Category Archives: 1931

Strangers May Kiss
Directed by George Fitzmaurice
Written by Ursula Parrot from her novel
1931/US
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
IMDb page
First viewing/Forbidden Hollywood Vol. 8

Steve: There will always be a bottle of champagne, burning in the window.

This is one of several very similar and better films in which Norma Shearer defies convention in the name of love or revenge.

The setting is New York City among the upper classes.  Lizbeth Corbin (Shearer) is madly in love with adventurer journalist Alan (Neil Hamilton). They aren’t in a hurry to get married.  Her family wants her to marry Steve (Robert Mongomery), a debonaire friend of the family and long time buddy to Lizbeth.  He proposes every time he sees her but is always rebuffed.

Then work takes Neil to Mexico, Norma accompanies him, and her love deepens. It is only then that Neil reveals the existence of a wife in Paris. Furthermore, he will be going to South America for a few years and is not taking Norma.  She is devastated as he was her first love.

Lizbeth, goes to Europe and becomes a “loose woman”. Steve searches for her all over the continent and finally meets up with her in Spain.  He is still willing to marry her despite her debauchery.  Finally Neil writes telling her he has got divorced and she should come to Paris and marry him. Will she let him break her heart again? Will she come to her senses and realize what a catch Robert is? I will not spoil it for you.

In my opinion this is the worst of the Norma Shearer “free spirit” movies I have seen.  The plot really doesn’t ring true and Shearer employs her girlish flirtatious giggle too frequently for my taste. She does handle the tragic parts well.  On the other hand, Montgomery is devastatingly suave and handsome at this age.  How could she resist him?

Platinum Blonde
Directed by Frank Capra
Written by Robert Riskin from a story by Harry Chandlee and Douglas W. Churchill
1931/US
Columbia Pictures
IMDb page
Repeat viewing/Amazon Prime rental

Conroy, The Editor: Anne Schuyler’s in the blue book; you’re not even in the phone book. Think that one over… sucker!

Capra delivers a solid newspaper/romcom picture with plenty of snappy dialogue.

Stew Smith (Robert Williams) is the wise-cracking star reporter on a big city newspaper. Michael Schuyler is trying to avoid a scandal about his chorus girl girlfriend who has settled a breach of promise lawsuit but has refused to return his love letters.  Rumors of this are floating around and Stew’s editor sends him to the swanky Schuyler family manse to verify the story.  The Schuyler’s lawyer tries to bribe him to not print the story.  Stew now has his confirmation.  At the same time, he is introduced to Michael’s sister Anne (Jean Harlow).  It is lust at first sight.

Lust turns to love and Stew and Anne marry.  Anne’s family is dismayed but Anne reassures them.  It is then he finds that Anne expects him to give up his old life and friends, live in the mansion, and accompany Anne to her many social engagements.

Now Robert has a long-time colleague at the paper who is called Gallagher (Loretta Young).  They are confidants and trade snappy banter.  What Robert doesn’t know is that she is in love with him.  He hasn’t really seen her as a woman.  With Claud Allister as a valet.

I liked this one a lot due to the snappy dialogue, expertly delivered by the very appealing Williams and company. IMO one of the best newspaper pictures and contains my favorite performance ever by Loretta Young.  Harlow was still developing her acting chops so she is somewhat stiff and at any rate feels miscast as a socialite.

I found myself wondering what happened to Williams. Turns out this was his first major role and he died of peritonitis 4 days after the picture’s release.

Blonde Crazy
Directed by Roy Del Ruth
Written by Kubec Glasmon and John Bright
1931/US
Warner Bros.
IMDb page
Repeat viewing/Forbidden Hollywood Vol. 8

Peggy: And let me tell you something about this place. I’ve been here six months and I know! For the love of Mike, stay away from those bellhops. They can’t do a girlie any good. And the worst monkey of them all is that guy, Bert Harris. He’s dynamite. Everybody in this joint owes him money from those crooked dice of his.
Ann Roberts: He can’t do me any harm. I haven’t any money and I don’t shoot craps.
Peggy: Oh, yeah? Well, maybe you have something else he can use.

