Skippy (1931) - In Memory of a Dead Dog...

It always surprises me how much child stars remember of their time in the spotlight. I can barely remember a thing about being 8 years old (though to be honest I can barely remember what I did yesterday) yet many child stars would later grow up to write vividly detailed accounts of their formative years. In fact Sybil Jason wrote three volumes of (apparently very entertaining) memoirs based on her brief career in 30s Hollywood. Yet, when I watched Skippy, and more specifically the performance of nine-year-old Jackie Cooper, it was difficult to think of him as anything other than a fully functioning adult in a child’s body. He’s just such a good actor for his age, with an uncanny ability to emote that the only feasible explanation has to be that the best of the child stars are some kind of super race of geniuses wise beyond their years. The reason I mention the matter of memory is that the main claim to fame of Skippy is that it’s the film where director Norman Taurog infamously got Cooper to cry for a scene by pretending to shoot his dog. I guess I’d remember an episode like that but the day-to-day details of life on a studio lot would certainly pass me by at that age.

Ignoring the above digression, Skippy is a pretty fun movie, and this is coming from someone with a general dislike of child stars and their vehicles. The movie was the big-screen adaptation of Percy Crosby’s incredibly popular and influential comic strip and I’d imagine there would have been considerable expectation by the public to see that the character was handled right. Though Percy Crosby himself hated the film, the treatment is about as good as you could ask for with the performance and costume of Jackie Cooper perfectly reflecting the illustrated version. Additionally, the film successfully creates a self-contained world of bright picket fenced houses contrasting with the rickety industrial wasteland of Shantytown, seemingly pulled straight from a printed page. Other than that it’s the sweet tale of middle class boy Skippy and his adventures on the wrong side of the tracks in Shantytown playing with his younger friend Sooky. Though he’s told by his parents to stay away from Shantytown, Skippy enjoys the rough and tumble of life in the run-down area with its good honest poverty and social degradation.

The main plot involves Skippy and Sooky’s attempts to raise $3 to free Sooky’s pet dog from the pound and a certain death. This is perhaps the best part of the film as it highlights so clearly the pains of being a kid. The narrative is told entirely from a child’s point of view, with its underage cast and where the adults are sidelined to the role of the distant yet understanding parent or the vindictive authority figure. Skippy’s friends are portrayed as the sort of easily recognisable black and white archetypes that can only be experienced by a child. From the innocent Sooky, the irritating and bossy Eloise to the show-off Sidney and the local bully Harley, they are all simple characters populating the society of childhood that anyone of any age can understand and recognise.

The heartbreaking saga of the impounded dog and the enormity of raising the $3 are deftly played by the cast and director. Skippy and Sooky do a number of chores to raise the astronomical sum only to find out that (spoilers) the poor pooch has already been disposed of by the uncaring dog catcher. Jackie Cooper beautifully plays what could easily turn into a saccharine display of pathos as he cries at the news whilst glowering with impotent rage at the injustice of the act and the lack of power he commands as a lowly child. The following scene finds him moping at home, unable to summon the energy to even take a telling off from his father, utterly destroyed by the news (and it wasn’t even his dog!). The whole scenario is so expertly played by Cooper, who makes the viewer feel the powerlessness of childhood acutely on his behalf. It’s a powerhouse performance that makes the eventual happy ending all the more sweet, with an air-punchingly good dénouement where Skippy’s father finally understands what his son has been going through and takes action to set it right. Despite this, it’s Cooper that makes you feel the emotions of the film, and it’s Cooper that effortlessly invokes the feeling of being a kid. Considering his youth, the fact he can do this in a naturalistic manner can only be answered by my previous super genius theory. There really is no other explanation!

