it difficult to categorise his work and this lack of universal appeal hurt his box office and reputation, right up to the present day. You find you either like him or you don't, there is rarely a middle ground. However, that he made such an enormous impact in such a small space of time in a busy marketplace showed an undeniable talent as a comedian.

Another downfall for Langdon's brand of humour, and this applies to Stan Laurel as well, was the move away from shorts and into features. Despite it being an economic necessity Laurel was always uncomfortable with features, feeling that Laurel and Hardy's humour was ideally suited to short bursts. Despite all the excellent feature films the pair made, even at 60 minutes there was frequently an element of padding in a Laurel and Hardy film (A Chump at Oxford's indeterminable maze scene comes to mind). Laurel settled on a four reel film as the perfect length if he had to go into features (although ironically he only made one 4 reeler in the end) and Langdon, in His First Flame (originally a five reel film, though currently running at 44 minutes in the most complete version) shows that this logic is sound. Though slightly padded, it consistently gets laughs and never outstays its welcome.

His First Flame was Langdon's first attempt at a feature film, originally filmed and due for release in 1925. However, due to his leaving Sennett and setting up his own production company with First National, the film was held back and not released until 1927. As a result audiences saw it as his fourth feature and thus it was seen as a step down from its predecessors and had a mixed reception. The plot concerns Harry trying to stay away from girls to please his woman-hating fireman uncle. Throughout various situations and interludes Harry continually lets the uncle down until saving a girl from a burning building and getting a happy ending. By this time his uncle has changed his mind about women so Harry at last finds love. The plot really doesn't matter in these sort of comedies as the focus is always on the minute details of comic business involving the star as they wander from one situation to the next.

Make no mistake, His First Flame is not a masterpiece but it is a very, very funny film filled with the sort of inventive subtlety expected of Langdon in his prime. The best moments involve some of the key themes in Langdon's work, those of Harry's passive, non reactive nature and of the blurring of the lines of gender and perception. The first key scene happens when Harry meets a woman who he recognises, who happens to be a shoplifter. He walks towards her, hand outstretched. On the run from the police she runs in his direction. Friendship turns to fear and Harry starts running away, chased through the streets by the woman. From this simple and typical Langdon role reversal, he takes it one step further when he thinks he has lost her. Safe, he stands looking blankly at the camera as she suddenly hits him on the head. Langdon then does his patented standing lean (a la Michael Jackson), to the right, then the left before falling over. The woman switches clothes with him and escapes leaving Harry in her frock and hat (with a flower poking out the top). He staggers about with a goofy grin on his face as he tries to hitch a lift to the fire station. What is very unusual about Langdon in drag is firstly that it happens a lot, but more importantly that despite being dressed as a woman he makes absolutely no attempt to act feminine. To add to the confusion, everyone around him treats him as if he is a real woman, despite the obvious evidence to the contrary (he gets picked up by a driver only to eventually be thrown out the car). It makes for a rather odd situation, with a staple of comedy not being milked for all the obvious gags. Langdon's reversal of convention and minimalist underplaying of the situation just adds to the audience confusion.

Similarly, the other key scene involves Harry's frequent inability to distinguish the real from the unreal, the material from the immaterial. Later in the film he tries to rescue a girl from a burning building in an uncharacteristic burst of bravery and energy. Unfortunately the girl is in fact a wooden shop dummy. To heighten the gag, the dummy's limbs are positioned in the most unrealistic manner and it has a ridiculous wig on, but in the real moment of genius, in full view of the audience is a large price tag hanging from its neck. Harry carefully lowers the dummy down the ladder then stops half way to tell her that she's going to be alright. Then, to stretch the bizarre situation further he has a sort of tender moment face to face with the dummy. For a moment he acts hurt that his words get no response from her before the penny slowly drops and the veil of unreality lifts. He then ditches the dummy and scampers down the ladder. To end the sequence, as he leaves he notices the dummy's skirt has come up and he bashfully pulls it down for her. As if in response, the propped up mannequin moves suddenly and Harry runs away in abject terror. The sequence highlights how Langdon often played on awkwardly uncomfortable incongruities to demonstrate his ability to collapse boundaries between the real and unreal worlds. He then continues to push each situation as far as it can go, and sometimes further, to highlight his otherness in a way that would leave his audience bewildered and unsure what to think. There was literally no one doing comedy like this in 1925 but sadly audiences grew impatient with his approach and he was left to plow his field alone.

Having watched pretty much all the surviving Langdon shorts he made at Sennett (1924 - 1927), as presented on Facets' indispensable and awe inspiring box set Harry Langdon: Lost and Found, I have to say that it's an amazing body of work and in terms of short films certainly better overall than Harold Lloyd's (though to be fair Lloyd had given up on shorts before Langdon had even started). There is always an element of debate regarding silent comedians as to which ones seem the most "modern" to current audiences. Traditionally Buster Keaton always wins the argument with his stoic pioneer spirit coming up against the trials of modern life in his rather detached way. Lloyd is modern in so much as his films depict the modern world that he lived in and his character displays an admirable drive and determination. Personally Chaplin always fails in modernity for me, despite the universal ideals of The Tramp, due to eternally being stuck in that early 20th century world of poor houses and flower girls that even D. W. Griffith eventually gave up on. Langdon, on the other hand isn't modern. He's from the future.

The mere idea of a passive central comedian is one worthy of genius, but for Langdon to play him as a character who is completely oblivious to the world around him to the point of frequently looking as if he has wandered into the wrong film is the icing on the cake. Much has been made of Langdon's childlike innocence and dopey boy in a man's body behaviour, but it's really the blank look that gives him his edge. The round face, the slowly blinking eyes and blank stare is the look of Andy Kaufman fifty years later confusing audiences with his foreign man character (in fact Langdon's minimal approach to his stage comedy apparently got the same reactions in vaudeville). It's this confusion, both for the audience and for Harry that is most startling about his art. He's like an animal awakening from hibernation, unaware of how to control his extremities, looking at everything as if it's the first time he's ever seen them and unsure what is real. Mere normal objects become threatening monsters that could explode and a pretty girl's smile the most frightening thing in the world. And despite the confusion, Harry just looks, and looks, then blinks. Then frequently the moment will pass and his goldfish memory sets back to zero and he remembers to be scared of everything all over again, so then runs away. Then he runs back. Then he runs away again.

This disarming confusion, the passive apathy, the blinking face, the odd wave, the inexplicable juxtapositions and the frankly bizarre approach to female impersonation is what splits audiences over Harry Langdon today, as he did in the twenties but which makes me think that we're just not ready for him yet.

