Monthly Archives: May 2018

American Madness
Directed by Frank Capra
Written by Robert Riskin
1932/USA
Columbia Pictures Corporation
First viewing/Amazon Instant

[box] Thomas Dickson: I don’t want to hear any more about it. If you don’t get married I’m going to fire the both of you. Helen, while you’re downtown, you might stop in and make reservations for the bridal suite on the Berengeria, sailing next week.[/box]

Early Frank Capra movie presages It’s a Wonderful Life.

Thomas A. Dickson (Walter Huston) has presided over the Union National Bank for 25 years.  He is a people person who treats both his employees and loan applicants humanely.  Lately, his Board of Directors is up in arms about what they think are foolhardy loans made to small businesses.  He refuses to change his policy.

Dickson’s love for his bank takes presidence over paying much attention to his beloved wife Helen.  Lonely, she appreciates the attentions of womanizing cashier Cyril Cluett. Good-guy assistant cashier Matt (Pat O’Brien) walks in at an inopportune moment and is torn about whether to inform the boss.

Concurrently with all this, gangsters pressure Cluett to let them rob the bank to pay off a gambling debt.  Exaggerated rumors about the amount taken causes a run on the bank.  All of it adds up to a very bad day for Dickson.  With Constance Cummings as Matt’s girlfriend.

Dickson operates the way Peter Bailey used to do in It’s a Wonderful Life but with more success. Rapid-fire dialogue and a dynamic central performance by Huston make the movie classic populist Capra fare.  Recommended for the director’s fans.

Clip – One man’s answer to the Depression

Jewel Robbery
Directed by William Dieterle
Written by Erwin S. Gelsey from a story by Ladislas Fodor
1932/USA
Warner Bros.
First viewing/Amazon Instant

Robber: The last place anybody would think of looking for me is in your bedroom.

Who knew William Dieterle had the Lubitsch touch?

The story is set in Vienna, Austria.  The Baroness Teri (Kay Francis) is bored in her marriage to an elderly nobleman.  She adores the jewels and furs he supplies, however.  He has just promised to buy her a 28-carat diamond ring.  Just after the couple make their purchase, an un-named Robber (William Powell) and his gang enter the shop for a daring daytime robbery.  They clean the entire store out at gunpoint.  It is lust at first sight between Teri and the Robber and he actually lets her keep her diamond.

The robber gives everybody the choice between smoking one of his “cigarettes” (pretty clearly marijuana) and getting locked in the safe.  Teri refuses to do either. When the cops show up, the gang gets away.  The Robber ends up stowing the loot in Teri’s bedroom. Both Teri and the jewels are then taken to the Robber’s pad for fun and games.

This movie is so much fun!  The double entendres fly between the utterly charming leads.  It’s only 68 minutes and I could have watched Powell and Francis do their thing for at least another half hour. The jewels and fashions are something to behold as well.  Recommended.

Five Star Final  
Directed by Mervyn LeRoy
Written by Byron Morgan and Robert Lord from a play by Louis Weitzenkorn
1931/USA
First National Pictures (Warner Bros.)
First viewing/FilmStruck

[box] Brannegan: For 2 cents I’d smash your face in.

Joseph W. Randall: You’d do anything for 2 cents.[/box]

Excellent cast gives this early Warner Bros. social realist melodrama some pizazz.

Joseph Randall (Edward G. Robinson) is the city editor of a sleazy tabloid.  The bosses decide that the paper is losing circulation because it is not quite sleazy enough.  They want to resurrect the 20-year-old Nancy Voorhees story in which a secretary killed the boss who had impregnated her.  They will bill it as a cautionary tale.  Randall goes along and assigns sleazy hypocritical reporter Isopod (Boris Karloff) to dig up new dirt on the old story.

Isopod tracks down the secretary and finds she is now married to Michael Townsend (H.B. Warner).  Her illegitimate daughter Jenny (Marian Marsh), who does not know her true parentage is about to marry the son of a wealthy stuck-up family.  Tragedy ensues when the paper prints the story over a mother’s pleas.  With Aline McMahon in her screen debut as Randall’s secretary.

This movie clearly betrays its stage roots with a lot of static long takes.  But with Robinson in command there is considerable dynamism in the acting.  The supporting cast is A-OK Warner Bros. quality to boot.