While Jackie Cooper holds the picture together, many other members of the young cast lend able and very entertaining support. In the role of Sooky is Robert Coogan, the younger brother of Jackie Coogan who at the tender age of seven is the youngest of the leads. In comparison to Cooper he’s awful, but his lack of ability works wonderfully well with the naïve character he’s given. He has such a lost look on his face, as if he has to concentrate really hard to remember his lines, and his regular fluffs are quite charming, as is a brief scene where he falls over mid sentence and everyone carries on regardless. He made me think of Jacquie Lyn in Laurel and Hardy’s Pack Up Your Troubles and the scene where she has to read Stan a bedtime story. She takes an age to get through it, constantly looking off camera for prompts between the blank looks as Stan desperately scratches his head and smiles to cover for her. It’s the sort of charming amateurism that you only see in early 30s films and in Robert Coogan’s case really lends an air of spontaneity to the movie

One other notable addition to the cast is the incomparable Mitzi Green as Skippy’s bossy friend Eloise. Although she doesn’t have much to do in the film, merely a handful of scenes, she lends a great sense of comedy and whimsy to the proceedings. She plays a variation on her usual character, a pushy know it all constantly badgering all around her to listen to her. In other film appearances (see Girl Crazy among many others), she usually pleads to sing, dance or do her much famed imitations, but this time round her character has a literary bent as she constantly composes odes and poems to the general annoyance of everyone else. On her first appearance she recites her new masterpiece “In Memory of a Dead Dog” to Skippy’s father, strangely foreshadowing events to come. The purple prose is typically awful, yet this fact doesn’t stop her reciting an endless stream of verse to Skippy’s confused dad, all the time beaming with pride. When the end of the poem comes, Mr Skippy gets up to leave, only to be told, “That was only the beginning. There’s a lot more” as he turns away from her in an effort to ignore her and read the paper.

However, Eloise has an important part to play in the ending of the film as when Skippy is at his lowest point after the death of the dog, she turns up (yodelling for some reason) with, - wouldn’t you know it, a new dog! Skippy convinces Eloise to swap her new dog for his new bike because, in the best line of the film “This dog looks like it would bite a girl, and then die of rabies”. So Skippy gets a new dog for Sooky and Eloise rides off on her brand new bike. She wobbles away, already staring a brand new poem in honour of her new possession.

At the 4^th Academy Awards in 1932, Skippy was nominated for four awards and walked away with one. Skippy lost out to R.K.O’s Cimarron for best picture, which was understandable but the fact that it was even nominated (and was the second most nominated picture of the year) shows what an “event” movie it was. Jackie Cooper was nominated as best actor and lost out to Lionel Barrymore in A Free Soul. Despite Barrymore’s inestimable talents and undoubted seniority as an actor, I’d actually give the nod to Cooper after comparing the two performances, though generally drama always wins over comedy in these cases. The third nomination was for Joseph Mankiewitcz and Sam Mintz’s script, which although well written and at times quite witty, in no way stands up to the majority of it’s fellow nominees like Little Caesar, The Criminal Code or eventual winner Cimarron.

Luckily for Paramount, Skippy did win one Oscar, the best director statue for Norman Taurog (still the youngest director to win the award). In retrospect it’s a puzzling decision because although the movie is well made, aside from a lovely tracking shot at the start, the only Oscar worthy aspect of the movie is how successfully Taurog managed to work with his young cast to get the most out of them. In terms of what we traditionally think of as merit for direction, the fact that Skippy beat out Lewis Milestone’s The Front Page and Josef von Sternberg’s Morocco is, to say the least odd. It goes to show that these decisions are made in the here and now with no thought to posterity, and that more importantly the Oscars are not and have never been primarily about the “best” films of the year. As I say every year, the Oscar ceremony has a story to tell, and in this case I get the feeling they wanted to give the movie something, so it got the director award. Then as now, there is always an element of politics and tokenism.

In the end, all is right with the world. The film could add the prefix “Academy Award Winner” to its advertising, Skippy and Sooky have a new dog each, Skippy’s father finally understands his son’s problems and stands up to the dog catcher and Shantytown is saved from development (after all, they are happy being poor and living in squalor, why build over it!). It’s corny and silly but after the emotional highs and lows in poor Skippy’s life, it’s just right that everyone lives happily ever after. Probably the most important part of the puzzle is that it was Skippy that propelled Jackie Cooper to greater things – a contract with M.G.M and the start of a career as one of the greats of the screen. I’m still not too keen on child stars but I have another name in my list of kids that I’ll make exceptions for.

Mitzi Green - Pre Teen Flapper of the Screen!

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 their 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.

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

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.