Happy Birthday Bob Hope !

2010-05-29T16:59:00.000-07:00

Recently I was at a Q and A with living legend and modern deity Bruce Campbell for the screening of his film My Name is Bruce and I decided to ask him a question. After seeing the film (which I really enjoyed) I asked him if he was a fan of Bob Hope, since I thought that at times he was positively channeling him in his role of an exaggerated version of himself. Bruce's answer was " You mean the young Bob Hope, not that guy who played golf with Reagan?". I qualified the question and said that I meant the former and he added "Oh yeah, I love all those ham actors".

It struck me that it was a very interesting reaction to my simple question. A lot of people like Bob Hope but there is a degree of uneasiness about Hope due to his later Republican years, the guy who went to Vietnam and who campaigned for Reagan and Bush Senior. Personally I don't care about his politics or personal views, Bob Hope makes me laugh and that's all that I bother about.

The other problem with Hope is the issue of his reliance on writers. Recently in Britain there was a show chronicling the 100 greatest stand up comedians "of all time", as voted by some spurious online poll. Bob Hope came 50th but all the talking heads they used for his segment on the show talked about how awful he was because he didn't write his own material. It's such a stupid argument though sadly it is a common one. I've found myself on more than one occasion having to argue the merits of Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby to popular musical history to people who think they have no value based on the same criteria. If you have the modern mindset of thinking that being an auteur makes you somehow more important (thanks for that Bob Dylan) than those with the talent of interpretation then basically we'll have to agree to disagree. When it comes down to it, Hope was one of the sharpest gag tellers of all time and whether he wrote his own material is or not is pretty much irrelevant in the face of his results.

Basically, I feel a whole lot of negativity against poor Bob Hope these days, which loses sight of the facts of his talents and career. These facts are: 1. He was a fantastic stand up comedian, a really quick witted and natural gag teller with superlative timing. You only have to listen to his radio shows to realise how sharp his delivery was, and if you ever listen to his guest appearances on other radio shows (such as Jack Benny's) you see what a powerful presence he was, he virtually takes over whatever show he guests on. 2. He was a hugely popular film star, in the top ten box office attractions for most of his peak years. He also created numerous movie moments and a distinct screen persona (with or without Bing Crosby) that struck a real chord with film goers stretching over several generations and which provided the basis for people like Woody Allen to launch their own comedy careers. 3. Despite what anyone can say about Bob Hope, and heaven knows, Sam Marx's book tries hard enough, he did more than anyone else in show business for the armed forces. You can say what you like about him but no one spends the better part of fifty Christmases away from home entertaining troops without some real love for what they are doing. Bob Hope dedicated his life to the troops, regardless of the rights or wrongs of each conflict and I think that deserves real respect.

I thought I should outline the above because for many Bob Hope is seen as a reactionary figure these days. Recently I've been watching the Hope in Vietnam DVD box set collecting his TV specials from the duration of the conflict. It's interesting watching the first few gung ho specials as they give way to the later ones where he has to make jokes about the anti-war demonstrations at home and where he sympathises with the GIs who just want it all to end. You can sense that he's playing to a different audience than from the Second World War and that he really doesn't know how to make everyone happy other than to parade a host of bikini clad women out on stage to raise the troops' spirits. The knowledge of that, and the fact that he's trying to bring a little happiness to troops in a difficult situation at Christmas gave me a whole lot more respect for Bob Hope that I had before. However, this loses sight of Hope's real skills as a joke teller, as he manages to make ordinary people laugh and forget their troubles (despite political and geographical problems) mainly due to his pacing and delivery (at one point he gets a big laugh despite reading his cue card wrong!). It's this wandering troubadour spirit, ready for anything that sets Hope apart from his peers.

Personally, I got in to Bob Hope when I watched The Ghost Breakers aged 15. I'd never heard of him but the familiar character of a cowardly braggart really struck a chord with me as a natural coward and I decided that this was a film star that I wanted to follow. In the mid nineties I wrote my first and only film star fan letter to him and got a nice reply from his secretary. I guess by that time it was too late to get a signed picture or personal reply but I'd like to think that the letter was at least passed to him.

I watched Road to Morocco recently and was moved by how young and dynamic he was, and also by how easily his interplay with Crosby came. You get the feeling that the two of them could genially ad lib forever and continue to one up each other with effortless glee. There's a freshness to their conversation that has rarely been seen in pictures before or since. That is the Bob Hope I'd like to remember, though to be honest I find him funny in pretty much all of his appearances. He belongs to that select band of comedians with such perfectly drawn persona that pretty much everything they do is clever and funny.

When it comes down to it, all I'd like to say is that Bob Hope has got me through some tough times and continues to make me laugh regardless of his personal life and political leanings, which make absolutely no difference to me. It's sad but I always feel that these days he suffers in comparison to Jack Benny, who seems more modern and relevant (and by all accounts a nicer person in real life) but to me it's like comparing apples and oranges. They are both extremely funny in their own way and have their own unique styles.

So Happy Birthday Bob Hope, here's to more fun times (and with a bit of luck some DVD releases of you TV shows!). If you feel like putting on a Hope film to celebrate, I'd recommend (leaving out the obvious ones), Casanova's Big Night, My Favorite Brunette and The Ghost Breakers. And if you want to go for a classic you can't go wrong with, it has to be The Cat and the Canary. I'd also recommend any of his radio shows as once you get past the topical references, his interplay with Jerry Colonna is hilarious and you get to see him (especially in the early ones) honing his comic timing to perfection.

I know it's a cliche, but...thanks for the memories Mr Hope.

Law of the Jungle (1942) - Monogram and the Importance of Mantan Moreland

2010-05-20T17:02:00.000-07:00

Watching Law of the Jungle marked two important firsts for me. It was my first Monogram Picture and it was my first exposure to Mantan Moreland (looking back, I doubt this actually the case as I remember regularly watching Charlie Chan films as a kid, but it's certainly my first exposure as an adult). It's odd that it's taken this long to visit the Monogram corner of poverty row as I grew up being as familiar with the Republic logo as those of the major studios. Now, being new to this I have little idea of which films are the best or worst examples of Monogram's output but in this showing they managed to create a fast moving and thoroughly enjoyable adventure comedy. And since their goal wasn't to make Oscar worthy dramas (I believe they would try that later though) but cheap and cheerful double bill fodder for the masses, I think Law of the Jungle works very well.