Five Star Final was Oscar-nominated for Best Picture.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0qL1fs1c6k

Trailer- lots of spoilers

Blessed Event
Directed by Roy Del Ruth
Written by Howard J. Green from a play by Forrest Wilson and Manuel Seff
1932/USA
Warner Bros.
First viewing/FilmStruck

“The public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything, except what is worth knowing.” ― Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man Under Socialism, and Selected Critical Prose

Rapid-fire pre-Code comedy was one of the first send-ups of Walter Winchell.

Alvin Roberts (Lee Tracy) sells classified ads for a tabloid for $35 a week.  When the gossip columnist (Ned Sparks) goes on vacation, Roberts is given the opportunity to take over for a week.  He has an inside informer at the maternity hospital, which gives him the opportunity to announce impending “blessed events” – especially ill-timed or out of wedlock ones.  Roberts’s hold-no-prisoners style leads to an increase in law suits and complaints but an even bigger rise in circulation and Roberts column becomes a regular feature.  Before long, he is raking in the big bucks by hosting a radio show as well.

Roberts uses his column to roast crooner/bandleader Bunny Harmon (Dick Powell).  When Bunny opens a new night club, he announces that Roberts is forbidden on the premises.Naturally, the newspaper man must take up the challenge.  We also get a subplot involving a gangster that is none too happy at his own coverage in the column.  With Ruth Donnelly great as Roberts’s long-suffering wise-craccking secretary.

Well, if for nothing else, I would be grateful to this movie for introducing the amazingly versatile Powell to the screen. Lee Tracy drank himself out of a career by the mid-30’s but was a bundle of entertaining energy, usually as a newspaper man or press agent, in a number of pre-Code films.  He’s fine in this one – matched in talent by a number of wonderful Warner Bros. character actors, Tracy does an amazing rendition of the reality of execution on the electric chair in this.  Recommended.

Girls About Town
Directed by George Cukor
Written Raymond Griffith and Brian Marlow
1931/USA
Paramount Pictures
First viewing/YouTube

[box] Give me a good script, and I’ll be 100 times better as a director. — George Cukor[/box]

George Cukor brings extra class to this delightful pre-Code comedy.

Wanda Howard (Kay Francis) and Marie Bailey (Lilyan Tashman) are “party girls” who get paid $500 a pop for being nice to rich old men in night clubs.  Wanda is getting bored and disgusted with the life but the wise-cracking Marie is out for every last dime she can get out of it.  One day their boss offers them work for a weekend on a yacht with Benjamin Thomas (Eugene Pallette).  Wanda reluctantly accompanies Marie.

Benjie turns out to be a specialist in bad practical jokes.  To Wanda’s delight, he brings rich young man Jim Baker (Joel McCrea) with him.  They kill time by “pretending” to like each other and by the time they disembark are in love.  Comic complications arise when we find out that Wanda has an estranged husband who expects to get rich on any divorce.

Oh for the days when “party girls” were dripping with jewels and furs and people spent their evenings in formal attire at nightclubs!  This one is heavy on snappy dialogue delivered by people who know how.  This picture also has Joel McCrea with and without his shirt and my friends know how that makes my heart go pitter pat!   Recommended.

Clip – Louise Beavers seen briefly as a maid

Red-Headed Woman
Directed by Jack Conway
Written by Anita Loos from the novel by Katherine Bush
1932/USA
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
First viewing/FilmStruck

[box] Man Outside Pool Hall: There’s a dame. Strictly on the level, like a flight of stairs.[/box]

Jean Harlow has sex appeal to spare. But her character is pretty unappealing in this one.

Lil Andrews (Harlow) has a great body to go with her bright red hair and she knows it.  She goes on a single-minded campaign to bed and wed her boss Biill (Chester Morris).  Bill is the son of the company president and is very much in love with his wife (Leila Hyams), his childhood sweetheart.  Through pure unmitigated gall, Lil manages her homewrecking mission but is disappointed when Bill’s crowd refuses to have anything to do with her.

Eventually Lil sets her sights on a much-older tycoon that disapproves of her mightily.  She initially wins him over.  Can Lil’s wicked ways succeed forever?  With Una Merkel, wonderful as usual, as Lil’s wise-cracking friend.

I like it better when Harlow is the one doing the wise-cracking.  I found her character just plain annoying in this.

Clip