Daily Archives: June 24, 2018

I Lived with You
Directed by Maurice Elvey
Written by Ivor Novello, George A. Cooper, and H. Fowler Mear from Novello’s play
1933/UK
Gaumont British Picture Corporation/Twickenham Films/Julius Hagen Productions
First viewing/YouTube

[box] Things which do not require effort of some sort are seldom worth having. – Ivor Novello[/box]

I just loved this Ivor Novello penned British farce.

Gladys Wallis i(Ursula Jeans) s a shopgirl from a lower middle-class family.  She goes on an outing to Hampton Court with a girlfriend and gets lost in the Maze.  There she meets Felix (Novello),  a Russian prince to tells her all about his sad life since the Revolution. Gladys does not believe him until he shows her a pendant given to his mother by the Czar.  Felix is homeless and penniless.  The royalty-crazed Gladys takes him home and offers him a place to stay.

It turns out that the pendant contains several very valuable diamonds. Felix is soon adopted by the whole family.  His money and worldly ways soon turn the household upside down.  With 15-year-old Ida Lupino as Gladys’s wild sister and Jack Hawkins as her erstwhile boyfriend.

The plot summary does not do the extreme wit of the screenplay justice.  Novello is simply superb – ridiculous and charming at the same time.  My only previous acquaintance with the actor-songwriter-playwright was in Hitchcock’s The Lodger.  Now I have to seek out some of his other movies.  Highly recommended.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SyExDa40qk0

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Possessed
Directed by Clarence Brown
Written by Lenore J. Coffee from a play by Edgar Selwyn
1931/USA
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
First viewing/FilmStruck

[box] Marian Martin, aka Mrs. Moreland (to her mother): If I were a man it wouldn’t frighten you! You’d think it was right for me to go out and get anything I could out of life, and use anything I had to get it. Why should men be so different? All they’ve got are their brains and they’re not afraid to use them. Well neither am I![/box]

Beautiful people and MGM Class-A production values enliven this otherwise standard woman’s picture.

Marian Martin (Joan Crawford) is a small-town middle-school dropout who works at a paper box factory.  Hard-working childhood friend Al Manning (Wallace Ford) has been after her to marry him for years.  A chance meeting with a drunk millionaire gives her the final push she needs to try her fortune in New York instead.

Almost immediately, she meets wealthy lawyer-politician Mark Whitney (Clark Gable).  He sets her up in an apartment, educates her on the ways of society, and takes her around the world.  In short, he is the best sugar daddy ever.  Marian holds herself out as a wealthy divorcee living on her ex’s alimony but fools nobody.  After a while, she chafes at her lack of marital status. But Mark is gun-shy and has high political ambitions that conflict with taking a woman with a past as his wife.  That’s when Al comes back into the picture.

I loved looking at the beautiful sets and gowns.  Joan Crawford was at the height of her beauty at this time as is the mustache-less young Gable.  I was enjoying the story, too, until the last 20 minutes when Crawford goes all noble on us.  Fans of Crawford are likely to appreciate the film even more than I did.

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Once in a Lifetime
Directed by Russell Mack
Written by Seton I. Miller from the play by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart
1932/USA
Universal Pictures
First viewing/YouTube

[box] George Lewis: I don’t know anything about elocution.

May Daniels: You don’t know anything about anything, George, and if what they say about the movies is true, you’ll go far.[/box]

Hollywood did not spare itself in this funny satire about the transition from silent pictures to talkies.

Vaudeville is dying with the advent of talkies and the act of George Lewis (Jack Oakie) and May Daniels (Aline MacMahon) is dying with it.  May gets the bright idea of going to Hollywood and holding themselves out as elocution instructors.  George is as dumb as a box of rocks and he soon becomes infatuated with Susan Walker (Sidney Fox), a wannabe actress who is his intellectual soulmate.  Through sheer luck and chutzpah George takes tinsel town by storm.  The fictional studio head Herman Glogauer (Gregory Ratoff), who rejected Vitaphone, is mercilessly skewered.

The play was a big hit on Broadway.  I read about its creation in Moss Hart’s autobiography, Act One, and this was my first chance to see it.  It really is as funny as all that despite the staginess of the production.  Oakie and MacMahon are two of my favorite character actors of the period but perhaps my favorite part was Sidney Fox’s frequent recitations of the Kipling poem “Boots”.  Recommended and on YouTube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pSJO03ZzUI