The plot is the typical matinee mix of thrills, involving a singer stranded in Africa meeting an archaeologist and getting involved with a Nazi plot to create unrest within the local tribes. Add to that a comic sidekick, an unconvincing gorilla, some unexpected characterisation and lots of silly slapstick and you have a winning formula, with the emphasis on formula. Of course, none of this really matters, it's just an excuse for some action, a couple of songs, some knockabout fun and a guy in a flea bitten gorilla suit. Who could resist?

As would be expected from a studio bound jungle picture, the direction by Jean Yarbrough (later to become the producer of Abbott and Costello's TV show) is serviceable and the cast are generally solid. Arline Judge (here ten years removed from her turn in Girl Crazy) brings enough life to her part to keep it interesting though John 'Dusty' King (known mostly for his appearances in westerns) as our leading man is painfully wooden. Some of the supporting cast are quite interesting, with Arthur O'Connell giving an odd, twitchy performance as Judge's shady nightclub boss. He slithers and slopes about in his early scenes like he's trying to bring some hidden depth to an otherwise one dimensional character and as as a result becomes one of the better remembered elements of the film. He would go on to find later success as a character actor in film and television, eventually receiving two Oscar nominations. At this point in his career you can tell he's possibly a tad more 'method' than his co-stars. Also of note is Laurence Criner as the tribal Chief who almost steals the show with his appearance in the last reel of the film, but we'll get to that later.

Of course, if it wasn't for the man billed third, Mantan Moreland, I doubt I'd be writing this review and nor would anyone be interesting in watching this film. Regardless of the thorny issue of race, he simply makes the film worth watching. If his representation of an African American is considered mildly offensive to some then so be it, but the fact of the matter is that we care a whole lot more about him that we do the stiff supposed stars of the picture. He stands out as the only real person we can connect with and share in the adventure with and he brings an element of spontaneity to every scene he is in.

Mantan Moreland specialised in the comedy sidekick, usually playing butlers, manservants, chauffeurs and the other assorted menial jobs that were the only way for black actors in the 30's and 40's to get screen time. He played up the bug eyed, superstitious manservant, constantly afraid for his life. However, to this stock character he added his own impeccable timing and charisma to create a lovable everyman that stole every scene he was in and who always got the upper hand with a zinging one liner. Of course, this sort of act quickly fell out of favour when the growing civil rights movement gained momentum in the 1950's and it's only really now that Moreland and his contemporaries are beginning to be reassessed.

The issue of race is always a difficult subject when watching Hollywood films of the Golden Age as generally, the only representation black actors get is in the stereotypical manservant or housemaid role. Of the films I've watched in the last few years I can only recall a few instances where attempts were made to reverse this trend and portray black characters as real people. Frank Capra's Broadway Bill (1934) has a black stable hand character played by Clarence Muse who at times is almost treated as an equal of star Warner Baxter (and also is shown the true pecking order by him at other times). Despite suffering occasional racial slurs, Muse almost steals the picture, investing dignity and humanity into a character that I'd imagine the script didn't give much to. Another good example is Third Finger, Left Hand (1940) directed by Robert Z. Leonard. In this, Ernest Whitman plays Sam (he's even given a name), a porter on the train the leads (Myrna Loy and Melvyn Douglas) are travelling on who is roped into pretending to be a lawyer for them. Sam, at first speaking in the sort of grammatically incorrect "yassuh!" voice that all black people have to use in these films, drops the accent and reveals that he's been taking correspondence courses in Law and is actually very knowledgeable on the subject. We then see him with spectacles on and law book in hand quoting all sorts of complicated by-laws as he does his job and becomes the catalyst that brings Loy and Douglas together. All this happens in the last ten minutes of the film and is a really pleasant surprise. He even get the last line of the film, as if to highlight his sudden guardian angel role.

Sadly, these examples are the exceptions when it comes to black actors on the screen, though I don't doubt that there are a few more examples out there. Into this social mix with its hard glass ceiling step actors like Mantan Moreland. The frequent criticism of him being a sell out to black people just doesn't stand because without actors like him there would be no black people at all in these films. Where he, and others like Eddie "Rochester" Anderson triumph, is in making the most of the situation and by attempting to overcome their second class status by sheer talent and charisma. Anderson, of course for the most part had the protection of Jack Benny and his writers always giving him the best lines and never putting him in any demeaning situations. Moreland didn't have this protection so using his vaudeville training he just went ahead and stole the show from everyone he starred with.

Given this argument, brief mention needs to be made of the other prominent black actor of the time, Stepin Fetchit, whose particular version of the stereotype character involved making him lazy, slackjawed and backward, every racist film goer's expectation of the average black man. Though he was very successful at his peak, his particular brand if comedy plays quite uncomfortably nowadays and it's frankly difficult to defend other that to say that at least he was making money to feed his family. I'd contend that the likes of Moreland and Anderson have little connection to him in terms of their film legacies. For a start, as stated before Moreland comes out of Law of the Jungle as the most human and most real of all the characters and almost single-handedly saves the film (and I'd imagine many other films) from the doldrums. This is something Monogram clearly understood due to the number of times they used him and the prominent billing they gave him in all his appearances, something possibly no other black actor in Hollywood was regularly getting.

However, Law of the Jungle is by no means a fully integrated non-racial film. Typically of poverty row productions its humour is aimed low and its characters painted in broad strokes. Most interestingly it shows some sort of racial hierarchy as Mantan Moreland constantly swindles the gullible natives and gets them to work for him, thus reversing the position he has with his own master, archaeologist King. The main tribesman is also called Bongo, which tells you everything you need about the depth and subtlety of the characterisation.

The best moment in the film comes at the end, where our three leads (King, Judge and Moreland) have been captured and awaiting some terrible fate at the hands of savage tribesmen. King supposes that they are cannibals to which Mantan makes a crack about how that's bad because everyone loves to eat "dark meat"(it's a low brow line but his delivery was hilarious). The leader of the tribe has a fat, ugly daughter who takes a shine to Mantan for some absurd comic business before they are led off to meet the Chief. In a brilliant twist, the Chief, played by Laurence Criner is college educated and speaks in clipped Ronald Colman -like tones while puffing stoically on his pipe. It further turns out that he belongs to the same Lodge as Mantan in Harlem. This juxtaposition of the educated savage is also used to good effect in, of all places, Old Mother Riley's Jungle Treasure (1951) where all the supposed cannibal tribesman are in actual fact ex-Oxford graduates who spend their time (in full tribal dress) listening to the cricket on the short wave radio. In the end Criner and Moreland catch the Nazis, save the day and between them save the film.

