Hell’s Angels
Directed by Howard Hughes (Edmund Goulding and James Whale uncredited)
Written by Howard Estabrook and Harry Behn from a story by Marshall Neilan and Joseph Moncure March
1930/US
The Caddo Company
IMDb page
Repeat viewing/YouTube (free)

Helen: Would you be shocked if I put on something more comfortable?

This movie shows what could be done at the dawn of cinema when unlimited amounts of time and money were thrown at one.

Two brothers, Monte (Ben Lyon) and Roy (James Hall), could not be more different.  Monte is worldly and cynical.  Roy is decent and honorable.  Roy is in love with Helen (Jean Harlow), whom he idealizes as a fine woman.  Jean prefers to wait for whomever next wants to show her a good time.  She starts off by seducing Monte.

Ben and Roy join the RAF and become pilots.  (Most of the characters in this are British but almost all speak with American accents.)  Helen follows them to France where she works at a canteen for pilots.

Who needs nudity when there are dresses like this and bodies to fill them?

Helen continues to break hearts.  Ben hates the war and is willing to do almost anything to avoid being killed.  Roy is brave and loyal.  Here is where the thrilling aerial combat starts.  When the brothers are captured, who will prevail?

The flying scenes and explosions are simply fantastic. Then throw in a super-sexy Jean Harlow in her Pre-Code break-out performance and you have one gripping film despite a little hoke once in awhile. I don’t know what I was expecting but this was a delightful surprise that held up perfectly on this re-watch. I saw the restored version with tinted sections.

The film was nominated for a Best Cinematography Oscar.

In Old Arizona
Directed by Raoul Walsh
Written by Tom Barry from a story by O. Henry
1928/US
Fox Film Corporation
IMDb page
First viewing/YouTube rental

[last lines] The Cisco Kid: Her flirting days are over. And she’s ready to settle down.

The plot is corny and the acting is over-the-top. But these things only added to the charm for me.

The Cisco Kid (Warner Baxter) is a stagecoach robber who steals only from companies not from passengers.  He’s an affable sort of Robin Hood who dotes on his girlfriend Tonia Maria (Dorothy Burgess), unaware of her serial infidelities.

Sergeant Mickey Dunn (Edmund Lowe) is on his trail.  He easily convinces Tonia to help bring her man in by promising her a share of the reward money.  Will the two be successful?

Baxter and Burgess take their characters way over-the-top, using every Latinex stereotype in the book, and Lowe is not far behind.  Despite, or maybe because of, this I found the film thoroughly entertaining.  It could not have been made post-Code for a couple of reasons.

Warner Baxter won the Oscar for Best Actor.  The film was nominated in the categories of Best Picture, Best Director, Best Writing and Best Cinematography.

I hadn’t really thought of Warner Baxter as a handsome man until I saw this tribute.

The Big House
Directed by George W. Hill
Written by Frances Marion
1928/US
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
IMDb page
First viewing/YouTube rental

John Morgan: You know it means the rope, Butch, if they catch you? Who’s in on it?
‘Machine Gun’ Butch Schmidt: Well, me and Olsen and Joe and the Hawk.
John Morgan: The Hawk? That means blood.
‘Machine Gun’ Butch Schmidt: No, he promised me he wouldn’t bump nobody off.
John Morgan: Why, he croaked his own mother.
‘Machine Gun’ Butch Schmidt: Sure he did. He cut her throat. He was sorry for it. He’s all right.

This forerunner of many better prison escape movies of the 30’s is made watchable by its actors.

Kent Marlowe (Robert Montgomery) is sent up to the “Big House” for 10 years for killing a person while drunk driving.  He is young, naive, and very nervous.  He is put in a cell with ‘Machine Gun’ Butch Schmidt (Wallace Beery) who is serving a life sentence for murder and John Morgan (Chester Morris), a thief also serving a ten-year sentence.  The two hardened criminals try to show Kent the ropes but he is a coward who would rather snitch than fight.

The story covers the planning and execution of an escape attempt.  Morgan falls in love with Kent’s sister (Leila Hyams) in a minor subplot.

The acting is good but I didn’t find too many thrills.  The main point of the movie seems to be to point out crowding and corruption in the prison system.

The Big House won Oscars for Best Writing and Best Sound.  It was nominated for Best Picture and Best Actor (Beery).  Amazing how Wallace Beery could be both so darn lovable and so damned menacing at the same time!

Wings
Directed by William Wellman
Written by John Monk Saunders, Hope Loring, and Louis D. Lighton
1927/US
Paramount Famous Lasky Corporation
IMDb page
First viewing/Amazon Instant

Mary Preston: Remember – I saw the war, too, Jack! And I can’t blame – anyone – for anything! What happens from now on is all that matters, isn’t it, dear?

Can’t believe it took me this long to get to the first Best Picture Oscar winner.  And I was not disappointed.