Joan Blondell and Jimmy Cagney make a perfect couple of grifters.

Cocky bellhop Bert Harris (Cagney) is famous for dirty tricks at the hotel he works for in a small midwest town.  When Anne Roberts (Joan Blondell) comes looking for a job he lands her one even though the position had already been filler.  He keeps being fresh and she keeps slapping him.  But he talks her into working a swindle on one of the guests and they become partners in crime, she more reluctantly than he.

They use their ill-gotten gains to move on to bigger fish in Chicago.  But Bert is not quite so smart as he thinks. With Louis Calhern as another con artist and Ray Milland as Anne’s suitor.

This is a very pre-Code and extremely fun movie.  Cagney and Blondell have enough energy to light up a big city.  Everything is kept moving along well.  Despite the crime theme the tone is nice and light.

A Free Soul
Directed by Clarence Brown
Written by Becky Gardiner from a novel by Adela Rogers St. John
1931/US
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
IMDb page
Repeat viewing/Forbidden Hollywood Vol. 2

Jan Ashe: [Seductively] Hello, there.
Ace Wilfong, Gangster Defendant: Hello, yourself. Say, it’s great to come up and find you here like this.
Jan Ashe: Is it now? Well, what are you going to do about it?

A very pre-Code take on the pleasures and pitfalls of free love.

Steven Ashe (Lionel Barrymore) is a brilliant, but alcoholic, trial attorney, who has taught his daughter Jan (Norma Shearer) to think for herself. When Jan meets Ace Wilfong (Clark Gable), a gangster her father exonerated in a murder trial, she drops her steadfast fiancé (Leslie Howard) and “gives herself” to him.

The Ashe family has already practically cut off Stephen and Jan.  Then Stephen shows up at a soiree roaring drunk, and that is that.  When Jan takes up with Ace, she is disowned as well.  Both pretend not to care.

Stephen objects violently to Ace but Jan refuses to give him up.  When Stephen’s alcoholism is growing terminal, Jan promises not to see Ace again if her father will stop drinking.  They go on a three-week camping trip together.  But their return to civilization doesn’t go so well.  I will stop here.

It was refreshing to watch a film with a strong female protagonist, even if Norma does recognize the error of her ways by the final frame. The trial scenes, as usual, bothered me. I always watch these with a critical eye and the attorneys and judge almost never fail to trample on every rule of evidence in the book.  Everything else about this movie is A-OK.

I have mixed feelings about Norma Shearer as she usually overdoes it in my opinion.  I was looking at her filmography though and hadn’t realized the number of silent films she made.  I looked at her through those eyes and understood her mannerisms completely.  Lionel Barrymore makes a good drunk, for sure.

Lionel Barrymore won the Best Actor Oscar for his performance in A Free Soul.  The film was nominated in the categories of Best Actress and Best Director.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kk7EYxPoHXs

I love this fan made video (spoiler warning)

Waterloo Bridge
Directed by James Whale
Written by Benn Levy and Tom Reed from a play by Robert E. Sherwood
1931/US
Universal Pictures
IMDb page
Repeat viewing/Forbidden Hollywood Collection

Roy Cronin: Where would I be likely to find her?
Mrs. Hobley: Oh, anywhere along the Strand, Leicester Square, Piccadilly. And of course there’s always Waterloo Bridge. A good many of ’em hangs about there to try to get the soldiers just coming in on leave.

James Whale shows that he was much more than a director of monsters in this sensitive portrait of doomed lovers.

The setting is WWI London.  Myra (Mae Clarke) was a chorus girl in a West End musical but has been out of work since the show closed two years earlier.  She now works the streets but has so much competition she is behind on her rent and everything else.

One night when she is cruising Waterloo Bridge looking for doughboys to pick up, she is caught in an air raid with fellow American Roy Cronin (Kent Douglass).  He escorts her back to her flat.  She doesn’t reveal her occupation and he doesn’t ask.  Instead, he begins courting her.