It's a real shame that actors like Mantan Moreland are still criticised for giving a negative portrayal of black people on the screen. All these films have to be seen in their context and with the consensus racial views in place. I feel that often people make too much of it, as Moreland was merely using his comic gifts the only way he knew how. His round, big eyed face lent itself to over the top expressions and his short, portly stature and street wise accent suggest a non violent coward who lives on his quick wits. In the scenes where Moreland freaks out in a dark cave before discovering a giant ape, I couldn't help thinking that his expressions, reactions and mugging could have been replicated, double takes and all by Lou Costello and no one would have batted an eyelid. Okay, so he's playing a manservant character, but he always comes out smiling and gets the best lines. If you asked anyone who saw Law of the Jungle, either at the time or now, who their favourite character was I guarantee that everyone would side with Mantan Moreland, he just has a special charm about him. People of all races and creeds have obstacles stopping them from achieving their potential, and Hollywood was perhaps the hardest place for anyone (black or white) to get noticed, but some way or another talent always finds a way to be seen. Moreland can't be criticised for his performances, rather the criticism needs to be leveled at a system who only made certain types of roles available for him to play. He's simply overachieving in the situation he was given and was and remains a very talented and funny man. Monogram Pictures deserve some credit for realising this and for giving him the opportunity to become one of their most bankable and entertaining stars.

Dangerous Curves (1929) - Clara Bow's New Beginning

2010-05-18T14:47:00.000-07:00

Early sound films, particularly those made in 1929, are always fascinating to watch. Virtually overnight the shockwave of sound sent Hollywood back to the Stone Age, and once the silent films that were already in production were completed and sent out into the world (ironically including some of the greatest pieces of cinema ever created), the real work of getting the big stars ready for their sound debuts begun in earnest. It's almost heartbreaking to see the lyrical, fluid camerawork and complex adult storytelling of films such as The Wind, The Crowd or The Wedding March wiped out in a matter of months for the sake of tinny sound and stilted acting, and all in the name of progress. As a result the language of film and the artistic strides being made were damaged irrevocably and in fact really never recovered, but that's an argument for another day. The fact remains that sound was in and silence was consigned to history, and the stars had to earn their place in Hollywood all over again.

The first few sound films of established silent stars are always the most interesting to watch. Sometimes, such as in Dangerous Curves, you can almost see the fear in their faces. I'd say that pretty much all the major stars survived the test, unless they had impenetrable foreign accent or fell foul of studio politics. Of course, some such as Ronald Colman, Laurel and Hardy and W.C. Fields did so well that it made their silent films an almost forgotten afterthought. With Clara Bow, her success and failure in sound seemed to be mostly out her hands. However, for some reason, silent stars that didn't go onto long and enduring sound careers (like for example Harold Lloyd) are deemed by modern critics to have been failures regardless of the reason for their lack of output and despite their actual critical and financial success at the time.

Clara Bow, by all accounts made a successful transition into sound with her early films receiving good reviews and box office. However, by that time her private life was spiraling out of control and faced with court cases, scandals, debts and near mental and physical collapse, the studios and Hollywood society in general backed off from supporting their former "It" girl and her movies were quickly withdrawn from exhibition, and eventually ended up playing to empty houses. I haven't seen her sound debut, The Wild Party as of yet but consensus opinion states that it was popular but an artistic disaster and that under the supervision of Ernst Lubitsch, the follow up was a vast improvement. Now having seen Dangerous Curves, I'm a bit fearful of watching it's predecessor.

It's not that Dangerous Curves is a bad film as such, it's just that it shows the typical teething pains of an industry finding it's feet once again. The story concerns a circus high wire performer played by Richard Arlen who is in love with fellow performer Kay Francis, while good girl and wannabe tightrope walker Clara Bow looks on. When Arlen falls during a performance after finding out that Kay is two-timing him he retires and it's up to love sick Clara to coax him back and convince him that she's the right one for him. The film is typically short and snappy and the stars generally carry the action but as you find with these early sound films, there are some wayward and at times bizarre moments.

Clara Bow's performance ranges from charismatic and sincere to out and out train wreck. Sound films were a good opportunity for her to emerge as the character she really was, not the character others perceived her to be. Rather than the formulaic flapper, in sound she uses her natural Brooklyn accent to become a fast talking streetwise go-getter with a good heart, a character much better suited to the times and one that stood out amongst the clipped theatrical tones of the many stage actors unaccustomed to sound. However, even with the patronage of Lubitsch, a good script and a fresh screen character, Bow could not escape her fragile health and nerves.

It feels awful to say it but there are times in the film where she just looks a little too overweight for a leading lady. She had always struggled with keeping in shape for the screen but she loses the battle here, and the skimpy circus outfits she has to wear don't help matters much. As well as that, as was common in classic movies of the golden age (Bette Davis I'm looking at you), star actresses frequently played teenage girls well into their thirties and beyond. I thought that she looked far too old to be playing the 17-18 year old character, until I realised that when making the film Clara Bow was only 23. Not good. Clearly the partying , the over-work and the stress had taken it's toll. Added to that, according to on set accounts, Clara developed a bad bout of microphone fear and broke down several times after making repeated mistakes during the particularly wordy scenes. Clearly, she was on the verge of some big problems and her performance in the film veers uncomfortably close to reality at times.

There is one very odd scene where she is sitting talking to Richard Arlen as they rehearse their act in the circus ring. The director, Lothar Mendes who infuriatingly refuses to use close ups at all throughout the film, frames her sitting down from a medium shot in one seemingly continuous take. She sits there really awkwardly in her circus tutu, with her legs at a strange, almost unladylike angle. She then begins her long monologue and continually pauses and stutters, at times visibly looking like she's trying to remember her lines. She also keeps looking up, presumably at the looming microphone above her, and generally looks very nervous and uncomfortable. The scene seems to never end and is just horrible as she trails on indeterminably with her speech. There are moments when time just stands still and and you feel she really is going to burst into tears at any moment.

Thankfully she shows moments of real sparkle in the rest of the film, though ultimately she never really connects fully with the viewer. This is mainly due to the absence of close ups, making it hard for the silent screen veteran to use her trademark expressions to charm the audience. Despite her constant giggling and bouncing about like a love sick teenager she just about wins out, and certainly audiences in 1929 took to her new persona with no questions asked. There's a charming scene where she woos Richard Arlen over coffee where you get the feeling that if she had just held her private life at bay and gotten studio backing (a tall order in reality) that she really could have made her mark in 30's popular cinema.

