The American Kingdom
Directed by Edward H. Griffith (with an uncredited George Cukor)
Written by Horace Johnson from a play by Philip Barry
1932/US
RKO Radio Pictures
IMDb page
Repeat viewing/Amazon Prime rental

Daisy Sage: For all our big talk, we both still belong to the animal kingdom.

I enjoyed this stagey but unique and adult sophisticated love triangle.

Tom Collier (Leslie Howard) is the free-thinking owner of a small publishing company. His father (Henry Stephenson) considers him a total flop. Dear old dad is very pleased to learn of Tom’s  engagement to Cecilia (AKA ‘Cee’) Myrna Loy. He did not approve of Tom’s three-year live-in love affair with Daisy Sage (Ann Harding). Daisy has been off in Paris studying art. Daisy, who had previously scorned marriage, has decided she wants children and more or less proposes to Leslie before he can announce his engagement to Cee.

Ann was also Leslie’s dear friend and had a major influence on his thinking. Leslie thinks he can remain friends with Ann after marrying Myrna. Myrna does her best to make this impossible. Actually, Myrna, a master manipulator, tries to change Leslie in every way and to isolate him from his former friends altogether.

This is an adaptation of a stage play and feels very stage bound. It’s a sophisticated adult story and the acting is good, if also stagey. This time around the Myrna Loy character made me so angry I was shouting at my TV. She really was convincingly despicable – the sign of a good actress. She has at least as much screen time as Harding but once again doesn’t get her name above the title.

Multiple complete versions of the film are currently on YouTube.

No trailer or clip so here’s a tribute

I Cover the Waterfront
Directed by James Cruze
Written by Wells Root and Jack Jevne from a book by Max Miller
1933/US
Edward Small Productions (Distributed by United Artists)
IMDb page
First viewing/Amazon Prime (free to members)

Joe Miller: Come on, let’s play a love scene.
Julie Kirk: Let’s fall in love first.

Short, kinda sweet, and enjoyable.

Joe Miller (Ben Lyon) covers the waterfront in San Diego for the newspaper he works for. He mostly hates his job. There is one story he wants to write though. He is convinced that “fisherman” Eli Kirk (Ernest Torrance) is smuggling in Chinese illegal immigrants. His interest is intensified when he finds the body of an immigrant who was tossed in the harbor during a raid.

Then Joe meets Julie Kirk (Claudette Colbert), Eli’s daughter. His first idea is to use her to get next to Eli but he rapidly falls in love with her. This throws a monkey wrench into his journalistic plans, but he persists.

I enjoyed this hour-long movie. Amazing how many newspaper stories there were in the early 30’s! The stars are appealing, the romance is cute, and we get a little crime story to boot.

No clips so here’s a song inspired by the movie

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The next day I rewatched The Story of Temple Drake (1933) which I had already reviewed here.  I think I liked it even more on the second viewing.

Riders of Destiny
Directed by Robert N. Bradbury
Written by Robert N. Bradbury
1933/US
Paul Malvern Productions (Monarch Pictures)
IMDb page
First viewing/Amazon Prime (Free to members)

James Kincaid: I’ve made Denton an offer he can’t refuse.

John Wayne brings star quality to even the most routine poverty-row oater.

This is a Western starring John Wayne as a singing cowboy (his singing voice is dubbed). As the story begins, Singin’ Sandy Saunders interrupts a stage coach robbery. He meets lovely Fay Denton (Cecilia Parker) and loans her his horse when hers is shot from under her. It turns out her father (Gabby Hayes) owns a gold mine and it seems that every time a shipment is sent to him the stage is robbed. So Fay intercepts the stage and takes the loot before bandits can get to it. Greedy city slicker James Kincaid (Forrest Taylor) is behind the robberies. He also has a lock on most of the water in the valley and is threatening to cut off the ranchers supply unless they sell out cheap. You have to know that Singin’ Sandy will save the day.

This movie is only 53 minutes long and is about what you would expect. I thought the antics of Kincaid’s none-too-bright thugs were fairly amusing. Wayne is young and very handsome. It’s also amusing watching him sing.

When Ladies Meet
Directed by Harry Beaumont and Robert Z. Leonard
Written by John Meehan and Leon Gordon from the play by Rachel Crothers
1933/US
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
IMDb page
First viewing/Forbidden Hollywood Vol. 9

Clare: Well, the hard thing for me to believe is that she’d believe this man.
Mary Howard: Good heavens, why? A woman knows when a man’s in love.
Clare: Perhaps, I suppose any married woman would think that this other woman ought to know enough not to believe a married man if he’s making love to her.

Here’s a sophisticated love triangle/quadrangle that works very well.  And possibly the last time Myrna Loy didn’t get top billing for a film.

Mary Howard (Loy) is a free-thinking young novelist.  She is currently writing a book about a woman who is having an affair with a married man.  Close friend Jimmie Lee (Robert Montgomery) has proposed countless times.  He hates Mary’s book.  As the story begins, he is being rejected once again.  Mary’s publisher Rogers Woodruf (Frank Morgan) is helping her with the final chapter.  It soon becomes evident that Mary is also having an affair with Rogers, a married man.  She gets her friend Bridget (Alice Brady) to host her and Rogers in the country for some alone time r.  None of this is lost on Jimmie.

Mary’s final chapter has the heroine determined to meet the wife before she decides whether to break up the marriage.  Jimmie plots to meet and get close to Rogers’s wife Clare (Ann Harding).  He tells her he wants to make Mary jealous and would like her to pose as the other woman and join him for a country weekend at Bridget’s house.  It will be an awkward weekend not least because it turns out Mary likes Clare very much.

I liked this one a lot.  The writing is sharp and the cast is great.  It’s hard to believe anybody would reject Robert Montgomery in favor of Frank Morgan but the latter is far more appealing than the befuddled character he would specialize in later in his career.  Loy appears in almost every scene while we don’t meet Harding until 30 minutes into the picture.  The vamp is gone and she adopts the common-sense fun-loving persona that would be hers for the rest of her long career.

The movie would be remade in 1941 with Joan Crawford, Greer Garson, Robert Taylor and  Herbert Marshall

Cedric Gibbon was nominated for the Best Art Direction Oscar.

The Vampire Bat
Directed by Frank R. Strayer
Written by Edward T. Lowe Jr.
1933/US
Majestic Pictures
IMDb page
Repeat viewing/Amazon Prime (free to members)

Karl Brettschneider: I don’t mind admitting that I’m up a tree. Stumped!

Despite it’s humble origins this B horror film works pretty well, if you are not looking for actual scares.

Several people have turned up dead – with puncture wounds in their throats and drained of their blood – in a Bavarian village. This has coincided with an infestation of bats and the villagers are convinced the murders ar the work of a vampire. The local detective (Melvyn Douglas) is not so sure. With Dwight Frye channeling Renfield as the village idiot; Fay Wray as the detective’s girl and Lionel Atwill as the local doctor who enjoys experimenting in his lab on the side.

Although this is a cheapo Majestic Pictures production, it has good production values due to its fine cast and the fact that the company rented the Frankenstein (1931) village set and The Old Dark House (1932) interior from Universal. Strangely enough Fay Wray does not scream once! Unfortunately, that is left to Maude Eburn, the comic relief hypochondriac aunt. I thought it was a pretty good way of spending an hour.