Monthly Archives: March 2022

An American Tragedy
Directed by Josef von Sternberg
Written by Samuel Hoffenstein from the novel by Theodore Dreiser
1931/US
Paramount Pictures
IMDb page
First viewing/Criterion Channel

Whether we fall by ambition, blood, or lust, like diamonds we are cut with our own dust. – John Webster

This is a case where the remake vastly surpasses the original.

If you have seen A Place in the Sun (1951), you will be familiar with the basic plot of this film.  Clyde Griffiths (Phillips Holmes) has been brought up in poverty by his parents who are missionaries.  He was a passenger in a car that hit and run, leaving a little girl dead. He flees taking many odd jobs until he applies for one with his wealthy uncle in Lycergus, New York. He becomes foreman of a shop of all female piece workers.

This is where he runs into Roberta Alden.  Although the company has a strict policy prohibiting relationships between management and labor, Phillips pursues Roberta.  She is a good girl but falls in love with him and he finally seduces her.

About this time, he meets Sondra Finchley (Frances Dee) an eligible high-society heiress. Clyde begins to move in high-class social circles.  He abruptly stops seeing Roberta. She waits a few weeks to inform him she is pregnant.  Phillips contemplates taking drastic action. The movie ends as a courtroom drama.

Sylvia Sidney, who plays the Shelley Winters part, is the best thing about this picture.  She is beautiful, charming, and pathetic when need be.  The relationship between Phillips Holmes and Frances Dee, who plays the Elizabeth Taylor part, is totally lacking in heat or chemistry.  You would not know von Sternberg directed this without reading the credits.  A curiosity.

Ladies’ Man
Directed by Lothar Mendes
Written by Herman J. Mankiewicz from a novel by Rupert Hughes
1931/US
Paramount Pictures
IMDb page
First viewing/Criterion Channel

‘The bigtime for you is just around the corner.’ They told me that first in 1952 – boy, it’s been a long corner. If I don’t hit the bigtime in the next 25 or 30 years, I’m gonna pack in the music business and become a full-time gigolo.– Ronnie Hawkins

Paramount could also be a glamor studio and this film shows off its stars.  Herman J. Mankiewicz wrote the snappy screenplay.

Jamie Darricott  (William Powell) is a man-about-town.  He finances his lavish lifestyle by romancing wealthy ladies who return the favor by giving him expensive jewelry originally given to them by their husbands.  Currently, Jamie is having an affair with the wife (Olive Tell) of a workaholic banker, who has little time for her.  Their daughter Rachel (Carole Lombard) is also crazy about Jamie and he takes up with her as well.  Rachel is extremely jealous and has marriage on the mind.

When Jamie meets Norma Page (Kay Francis) by chance at a party, everything changes. He rapidly falls in love with her.  In the meantime, the banker has found out about his wife’s affair.  How will Jamie extricate himself from his situation so he can marry Norma?  I was not expecting that ending!

This movie is only 70 minutes long, not nearly enough time to give it any time to really develop the characters.  But the gowns are to die for and the actors are all in their prime.  I enjoyed it.

Tribute to Kay Francis

The Cocoanuts
Directed by Robert Florey and Joseph Santly
Written by Morrie Riskind from a stage play by George S. Kaufman
1929/US
Paramount Pictures
IMDb page
Repeat viewing/Criterion Channel

Hammer: Hello? Yes? Ice water in 318? Is that so? Where’d you get it? Oh, you want some.

The boys were still learning the ropes of the movie business but their film debut is one of my favorite of their films.

Mr. Hammer (Groucho Marx) is the owner of a hotel that is going down the drain fast.  amison (Zeppo Marx) helps him manage it..  Things look up with the arrival of the wealthy Mrs. Potter (Margaret Dumont) and her daughter Polly (Mary Eaton).  Polly is in love with hotel clerk Bob Adams (Oscar Shaw), an aspiring architect.  Mrs. Potter objects strongly to the match and wants Polly to marry Harvey Yates (Cyril Ring).  But unbeknownst to all Harvey is a conman who is scheming with equally bad Penelope Martin (Kay Francis) to steal Mrs. Potter’s $100,000 diamond necklace.

Hammer’s idea to save his hotel is to auction off swamp land for development.  Either that or to seduce Mrs. Potter.

Then Chico and Harpo arrive and create chaos everywhere they go.  All this is interrupted at random times with love duets and chorus numbers.

I laughed out loud several times, mostly during Groucho’s encounters with Margaret Dumont. How I love that woman! One of the great straight “men” of all times. This movie is heavy on the musical comedy. The songs aren’t too memorable.  I always enjoy Chico and Harpo’s performances on piano and harp and this movie has some dandies. The chorus girls are also unintentionally amusing – where did they ever find them and how did they improve so noticeably in just a few years? The Monkey Doodle Do number must be seen to be believed.  Recommended.

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The Criterion Channel is showing a series of films in its Pre-Code Paramount Collection in March.  These will probably be the next films I will cover.  The list is here.

Our Modern Maidens
Directed by Jack Conway
Written by Josephine Lovett, Marian Ainslee, and Ruth Cummings
1929/US
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
IMDb page
First viewing/Amazon Prime rental

Billie Brown: All together, children… what are *our* thoughts on leaving school?
The Girls: Men! Men! Men! Men! MEN!

Jazz age love quadrangle could have been better if someone had asked Joan Crawford to rein her performance in a little.

Billie Brown (Crawford) is the daughter of an immensely wealthy man.  As the film begins, she becomes engaged to Gil Jordan (Douglas Fairbanks Jr.)., an ambitious diplomat.  They decide to keep the engagement secret.

Billie runs into hunky tycoon Glenn Abbott (Rod La Roque) on a train and decides to invite him to a huge house party she is hosting.  She wants to use her feminine wiles to get Glenn to use his influence to get Gil an assignment in Paris.  The party is wild, to say the least, complete with entertainment including imitations of famous actors by Gil and a bizarre interpretive dance by Billie.

Billie has invited her beautiful romance-novel-reading friend Kentucky (Anita Page) to live with her for the summer.  Kentucky falls madly in love with Gil and he doesn’t exactly object to her attentions.  In the meantime, Billie is going out with Glenn and he falls in love with her.  When her engagement to Gil is revealed, he is furious.  The bride, the groom, and the best friend are all miserable on the wedding day.

Joan Crawford is not a great favorite of mine and she was much too much in this movie.  She prances around like a flirtatious and precocious child.  Her dance solo must be seen to be believed.  Everybody else was good and the film has MGM glamor written all over it.

This was Crawford’s last silent movie.  She met Douglas Fairbanks Jr making this film and their real life wedding was highly publicized to promote the picture.

Shadow of the Law (AKA The Quarry)
Directed by Louis J. Gasnier
Written by John Farrow from a play by Max Martin and Jack A. Moroso
1930/US
Paramount Pictures
IMDb page
First viewing/YouTube

Detective Lt. Mike Kearney: Next time you want to get the truth from a woman, don’t send money – send a cop.

The always debonaire William Powell is the best thing about this creaky wrong man mystery. Pity he didn’t have better material.

John Nelson (Powell) is a wealthy man-about-town. He escorts a neighbor, Ethel Barry (Natalie Moorhead) to her apartment after a night out. When the two get there, an angry man is waiting.  Nelson intervenes to defend Ethel and in the scuffle the man is knocked out of the window.  Ethel disappears, taking Nelson’s self defense claim with her, and he is tried, convicted and sentenced to jail.  Nelson spends the rest of the movie trying to clear his name.

Well. this one was a dud.  I’ll always take a chance on William Powell, however.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJ1SdfCxh3k