The rest of the cast fare well, especially Kay Francis in her third film appearance. Kay was just beginning the short-haired villainess phase of her career (for another great example see The Marriage Playground) where she ably played slightly aristocratic "other women" constantly trying to lure the hapless leading man away from their true loves. She's good in this despite the plainly ridiculous premise that she's supposed to be a top high wire performer. Her cultured accent and worldly ways make a good contrast to Clara Bow's love struck teen. Based on her real life, I bet she could have had a great time off set comparing notes on bohemian high living with Miss Bow. Then they could have met up 15 years later to discuss having their careers shortened due to studio politics. In many ways they were very similar, just from different decades.

Previous to this movie the only other Clara Bow sound film I'd seen was the frankly astonishing Call Her Savage, which is without a doubt the most jaw droppingly outrageous pre-code movie I have ever seen. Living up to the retina scarring memory of that little epic was always going to be hard and Dangerous Curves, doesn't reach such giddy heights. However, all in all it's an interesting snapshot of the movie industry adapting to sound. It doesn't live up to its hype (even the "dangerous curves" of the title refer to Richard Arlen's character's career path, not the literal curves of Clara Bow, sadly) but it does show what could have been a new beginning for her as a 'good' girl. Alas, it was not to be and after a few more under promoted films, combined with the pressure of several major court cases and the onset of mental illness she retired from the screen aged only 28. I'd have to say that although it's not a particularly good film, there are still moments when she shines like the Clara Bow of old and you see hints of what made her one of the biggest stars in the world, and personally that's enough for me.

Too Hot to Handle (1938) - The King and Queen of Hollywood Revisited

2010-05-10T15:11:00.000-07:00

When it comes down to it, Myrna Loy is my absolute favourite film star and I have been besotted by her for nigh on twenty years. I remember vividly trying to find out if she was still alive in the early 90's (this was before the internet, kids and up to date information was hard to come by) and literally on the week that I found out that she was alive and living in New York, I opened the local newspaper to find a small article entitled "Perfect Wife Myrna Dies Age 88". Talk about bad timing - always the bridesmaid, never the bride...

Anyway, the film that got me started with her was Too Hot to Handle. I'm not sure why I watched it, I may have been giving Clark Gable a try or it may just have happened to be on one afternoon and sounded good. It's all lost in the mists of time, but I do remember being hugely entertained by the sparkling dialogue between the two stars and in particular by the poise and presence of its female lead, whose exotic sounding name was new to me. The movie zipped by in a screwball blur and I immediately decided that I needed to find out all I could about this Myrna Loy person.

Recently I realised that I had been amassing a substantial library of classic movies but not actually watching many of them, and so have been making an effort to catch up just in case I meet by an untimely demise and on my deathbed regret never having seen The Horn Blows at Midnight (you never know, morphine drips make you think all sorts of things). This has involved watching films that I haven't watched since way back in the day, with sometimes a gap of fifteen years or more. This was one of them and when it's number came up (I'm ashamed to admit it but I pick the films to watch by way of a highly complicated lottery - I have too much time on my hands, sorry), I knew this was going to be interesting due to it being the one that started it all. In my sepia tinted, soft focus memory it outshone all others as a perfect example of star comedy complete with sizzling chemistry and zinging one liners. Like His Girl Friday (another film I haven't seen in about twenty years) and Bringing Up Baby all rolled into one. Or something.

Having watched it again, it's still the great film I remember and hugely entertaining, it's just that the chemistry between Myrna Loy and Clark Gable that I'd remembered just...wasn't there. What was immediately apparent from the start is that although the film was made to capitalise on the Gable-Loy success of Test Pilot, made the same year, is that this one is really all about Clark Gable. Myrna admits as much in her autobiography, saying her role "wasn't much of a part, rather routine". I'm a big admirer of Clark Gable rather than a fan and I have to admit he's just a force of nature in this one. He does action, drama and comedy and sometimes does them all at once, just to show how easy in is for him. He shouts from the top of Hollywood's Mount Olympus at the ant-like lesser stars below, taunting them with his palpable charisma and lust for life. The film made me realise what huge, huge deal he was in his day in a way that I don't think has been matched. If you look up the definition of 'film star (male)' in the dictionary, there should be a big picture of Clark Gable and nothing else other than 'see also: charisma and screen presence'. Faced with this whirlwind of manly activity it's hardly surprising that Myrna finds herself somewhat sidelined. In some scenes she's positively restrained. I've heard the word "bored" bandied around by some critics but I choose not to believe such uncharitable accusations.

However, it starts off promisingly for the pairing as Gable rescues Loy from a burning plane for complicated plot reasons. They argue like cat and dog, doing the characteristic screwball comedy patter of men and women talking in a really fast snappy way that seems to be another lost art these days. For a second Loy is playing the part as Katherine Hepburn or perhaps Joan Blondell would, and the viewer is led to believe that this will be one of those battle of the sexes comedies where the plucky and stubborn woman shows that she's really the equal of any man. Sadly it's not to be and as soon as Myrna is out of her aviator outfit and into a rather stylish hat she adopts a mildly passive pose as Clark Gable and Walter Pidgeon take up the battling and squabbling. Ah, well it wasn't to be. I never believed she was an ace pilot anyway and I don't think she did either.

Throughout the rest of the picture she does her bit but she shows little of the intelligent charm, sly humour and sophistication she's known for, despite a decent script. It's like she decided to let Gable shine in this one, for the good of the picture. If so, it was the right call and shows the instincts of a clever and generous performer. Nevertheless, a toned down Myrna Loy is better than none at all but it's strange how memory plays tricks on you. If she shows little of her established screen persona, I wonder what it was that made her stand out so when I first saw the film? Personally, I think it was all of the above characteristics, and that when I saw more of her films I realised that I hadn't really seen her at her best. and it goes without saying that her looks may have helped a little too. Even though, it's always disappointing when you see a (usually minor) star in a film then find that they are never quite as good in anything else as they were in that first film you saw them in.

So there you have it, Too Hot to Handle fifteen years on. Still a fantastic film with two fabulous stars, but with one of them shining slightly brighter this time around. After all these years I've realised that Gable is great, but Myrna is still my favourite.

