Category Archives: 1929

Steve Roberts: [On the Nicaraguan rebels] You know damn well what’s going to happen if these people come along and catch you alive.

Too much love triangle.  Not enough flying.

Lefty Phelps (Ralph Graves) is infamous for having lost a football game for his college in a “Wrong Way Corrigan” style maneuver. One of the few people sympathetic to Lefty is Panama Williams (Jack Holt). Lefty joins the U.S. Marines. Panama is his flight instructor and befriends him. Lefty washes out as a pilot but becomes a flight mechanic. The two men both fall in love with beautiful nurse Elinor Baring (Lila Lee). Panama is too shy to propose so he sends Lefty to do it for him. But Elinor is actually in love with Lefty. This creates much bitterness on the part of Panama. The two end up in Nicaragua where Panama refuses to fly with Lefty or help rescue him when his plane crashes. Will he relent in time?

This is technically accomplished for its era. The Marines cooperated in the making of the movie and the best parts are the flight scenes. Otherwise, it is kind of dull and clocks in at almost 2 hours – much too long for the story it has to tell.

Colorized clip (full version on YouTube is in the original black and white)

Mexicali Rose

”No gold-digging for me; I take diamonds! We may be off the gold standard someday.” – Mae West

Barbara Stanwyck is the best thing about this early talkie potboiler and that’s not saying much.

Happy Manning (Sam Hardy) runs a saloon/gambling hall on the Mexican side of the border. He is generous and beloved by his customers. He dotes on his ward, who is a big U.S. high school football star.

He is married to the much younger Mexicali Rose (Stanwyck). Rose is a huge flirt and Happy finds out about an affair she had while he was away on business.  He throws her out with enough money to get, and stay, on the other side of the border. Unfortunately, that leaves her within striking range of his ward.

Stanwyck is good at being a bad girl. She doesn’t exactly have the chance to shine in this low-budget 60-minute B movie though.

Collection of fun clips

The Locked Door

Ann Carter: You won’t gain anything by keeping me here!
Frank Devereaux: Oh, I like you in a temper. I want to hold you close, knowing you don’t want to be held.

Continuing my Barbara Stanwyck pre-Code retrospective with a rewatch of this creaky early talkie, which contains her first starring role.

I’ll point you at my original review for the plot summary.  Couldn’t find much media at that time.  Here’s a couple of photos that illustrate the high melodrama of the piece.

This is not a good movie but Stanwyck is pretty good in it.  She has a couple of scenes where she lets loose with her fire and reveals a glimpse of things to come.

Clip

Ladies of Leisure

Dot Lamar: You can’t weigh sex appeal.

I love a good melodrama when it makes me cry.

This Pre-Code romcom/melodrama begins at the studio of artist Jerry Strong (Ralph Graves) where a wild drunken party is in progress. When Jerry flees the highjinks, he meets cute with Kay Arnold (Barbara Stanwyck) a self-proclaimed “party girl” who is fleeing a party she attended on a ship. Jerry is sees something in her which represents “hope” to him and asks her to pose for a portrait. The two leads have quirky counterparts in the form of Kay’s roommate fellow party girl Dot (Marie Provost) and Jerry’s playboy friend Bill (Lowell Sherman).

Jerry keeps things strictly platonic and it is not too long before Kay is madly in love with him. Can these two opposites attract?   Not to give away too much but the course of true love never did run smooth.

I liked this far more on the rewatch than the first time around.  It is really quite a touching love story. Barbara Stanwyck is wonderful throughout. Last time I thought she cried too much in the second half. This time I was crying right along with her.  Even this early in her career she could deliver heartbreaking performances like this one.  Recommended.

Clip (spoiler from near end of movie)

The Cocoanuts

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

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.

Fay Cheyney: I know too much about you. And you know too little about me.

Oh, how this movie cried out for the Lubitsch touch!

New widow Fay Cheyney has burst on the London social scene and let it be known she is looking for a husband.  The “smart set” adopt her and invite her to their homes.  Finally she snags a invite to a very wealthy woman’s home for a country weekend.  While there she takes turns flirting with her two suitors, elderly dunderhead Lord Elton and debonair confirmed bachelor Lord Arthur Dilling (Basil Rathbone).  Fay manipulates both men, playing very hard to get with Arthur and patronizing Lord Elton.

Half-way through the movie we learn Fay’s secret.  Arthur isn’t far behind and takes charge of her.  With Hedda Hopper as one of Fay’s new friends.

This could have been a rather funny and sophisticated farce in the hands of Lubitsch.  Unfortunately, we get actors must who have been coached to speak their lines in as affected and wry manner as possible.  This got on my nerves and by the end of the film I didn’t care what happened to anyone.

Thunderbolt

Warden: Listen Doc, you just gotta see that this man lives. Do something. I’ve got to execute him tonight.

George Bancroft has some marvelous bits in this gangster/love triangle/deathrow tale. The rest is pretty “meh”.

Jim ‘Thunderbolt’ Lang (Bancroft) is the boss of a gang of vicious thugs. He is wanted for bank robbery and murder.  Ritzie (Fay Wray) is his moll.  But lately she has fallen for straight arrow banker Bob (Richard Arlen) and attempts to break up with Thunderbolt. Nobody quits the Thunderbolt and he makes it his mission to assassinate Bob.

His mission fails.  He is apprehended, tried, and sentenced to death.  Thunderbolt will not rest until Bob dies before he does.  So he frames him and soon Bob is his neighbor on death row.

Bancroft is great, as always, in this.  The part where he tries to get an annoying dog to come to him is hilarious.  On the other hand, I have never seen Wray or Arlen give such stilted performances.

George Bancroft was nominated for the Best Actor Oscar.

Catch the glance George Bancroft gives singer Theresa Harris.  Definitely pre-Code!