The setting is WWI. David Armstrong (Richard Arlen) is a son of the richest family in the small town in which he lives.  Everybody, including the principals, expects him to marry the rich and lovely Sylvia Lewis.  All-American middle class boy Jack Powell (Charles ‘Buddy’ Rogers) is in love with her too.  Jack is oblivious to the fact that Mary Preston (Clara Bow) is crazy about him.  Both men enlist as combat pilots and go off to France.  They become flying aces and eventually best friends.  Mary enlists as a motor pool driver and catches up with them in France.

Most of the film is devoted to spectacular aerial footage of combat. So we get action, adventure, comedy, tragedy, romance and male bonding.  Gary Cooper’s two-minute scene in this film set him on the road to stardom.

Two and a half hours of war movie didn’t exactly sound like a load of fun but I loved this.  It was charming when it needed to be, touching when it needed to be, and, wow, those flight scenes were unbelievable.  Amazon had the restored print with colorized flames coming out of planes that are shot down.

The Big Trail
Directed by Raoul Walsh
Written by Hal G. Evarts, Marie Boyle, etc.
1930/US
Fox Film Corporation
IMDb page
Repeat viewing/Amazon Instant

Breck Coleman, Wagon Train Scout: We can’t turn back! We’re blazing a trail that started in England. Not even the storms of the sea could turn back the first settlers. And they carried it on further. They blazed it on through the wilderness of Kentucky. Famine, hunger, not even massacres could stop them. And now we picked up the trail again. And nothing can stop us! Not even the snows of winter, nor the peaks of the highest mountain. We’re building a nation and we got to suffer! No great trail was ever built without hardship. And you got to fight! That’s right. And when you stop fighting, that’s death. What are you going to do, lay down and die? Not in a thousand years! You’re going on with me!

This ambitious tale of pioneers on the Oregon trail combines a simple plot, a cast of thousands, and the launch of a natural born star.

As the story begins, hundreds of settlers (here called pilgrims) are gathered in Missouri preparing to set off for new homes in Washington State on the Oregon Trail.  Young Indian Scout Breck Coleman is hanging around the camp preparing to set out for parts unknown.  Then he notices that Red Flack (Tyrone Power Sr.), whom he suspects of killing his friend is wagon master.  Breck is convinced to sign on.

He meets awkwardly with single beauty Ruth Cameron (Marguerite Churchill) and they spar for most of the rest of the film as she rejects his advances.  Ruth is also being courted by a fugitive con man who is more “civilized” than Brent but is really after her money.

The journey is beset by raging river crossings, indian attacks, torrential rain and mud, steep mountains, and finally snowstorms.  Meanwhile, our revenge and love triangle plots get sorted out satisfactorily.

The 23-year-old John Wayne went straight from the prop department to a leading role here and was oozing star quality right out of the box.  The other actors are OK but you can’t take your eyes off of Wayne.  The other outstanding aspect of the film is the awesome photography and choreography of the epic wagon train scenes and animal crossings.  Truly ahead of its time.

Unfortunately the high cost and technology adopted by this movie – it was shot simultaneously in 70 and 35 mm and in four separate language versions – ensured it would be a box office flop.  So Wayne would be relegated back to B movies until John Ford made a star of him with Stagecoach (1939).

Condemned!
Directed by Wesley Ruggles
Written by Sidney Howard from a book by Blair Niles
1929/US
The Samuel Goldwyn Company
IMDb page
First viewing/Amazon Instant

Jean Vidal: Did you or did you not give my wife a monkey?

A decent action/adventure for the sound era.

Jean Vidal (Dudley Digges), the sadistic and gross warden of Devils Island, made a loveless marriage with the pious, timid, and much younger Madame Vidal (Ann Harding). She throws herself into her housework to take her mind off Jean and her extreme homesickness.  Jean thinks household chores beneath the dignity of a warden’s wife and insists on hiring a prisoner to help her.  He thinks he has found the perfect candidate in Michel Oman (Ronald Colman), a gentleman thief recently sent to the island.

Michel and the Mme. form a close emotional attachment and the pair soon become the talk of the town despite the chaste nature of their relations.  This makes Jean a laughing stock and he is determined to get to the bottom of the stories.  His treatment of both lovers ends only in their declaring themselves and plots for Michel to escape.  The second act of the movie is devoted to the escape through the fever-torn jungles of Guyana.  With Louis Wolford as Michel’s tough convict buddy.

This drags at times but is entertaining mostly due to Colman’s debonaire performance.  I like Ann Harding but I thought she overdid it a bit in this one.  She certainly looked lovely.

Colman received an Oscar nod for Best Actor.

Montage of clips from Colman’s films – what an actor! what a face!

The Single Standard
Directed by John Robertson
Written by Josephine Lovett from a novel by Adela Rogers St. John
1929/US
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
IMDb page
First viewing/Amazon Instant

Opening Title Card: For a number of generations men have done as they pleased–and women have done as men pleased…

Greta Garbo was still making silent movies in 1929.  Her loveliness makes them worth watching for fans.

