Daily Archives: June 28, 2018

City Streets
Directed by Rouben Mamoulian
Written by Oliver H.P. Garrett; adapted by Max Marsin from a story by Dashiell Hammett
1931/USA
Paramount Pictures
First viewing/YouTube

[box] The Kid: When you talk to me, take that toothpick out of your mouth.[/box]

Rouben Mamoulian brings “art” and flashy camera moves to the gangster flick.  It works out remarkably well.

Spunky Nan Cooley (Sylvia Sidney) lives with her sleazy stepfather (Guy Kibbee) who is a bodyguard to bootleggers.  She is in love with “The Kid” (Gary Cooper), who runs the shooting gallery at Coney Island and is a sharpshooter in real life.  Nan would like him to get a job with the racketeers to earn money so they can get married.  He refuses.

Loyal Nan is called on to help her stepdad by hiding the gun he has used to bump off his boss.  She is caught with the gun and refuses to cooperate with the police by naming its owner.  Though Pop promises she won’t spend a day in the pen he essentially forgets about her once she is in jail.  That is, until he runs in to The Kid and persuades him to carry a rod for the mob in order to get money to spring her.

The Kid finds he loves the high life in the beer racket.  But he’s still madly in love with Nan. When she gets out, evil Big Fellow Maskel (Paul Lukas) develops a yen for her and simply will not leave her alone.  The confrontation between the Kid and the Big Fellow takes up the remainder of the movie.

I really enjoyed this movie.  Sidney and Cooper are two of my favorite early stars and do splendidly.  Mamoulian is at his most experimental trying out every angle and gimmick he can think of.  It doesn’t hang together as well as in some of his other films but does keep up the audience’s interest throughout.  Recommended and available on YouTube.

Clip – I actually gasped when the gorgeous young Gary Cooper turned around and smiled!

The Man Who Played God
Directed by John G. Adolfi
Written by Julian Josephson and John T. Hawley from a play by Jules Eckert Goodman and a story by Governeur Morris
1932/USA
Warner Bros.
First viewing/Amazon Instant

[box] Grace Blair: You’re my ideal!

Montgomery Royle: I shall always be… your friend. [/box]

George Arliss may be an acquired taste that I may never acquire.

Montgomery Royle (Arliss) is an eccentric virtuouso concert pianist with hordes of admirers.  One of his most ardent is protegee Grace Blair (Bette Davis).  Despite their 40 year age difference, she idolizes him to the point of asking him to marry her.  He gives her six months to think it over.

Royle is concluding a successful tour in Paris with a command performance for the king of an unnamed country.  When an assassin bombs Royle’s dressing room to get at the king, Royle loses his hearing.  Deafness has been a family curse.

Grace takes off for a vacation in Santa Barbara.  While she’s gone, Royle loses his love of music and his faith in God on top of his hearing.  He becomes an expert lip reader as well as a bitter cynic and attempts suicide.  He is saved at the last minute and finds meaning in his life by reading the lips of folks on a Central Park bench through binoculars and trying to change their lives for the better.  With Ray Milland in a tiny role as one of the sad souls Arliss sees in Central Park.

I know Arliss is considered a great stage actor.  Viewed up close on screen, he appeared positively cadaverous with his heavy white make-up and silent screen poses – making the romance with Davis pretty darned creepy.  The material hasn’t aged well either.  It is pure grand melodrama of the most incredible variety.  Still it’s a quality production with a high user rating on IMDb so your mileage may vary.

This was Bette Davis’s first film under her Warner Bros. contract.  It’s one of those blonde ingenue roles she would have to fight like hell to break free of.