Roy tricks Myra into visiting his family who have a country estate near London.  They welcome her but Roy’s mother takes a private moment to have a conversation with Myra about the fate of their romance.  Roy is hearing wedding bells.  Both mother and Myra know this is impossible.  But Roy is set on the idea.  With Bette Davis in her third movie appearance as Roy’s sister.

1931 was the year of Mae Clark who did well in a wide range of roles – the fiance in Frankenstein, Jimmy Cagney’s rather strait-laced moll in The Public Enemy and as a sensitive but street-wise woman in this one. I enjoyed Whale’s restrained handling of the melodrama. I could have lived without the ending. I didn’t know they would have to resort to that in the pre-Code days. Highly recommended.

The Miracle Woman
Directed by Frank Capra
Written by Jo Swerling based on a play by Robert Riskin and John Meehan
1931/US
Columbia Pictures
IMDb page
First viewing/My collection

John Carson: Are you a teetotaler?
Florence: No, not annoyingly so.

This false prophet picture is another solid pairing of Frank Capra and Barbara Stanwyck.

Florence “Faith” Fallon (Stanwyck) is the daughter of a devout and holy preacher. His parish gave him the boot in favor of a younger man. He can’t even give his farewell sermon before dying of a broken heart. Florence loses her faith and thinks of believers as hypocrites.  She delivers a fierce farewell sermon.

Con man Bob Hornsby (Sam Hardy) approaches Barbara and tells her she can get back at the hypocrites by fleecing them and Barbara becomes a miracle worker and revivalist.  The entire operation is based on lies and playacting and is thoroughly corrupt.  Bob somehow figures he has an ownership interest in Florence and is very jealous.  She refuses to give him a tumble.

One night she chances to meet blind aviator John Carson (David Manners).  They begin seeing each other.  Can true love reform Florence?

This is an enjoyable movie and Mme. Stanwyck acts her heart out.  Not a must-see but one of the better pre-Code movies she made.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1xrg6aWjBI

Clip – Stanwyck lets loose in the opening sequence.

Illicit
Directed by Archie Mayo
Written by Edith Fitzgerald, Robert Riskin, and Harvey F. Thew
1931/US
Warner Bros.
IMDb page
First viewing/My collection

Anne Vincent Ives: Nearly every girl I know, Mr. Ives, is either unhappily married or happily divorced, and I’ve simply come to the conclusion that marriage is disastrous to love. There’s so much about it that’s all wrong – the awful possession that people exert over each other, the intimacy, and the duties. I don’t know… but love can’t stand the strain, that’s all.

This movie can be criticized on several grounds, but Barbara Stanwyck’s performance isn’t one of them.

Dick Ives (James Rennie) and Ann Vincent (Stanwyck) are upper class New Yorkers who run with the fast crowd.  They are in madly in love with each other and, though they don’t live together, go away on lots of weekend get aways.  Ann thinks marriage would only kill the spontaneity and fun they currently enjoy.  She eventually talks Dick into going along with her, though he hates the hiding they must do.

Finally James’ father talks them in to marrying. All the things that Barbara feared happen and then they flirt with disaster and old flames played by Ricardo Cortez and Natalie Moorehead.  Can this marriage be saved?  With Joan Blondell as a friend.

Stanwyck is by far the best actor in this movie.  Though this is not a comedy, she exudes a charm and pep in the early love scenes that provide an early glimpse of her talents as a comedienne.  Other than that, the movie just seemed to plod along while not really being long enough to earn its rushed ending.

clip

Ten Cents a Dance
Directed by Lionel Barrymore
Written by Jo Swerling and Dorothy Howell; inspired by a song by Rogers and Hart
1931/US
Columbia Pictures
IMDb page
First viewing/YouTube

Barbara O’Neill: She’s got to keep the place hot enough to avoid bankruptcy and cold enough to avoid raids.

Lionel  Barrymore’s directorial debut was this pretty good melodrama with Barbara Stanwyck in fine form.