Footsteps in the Dark (1941) - Errol Flynn, the Light Comedian

2010-04-26T14:27:00.000-07:00

Errol Flynn has aways interested me. He's such a fascinating, contradictory and almost mythical character and a far better actor than he is ever given credit for, though you get the feeling with him that acting was just one of many sidelines he dived into in the pursuit of adventure. Still, it's always good to see him cast against type and working for his money, and comedy is something well out of his normal range and a genre he rarely got the opportunity to try. Only three of his films could be classed as comedies (and no, that's not counting Cuban Rebel Girls, that's a whole different type of comedy) and apart from the occasional television appearance (I've only seen him on the Colgate Comedy Hour with Abbott and Costello and his appearance was a bit odd to say the least but he looked to be having fun), Errol Flynn the comedian was rarely seen.

Footsteps in the Dark is the last of Errol Flynn's comedies and although in terms of comedic value it's the least of them, it still has some points of interest. Whereas The Perfect Specimen and Four's a Crowd veered into the more traditional vein of screwball and relationship comedy, Footsteps in the Dark was an attempt to put Flynn into the comic murder mystery, the sort of part played so effortlessly by the likes of William Powell or Warner Baxter. It's not quite The Thin Man, as Errol doesn't partner up with his wife (not until the end at any rate) instead it's the more traditional detective story, to the point that he even gets Allen Jenkins as his put upon sidekick. The result is not entirely successful, mainly due to a pedestrian script and workmanlike direction, but what is really interesting is the hints that Flynn gives of having a real talent for that almost lost art - light comedy.

Flynn plays Francis Warren, a rich socialite who lives a dull live with his wife and mother-in-law but who, in secret is a crime novelist and writer of the scandalous book "Footsteps in the Dark" that satirises the spoilt society of which he tires. He also uses his alter ego to hang around with the police and stumbles upon a real murder. Warren has to balance this double life all the while making sure that his family don't find out, by way of more and more elaborate lies while trying to solve the murder. This plot lends itself to some interesting situation which unfortunately frequently lack any real sparkle. If not for the sterling work of the cast, wringing the comedy out of the script by way of gesture and delivery, it would really fall flat.

Luckily there is an excellent cast, including the ever dependable Allen Jenkins, who sadly doesn't get much to do other than perpetually look exasperated, Flynn crony Alan Hale as the chief inspector and the excellent William Frawley as a dim witted detective. Added to the cast are the familiar faces of Roscoe Karns (again under used), Grant Mitchell and Jack La Rue. As Flynn's wife, Brenda Marshall gives a good performance in an under written part. She's particularly good when she starts to become suspicious of her husband's late nights and tries to catch him out. However, for me the scene stealer was Lucile Watson as Flynn's interfering mother-in-law. From her disapproving reactions to her son in law's behaviour to her comic embarrassment upon going to a burlesque show, her antics are hilarious. There is a particularly funny moment when mother and daughter confront Flynn with some difficult questions. Errol starts to stutter as the tirade of accusations start then he suddenly compliments her on her hair. Without missing a beat Watson changes immediately into a pussy cat, flattered at the comment, before a nudge from Brenda Marshall brings her back to the point and the nagging resumes. It's beautifully played and one of the many highlights in the performances of the leads.

However, it's Errol Flynn that gives the most illuminating performance. A large percentage of his time is spent doing one of his most used acting techniques, grinning nervously. however here he has a good reason for doing so an he grins for Tasmania, all the time with eyes that don't match the confidence of his smile. His jittery fumbling coupled with over the top bravado is quite brilliant and really very unexpected. He frequently milks all the laughs out of the domestic circumstances, whether it be creeping into bed late at night or, in one very funny scene, bounding down for breakfast, all smiles, only for his voice to go all high when he tries to speak. He consistently shows great timing with his ticks, mannerisms and frequently raised eyebrows. Added to that he shows ability in physical comedy too, especially in a nightclub scene where he madly dances, spinning round the floor in a ridiculous attempt at a hoe down straight out the Cary Grant book of dignified silliness.

There is also a sub plot involving a burlesque girl who Flynn tries to woo in order to extract some information about the murder. To do this he pretends to be a rich Texas oil baron and employs one of the most half-assed Texas accents this side of Northampton rep. You would think with all his experience in Westerns that he would have picked up the ability to do a better accent but then again, perhaps it's a sly nod to the fact that most of his cowboy parts had to have a line written into the script to explain his cultured Anglo-Australian accent. Despite this there is another interesting scene where Blondie, the showgirl (played by Lee Patrick) tries to kiss him. The look of momentary confusion as she lurches towards him is priceless, as is the increasingly uncomfortable expression as she tries to get closer. Errol Flynn recoiling from a beautiful woman in abject terror? Now, that is acting...

As mentioned before, the film isn't really anything particularly special and sadly it isn't quite the sum of it's parts. What makes it fascinating is that it marks the last time Errol Flynn would be given the opportunity to try comedy. While he lack the lightness of touch of a William Powell, the feeling I get is that he had a real gift for comic timing and with a bit of studio vision could have really excelled in those sorts of roles. I always got the feeling with Errol Flynn that, in many ways like Elvis Presley's film career, he constantly felt short-changed by the sort of roles he was given but despite the private frustration was happy to coast in the typecast parts as they brought him the fame, money and lifestyle he enjoyed. Looking at Footsteps in the Dark in the context of Flynn's filmography, we see it placed right in the middle of his peak years as a War and Western hero, coming after the likes of Santa Fe Trail and Virginia City and before such blockbusters as Dive Bomber and They Died with Their Boots On. Faced with the onset of war, Warner Brothers naturally would have wanted their bankable action hero to be even more typecast to boost morale on the home front.

It's just a real shame, both for Flynn and for the viewer that this sort of film didn't come his way again. He shows real skill in terms of his reactions and mannerisms and quite a flair for the comedy of embarrassment. This subtle form of comedy really played to his strengths and in this viewing at least gave some new insight into his acting abilities as well as the inevitable lost potential. Would Flynn the light comedian have gone down well with his public? Obviously not since it never happened again. Maybe he really was as frustrated with his typecasting as he often admitted to his ghost writer Earl Conrad in his autobiography. Or maybe he didn't really care, did his day in the studio when went out for a drink. With Flynn, who ever knows the truth? I'm not sure even he did.

Girl Crazy (1932) - The Case for Wheeler and Woolsey

2010-04-06T14:43:00.000-07:00

I must confess to being a bit of a fan of Bert Wheeler and Robert Woolsey. Should I say that in hushed tones? (or is that saved for admitting to being a Ritz Brothers fan?). It almost seems like a guilty confession as the pair are frequently derided and the general consensus seems to be that their humour has dated badly. Currently I'm working my way through their pictures in order, and now after the ninth movie, I'm finally getting to see what it was that made them so popular.