Arden Stuart (Garbo) is a wealthy young socialite.  Polite society is beginning to bore her. After refusing the proposal of Tommy (Johnny Mack Brown), an eligible young man, Arden takes off on a romantic moonlight drive with the family chauffeur.  She is caught in a passionate embrace and the chauffeur loses his job.

Several years later she meets ex-boxer painter Packy Cannon (Nils Asther).  He believes love should be free and equal.  This makes him a soul mate to Arden and they sail off in his yacht the “All Alone” where they pursue an idyllic affair.

Packy eventually dumps Arden on the grounds that their love is interfering with his work. Arden goes home in disgrace.  She eventually agrees to marry Tommy and they have a child.  What will happen when Packy turns up again eager to rekindle their romance?

Despite all the posing Garbo does in this film, she is completely mesmerizing and makes one half of an absolutely gorgeous couple with Asther.  The story is kind of average and predictable.

Alibi
Directed by Roland West
Written by Roland West and C. Gardner Sullivan from a play by John Griffith Wray et al
1929/US
Feature Productions
IMDb page
First viewing/Amazon Instant

Joan Manning Williams: Law! Is bull-dogging, third-degreeing people into confessing crimes they didn’t commit, is that law?
Buck Bachman: No, but… Oh, I don’t understand.
Joan Manning Williams: Of course you don’t. You’re a policeman. And you’ll never understand!

This precursor to the great gangster films of the early thirties is atmospheric but suffers from early talkie-itis.

Straight-arrow Detective Sgt. Buck Bachman (Harry Stubbs) is in love with Joan Manning (Eleanor Griffith), a policeman’s daughter and wants to marry her.  She rejects him in favor of recently released gangster Chick Williams (Chester Morris), whom she thinks was wrongfully convicted. They marry.

But Chick is unrepentant and is soon back to his evil ways.  He takes Joan to the theater and uses her as an alibi for a robbery committed during the intermission.  A policeman is killed and soon an intense police investigation begins to corner him.  With Regis Toomey in his film debut as a police double agent.

This movie has its merits.  It looks good, with plenty of atmospheric lighting, and Chester Morris makes an excellent charismatic anti-hero.  On the other hand, it suffers from the slow pacing and stilted dialogue style that mars many of the very early talkies.  Regis Toomey hams it up to the max as my least favorite film character the “comic” drunk.  On balance, I’m glad I saw it.

Alibi was Oscar-nominated for Best Picture, Best Actor (Morris), and Best Art Direction.

Restoration Demonstration

Where East Is East
Directed by Tod Browning
Written by Tod Browning Henry Sinclair Drago, et al
1929/US
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
IMDb page
First viewing/Amazon Instant

Tiger Haynes: Your heathen tricks have broken enough men! You’re going to leave this boy alone!

The last of the ten films Tod Browning made with Lon Chaney was this OK melodrama.

The setting is somewhere in Southeast Asia, possibly Laos. Tiger Haynes (Chaney) is a wild game trapper who sells the tigers and other animals he captures to circuses. Tiger dotes on his daughter Toyo (Lupe Velez) and is very protective of her. Toyo falls in love with cute white boy Bobby and they get engaged. Tiger is skeptical but eventually warms to the young man. He asks him to escort one of his tigers to Singapore.

On his journey, Bobby is seduced by vamp Mme. de Sylva (Estelle Taylor), unaware that she is Toyo’s estranged mother.  High melodrama ensues.

This is an OK way to spend an hour but nothing great.

Can somebody explain to me why grown daughters in early cinema are always flirting with their fathers, sitting on their laps, kissing them on the mouth etc.?  I don’t think that it is meant to be as creepy as it seems to me now.

Bulldog Drummond
Directed by F. Richard Jones
Written by Herman C. McNeile
1929/US
The Samuel Goldwyn Company
IMDb page
First viewing/Amazon Prime (free to Members)

No matter where she’s a hiding
She’s gonna hear me a comin’
Gonna walk right down that street
Like Bulldog Drummond
‘Cause I’ve been searchin’  – “Searchin”, The Coasters (1957)

This was the first talking Bulldog Drummond picture though it may be among the last I have yet to see.  Ronald Coleman is perfect in the title role.

Bulldog Drummond (Coleman) is bored to tears after serving in WWI so he places an ad in a newspaper and begins his work as a private eye being hired by Phyllis (a young, blonde Joan Bennett) whose uncle has been kidnapped by extortionists.  Phyllis will become his long-suffering and eternal fiancee in the remainder of the series.  The other running character is Algy, Bulldog’s friend and sidekick.  The actors change many times but the characters remain the same.

These are consistently entertaining mystery/private eye movies with a twinkle in the eye and a bit of excitement.  Ronald Coleman may be the ultimate Bulldog Drummond though The role would also fit Ray Milland like a glove later on.

The film was nominated for Best Actor (Coleman) and Best Art Direction.