Barbara Stanwyck is a taxi dancer that hates her job and most men. It does pay the bills, however.  She has a secret boyfriend named Eddie (Monroe Owsley) to whom she is devoted. She has also attracted the attention of millionaire Bradley Carlton (Ricardo Cortez). He obliges when she asks him if he has a job for Eddie, whom she refers to as a friend.

After they secretly marry, Barbara quits her job and attempts to make ends meet as a housewife.  However, Eddie reveals himself to be an irresponsible loser and Barbara is back on the dance floor.  Carlton does not stop pursuing Barbara.

I enjoyed this one. Stanwyck and Cortez have good chemistry and the story, if hackneyed, moves right along and sustains interest. This was the first movie Lionel Barrymore directed and I think he did a good job.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfUniuD-jsY

Doris Day sings “Ten Cents a Dance” in Love Me or Leave Me (1955), a biopic about Ruth Etting, who first made the song a hit

Night Nurse
Directed by William A. Wellman
Written by Oliver H.P. Garrett and Charles Kenyon from a novel by Grace Perkins
1930/US
Warner Brothers
IMDb page
Repeat viewing/Amazon Prime rental

Maloney: Take my tip and stay away from interns. They’re like cancer… the disease is known but not the cure.

Pre-code classic with the perfect cast and lots of snappy dialogue.

As the movie starts, Lora Hart (Barbara Stanwyck) is applying for a nurse training program at a local hospital.  The director of nursing is an old bat who rejects Lora for her origins and lack of high school diploma.  But a kindly old doctor recommends her and she is immediately accepted.  In training with Lora is Maloney (Joan Blondell).  The two become roommates and have adventures, many involving undressing or dressing.  One that doesn’t has the two nurses treating bootlegger Mortie’s bullet wound on the quiet.  Mortie starts his campaign to win Lora.

The first jobs Maloney and Lora get after graduating is shifts at the house of a wealthy alcoholic mother of two.  Mom’s life is one round of drunken parties after another.  She has taken up with hunky but sinister “chauffeur” Nick (Clark Gable).  In the meantime, the little girls are slowly dying of starvation.  Lora fights like the dickens to get them out of the control of their scheming doctor (Ralf Harolde).

This Pre-Code classic is great fun what with all the disrobing, fisticuffs, and straighttalking (“you mother!”). It  combines two of my favorite things – a feisty Barbara Stanwyck and a great pre-code vibe. Add in Blondell and Gable and you’re in essential territory.  Highly recommended.

Night Nurse was the last film in which Clark Gable played the bad guy.

Other Men’s Women
Directed by William A. Wellman
Written by Maude Fulton and William K. Wells
1931/US
Warner Brothers
IMDb page
First viewing/Amazon Prime rental

Bill White: I love you, Lily. And I want ya. And if you are here or near me, I’ll take you. You understand? I’ll take you.

William Wellman blends exciting railway action with a love triangle made more palatable by the excellent acting of all concerned.

Bill White (Grant Withers) is a hard-drinking locomotive engineer and ladies’ man.  He is currently hanging out with drinking buddy Marie (Joan Blondell) who is after him to marry her.  He shares duties in the same locomotive with colleague and best friend Jack (Regis Toomey). Both are railroad men through and through.  Jack thinks Bill should settle down and invites him to dinner at his home with his wife Lily (Mary Astor).  Bill eventually moves in with the couple and quits drinking.

There has been an unspoken sexual tension between Bill and Lily.  One day, they declare their love and seal it with a kiss.  Bill decides the best thing to do is move out which leads Jack to figure out something is going on with Bill and Lily.

This revelation occurs on the locomotive and the two begin fist fighting furiously.  In the process, Jack is thrown off the train.  The incident leaves him blind.

Bill begins drinking again and is back with Marie.  I think I’ll stop here except to say that the climax of the film is an unbelievable but spectacular.  With James Cagney in a small speaking part as one of the railway workers.  He even does a little dance (see below)!

I love Mary Astor and I thought she was very appealing in this.  It’s Grant Withers’s movie though and he acquitted himself admirably.  As did everyone else.  If the fairly standard tragic love triangle is pretty routine, there is all that spectacular train action to enjoy.