In retrospect it's fairly obvious why they haven't had the lasting appeal of their contemporaries. To put in plainly, they are just not in the league of Laurel and Hardy nor the Marx Brothers. They neither have the innocent charm of the former, nor the anarchic bite of the latter. They are a classic case of having a little from column "A" and a little from column "B". History remembers the victors and Wheeler and Woolsey, like that other underrated 30's team, Clark and McCullough were just lost in the shuffle. And Bert Wheeler, like Bobby Clark, would sadly find his partnership cut short before its time.

However, they have been unfairly overlooked. While they may lack the universal appeal, the unbreakable on-screen friendship and the methodically worked out gags of Stan and Ollie, in their best films they more than hold their own. While it's true that a lot of the appeal today of Wheeler and Woolsey is in spotting the frequent occurrences of bawdy pre-code humour, they themselves as performers are far more than their reputation for (sometimes very) thinly veiled innuendo would suggest.

Nine films in, Bert Wheeler emerges as a versatile comic character, all smiles and innocence and easily coerced into Robert Woolsey's fast talking shyster's schemes. It's the sort of relationship that worked so well for Abbott and Costello a decade later, but performed with so much more style (and less violence) than the boorish Bud and Lou. However, ultimately their lack of lasting fame comes down to a lack of a consistent relationship between the two. Though ostensibly a double act, on film they frequently act like two solo performers, playing different characters who often don't meet until part way through the film. What sets Laurel and Hardy apart from practically every other double act in film history is the beautifully observed relationship between the two friends. And without this, no double act no matter how good, is going to last the test of time.

Anyway, as I said, I've been watching the boys sing their way through their early musical appearances in Rio Rita, The Cuckoos and Dixiana and then into their own star series. Both Caught Plastered and Peach-O-Reno were excellent and very amusing, but I found their ninth film, Girl Crazy to be their most satisfying to date (and yes, I know it's not going to last - I've heard their decline is quite painful to watch.Thank you very much Mr Hays.)

Girl Crazy works so well for a number of reasons - It has a sharp script, a plot loosely adapted from a Gershwin musical and a strong ensemble cast. Pulling this together is their frequent director, William A. Seiter a man most comfortable working with experienced comedians. Though Gershwin purists generally dislike this version of the musical, they forget that it is primarily a Wheeler and Woolsey comedy, not a full fledged Gershwin musical (that version would follow in 1943) and as such the few moments of Gershwin exist only to add a touch of class to their vaudevillian antics. However, whether the film is true to its source material is irrelevant as there is a well structured story that lets Wheeler and Woolsey do their characteristic shtick while keeping the various characters and sub plots moving along nicely.

The plot concerns a city slicker (Eddie Quillan) who rolls into a small town in Arizona where he sets up a dude ranch. He needs the skills of gamber Slick (Woolsey) in the casino so Slick hires a taxi (driven by Wheeler) to take him (with wife in tow) from Chicago to Arizona. Once there, Wheeler is unwittingly elected Sheriff not knowing that local heavy Lank (Stanley Fields) has sworn to kill the next man who takes the job. Add to that various love affairs and a couple of songs and hey presto!

Where Girl Crazy really shines however, is in the cast. Eddie Quillan and Arlene Judge do more than enough to engage as the male and female leads, with Quillan using his Sennett and Roach training to liven up proceedings with appropriate physical comedy. The pair even have a nice bit of pre-code dialogue at the start ("I take care of the mails in this section" says mail girl Judge, to which Quillan replies "What, all of them?" - wow did he see her future or what?). Stanley Fields is rather excellent as the classic Western heavy and lends an air of menace and blustering incompetence at the same time. It's a shame he never tied up with Laurel and Hardy as he would have made a great foil for them. There is a great running gag in the film where whenever "The West" is mentioned, all the cowboys take off their hats and stop for a moment of quiet reflection. Shades of Blazing Saddles, perhaps?

Other notables in the cast include Kitty Kelly as Robert Woolsey's equally fast talking wife. Her (and the film's) standout moment is the nightclub scene and her spirited rendition of "I Got Rhythm" (called "I've Got Rhythm" here) where spotlights are spun around the room as the song picks up pace, resulting in a delirious strobe like effect as the camera cuts to dancing cacti in the desert and stuffed deer heads on the wall moving back and forth to the beat. It's a truly jaw dropping scene of 30's exuberance and dizzy thrills.

The other stand out is the delightful Mitzi Green as possibly the only child star in history who acts like a brat without actually being one. She expertly manages to wind up and annoy the other characters precisely because she knows it annoys them. This extra dimension to her character shows her to be a very gifted actor at such a young age. She also does a great dance number and her impressions are pretty good too (especially her verging on the surreal but spot on George Arliss). I recently saw her in the Mary Brian and Kay Francis picture The Marriage Playground (1929) and she was really excellent so I may do a bit of digging and do a short profile of her at some time in the future.

The only downside to the wonderful cast is that the usual third man in the Wheeler and Woolsey act, Dorothy Lee is a bit sidelined and doesn't really have much to do. Sadly, she only made four more appearances with the boys and her slightly wonky charm is missed here.

As for Wheeler and Woolsey themselves, they get to do all the things expected of them that shocked and amused movie audiences so much. Though tame by today's standards, the free and easy nature to their comedies has a remarkably liberating effect, especially compared to the starchy comedy efforts of the subsequent decade. When Fields pokes a gun at Woolsey's behind and he thinks it's Wheeler goosing him, his remark to "Cut out that backgammon business" really takes the viewer by surprise. Though the slang is dated, the fact that there is a gay joke in a 30's light comedy musical is still an unexpected and disarming moment. But of course this is what audiences went to see their films for - the expectation of hearing something that most comedians wouldn't dare say. Everything is fair game and in this film Wheeler and Woolsey run the whole gamut from cross dressing to inebriation to infidelity and more. This run of "what can we get away with this time?" movies reached it's peak with the film So This is Africa, by which time the censors had had enough and the boys were sadly reduced to far tamer material.

Added to all these pre-code shenanigans there are some very well realised routines, from the epic cross country taxi ride and it's police bothering to the hilarious hypnotism routine at the end. Also notable is some great business at the start where taxi driver Wheeler manages to smash his windscreen while cleaning it, then throws the broken glass onto the road. He watches as all the cars burst their tires, all the time pretending to clean an invisible windscreen so no one realises he is to blame. It's a nicely observed bit of Harry Langdonesque comedy and shows Bert Wheeler to be a much under rated physical comedian.

At the end of the day, Wheeler and Woolsey are still and acquired taste, but Girl Crazy is the team really hitting their stride. It's a shame they are almost forgotten today but I suppose they burned out too early. Writer David Quinlan supposes that had Robert Woolsey lived longer, they would have given Abbott and Costello a run for their money in the 40's. I'm not sure if that's true as it seemed hard to get a studio in that decade that was able to make a creative comedy (as Laurel and Hardy found out to their cost). At the end of the day perhaps it's best that they will forever be associated with a particular time and place. They have no peers and should you take the time to get to know them, Wheeler and Woolsey can be funny, entertaining, subversive and shocking. and sometimes all at once. They are not for everybody but for me they are an increasingly welcome visitor on my TV screen.

Pick a Star

2010-04-05T17:01:00.000-07:00

It has occurred to me that a love of the Golden Age of Hollywood at times is a completely separate thing from a love of film as a whole. For me, the focus is different, largely because situations existed in the studio system that no longer exist today, at least in Hollywood anyway. From the early 1920's and the rise of the producer as King, until the whole thing fell apart due to television, a new generation of film educated creators and the end of the long term studio contract, movies were made as part of a collective, conveyor belt process. The studios existed to create dreams and contracted artistes were by and large told what to do. This intense management of resources created a lot of great films, some quite bad films, and a lot of solid, well made films.

The great films went on to become cultural touchstones, and the rest...well they were remembered by the people that saw them then just hung around, waiting to be rediscovered. My point being, if you are a proper student of film, you seek out the best examples of the art form worldwide and go forth to write your thesis and scratch your chin. If you are a student of classic movies, you tend to ignore (or at least take for granted - we all know The Wizard of Oz is good) the classics and head straight for the bargain bin (or at least the blue cross sale). Cary Grant? Yeah, Bringing Up Baby is a stone cold classic, but give me Gambling Ship any day.

For me it's not about auteur directors or method trained actors, nor is it about innovative camera technique and epic cinematography (though theses things all help). It's about stars. It's about a window on a forgotten world. It's about the unexpected thrill of something quite out of the ordinary happening in a very ordinary film. The films I want to watch aren't directed by Hitchcock, Ford or Capra. They are directed by the workhorses of the era, the guys made those conveyor belt films and made damn good ones too. They are the almost (but not) forgotten likes of Archie Mayo, Lloyd Bacon, Ray Enright, Alfred E. Green and Roy Del Ruth. They made the movies that recorded what ordinary people in the 30's saw, felt and loved.

My original point for this was to talk about how I got started watching classic movies, how one star beget another and through six degrees of separation I ended up with the dozen or so favorites that I feel define me and my tastes. As I said earlier, to me, classic movie watching is all about the middle ground. However, while this may apply to the middle ground of directors, it doesn't preclude anyone from following the top end of the star spectrum. Because, really it all comes down to the stars.

I'm not going to rant about the difference between the stars of today and of yesteryear because really, that would be a futile waste of space and it's also like comparing apples and oranges. but what brings me back time and time again to the films of the Golden Age is the cast of big stars, small stars, character actors, bit-parters and all the people in between. And while I tend to shy away from the important directors, I have no such problems with the big stars. However, as previously stated, the middle ground of the filmography is where they all really shine. All those early 30's films with the crackle of energy and the zip of stars finding their way, all done in 65 minutes. It is such a shame that the era nowadays is reduced to a "Greatest Hits" package and that people don't wish to see a film or a star in their proper context. Humphrey Bogart's gangster films are great,but the real fun is in watching him climb up the ranks and cast lists in his early pictures, stealing the show until he becomes a fully fledged star.

You can easily watch a bad film, or a least a pretty dull one, but if your favorite star is in it then it doesn't seem so bad. You can anxiously wait for them to reappear on the screen and the time spent just watching them sometimes turns an average film into what is often generously labelled a "curio". Afterwards, in reflection you then piece together where the movie stands in the career of your favourite, maybe it's not their best (everyone made at least a few duds) but it can help in an overall understanding of why you like them. Personally I'd take countless average movies with their various quirks to the tried and tested, and frequently over-viewed "Greatest Hit". And this applies to most major stars. Do we really need to see Casablanca again?

As they say, the devil is in the detail, and I hope to dig up a few dusty corners of film history in the months to come. Next stop should be a certain love 'em or loathe 'em pre code comedy duo...

Feet First...

2010-03-26T17:08:00.000-07:00

Where do I start? Well, having read some of the excellent blogs currently running I thought that I'd take the plunge and start my own. In theory, a good idea but I'm new to all this so please bear with me while I find my feet. Like many people out there I have a love for movies of the 'Golden Age' and essentially want to use this space to promote and discuss the lesser looked upon corners of cinema history.

It disturbs me that a generation of people have grown up with a lesser appreciation for an ever distant era of film. I grew up in the late seventies and early eighties of a strict diet of Laurel and Hardy and Harold Lloyd, and as I hit my teens I looked around me and found all sorts of wonders to pick from in the television schedules. Looking back I really wish that I had set my VCR to tape 24 hours a day as today all we are left with is the same few titles repeated ad nauseam. As you may or may not have guessed I live in Britain and don't have the benefit of the wonderful TCM. Unfortunately TCM Europe's idea of a classic film begins somewhere in the late 70's and end a few years ago. Heaven forbid they lose viewers by broadcasting in (gasp) black and white...

Well, that's a rant for another day. The point I'm making is that during my formative years I fell in love with all manner of leading ladies, lived vicariously through the leading men, laughed at a plethora of comics, marvelled at the wonders of silent film and basked in the glow of the silver screen. And now, in these difficult times, I cling to them all the tighter.

Hopefully with this blog (if anyone ever reads it) I can discuss whatever comes to mind based on my haphazard viewing schedule, and thus highlight a few films and stars that may be of interest. And perhaps it might be entertaining. Well, that's the plan anyway...

I must stress that I predominately watch films up until the end of the studio system. I kind of lose interest once the 50's roll around. Obviously there are many great movies from that era but they don't quite have the sparkle of a great silent or pre-code film. Also, being as how I'm British, I may stray off the Hollywood path occasionally to look at some home grown talents.

So basically I'm making this up as I go along. Let's see how it works out, shall we?