Category Archives: 1932

Cynara

Jim Warlock: That’s all I have left now – that I don’t have to lie about it.

It’s hard to go wrong with King Vidor, Ronald Colman and Kay Francis.  I loved this excellent romantic drama.

The setting is London. Virtually the entire movie is told in flashback as Jim Warlock (Colman) tries to explain to his wife Clemency (Francis) how he went from being a faithful, happily married man to having to exile himself to South Africa.  In happier times, Colman was a successful barrister with a  bright future. He and Clemency (Francis) have had seven years of marital bliss. Jim is a stay-at-home kind of guy and considered to be somewhat boring. Clemency has to go on a month-long trip to Venice with her flighty sister to distract her from a bad romance.  She encourages Jim to have some fun in her absence.

The minute Clemency has left the scene, Jim’s playboy friend John Tring (Henry Stephenson) encourages Jim to have a bit of extramarital fun . The two meet a couple of shopgirls in a restaurant and Ronald is clearly attracted to much younger brunette Doris Emily Lea (Phyllis Barry). He continues to resist and then John enters Doris in a bathing beauty contest Jim has to judge. Doris will stop at nothing to win her man. She tells him she has had other lovers and that she will say goodbye without a wimper when Clemency comes back. So Ronald and she begin a love affair. When Kay returns, though, Phyllis is too in love to give Ronald up, leaving him in a terrible dilemma. I will stop here. The movie ends with a courtroom drama and then segues into the present as Jim prepares to board his ship.

I really liked this one. All the principals are excellent and the story seems like something that could actually have happened.  If you are looking for a sophisticated adult romance, I warmly recommend this.

No trailer or clip so here’s a tribute to the director

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I also rewatched Marie Dressler’s charming performance as “Emma” (1932).  My review can be found here.

Is My Face Red?

Morning Gazette Telephone Operator: And get the lead out of my WHAT?… oh, Mister Poster!

OK newspaper movie with a smackable performance by Ricardo Cortez as an unscrupulous gossip columnist.

William Poster (Cortez) plays a cocksure and obnoxious Walter Winchell-style gossip columnist who relishes digging up the most embarrassing dirt on famous names. He is also quite a playboy. For some reason, chorus girl Peggy Bannon (Helen Twelvetrees) has remained engaged to him for five years and is a source of a lot of juicy tips for his column. Eventually, Cortez takes a huge risk spilling the beans on Sidney Toler, an Italian restaurant owning mafioso. He also steps out on Peggy with heiress Mildred Huntington (Jill Esmond).

My favorite parts were the scenes with Zasu Pitts as the paper’s switchboard operator. Ricardo grins a lot but his character is really unlikeable. I like him as a romantic lead, but a comedian he is not. Twelvetrees has not let me down yet.

White Zombie

Charles Beaumont: Zombies!
Legendre: Yes, they are my servants. Did you think we could do it alone?

This is an effective low budget independent film noted for being the first zombie movie, though these zombies do not feed on human flesh but are more or less slaves.

On an ocean voyage plantation owner Charles Beaumont (Robert Frazer) falls for a woman (Madge Bellamy) who is sailing to Haiti to be married. Once they return to the island and she meets her intended, Beaumont enlists the help of evil sugar mill owner Legendre (Bela Lugosi) to make her his own. Legendre does this by using a hypnotic drug and making her a zombie like all the workers at his mill. Is there any going back? And what sinister plans does Bela have for her?

This is pretty darn creepy without a drop of blood to be seen.  Lugosi’s performance is very like that in Dracula (1931), with the hypnotic stare and slow emphatic delivery. The zombies look pretty much like the zombies in more modern fare.  The print I watched on Amazon is the best I have seen and gave me more appreciation for the film.

Bird of Paradise

Johnny Baker: Aw, you haven’t sinned. I loved you and you loved me. That’s all there is to it.
Luana: But, I taboo for white man, Johnny.

They say the play was more ridiculous than the movie but I suspect it was a close call.

Johnny Baker (Joel McCrea) is on a yacht trip in the South Seas when he is dragged from the boat by a shark. Native beauty Luana (Delores Del Rio) cuts the rope that has entangled McCrea with the fish. The two are instantly smitten. The yacht crew is invited to Del Rio’s island for a welcome banquet. When McCrea attempts to carry her off for some nookie he learns that she is taboo, is to marry the prince of the island, and is also set to be a sacrifice to the god Pele if the island’s volcano erupts. The yacht crew leaves McCrea behind. Before long the two are lovers and flee to another island. Can they escape the long arm of Dolores’s father?

For me this veers into the so bad it’s good category. I never thought I’d say that about a film directed by Vidor. But seriously some of the dialogue is such high camp that I laughed out loud. The main attraction for me is that McCrea spends much of the movie without his shirt on.  It didn’t help that the version I watched on Amazon Prime was colorized. There are several versions currently available on YouTube for free.

Upon receiving his AFI Lifetime Achievment Award] I’d be the first to admit I’m a damn good director. – Frank Capra

Thomas A. Dickson (Walter Huston) runs a successful bank. He believes that credit should be given based on character not on wealth. His board of directors believes this “faith-based lending” will wreck the bank and wants either to get Walter to change his ways or quit. Walter refuses to do either.

Then the bank is robbed of $100,000. It was evidently an inside job and blame is placed on cashier Pat O’Brien who is in charge of the vault. He has an alibi which he refuses to use because it might compromise Walter’s wife Phyllis (Kay Johnson) whom he found in the apartment of creepy bank executive Cyril Cluett (Gavin Gordon).

In an elaborate game of “telephone”, rumors that the bank has lost millions in the robbery and is on the verge of failure spread like wildfire through the city.  A run on the bank ensues. I will go no further except to say that many of the tropes in this movie would appear again in It’s a Wonderful Life (1946). With Constance Cummings as O’Brien’s fiancee and Huston’s secretary.

This is an excellent movie. The acting is terrific and the skill that Capra was developing is evident in every scene, especially the spectacular crowd shots during the bank run. Recommended.

Murders in the Rue Morgue

Dr. Mirakle: My life is consecrated to great experiment. I tell you I will prove your kinship with the ape. Eric’s blood will be mixed with the blood of man.

Overlooked Universal horror entry loosely based on the Poe story complete with “Swan Lake” opening music.

Bela Lugosi plays mad scientist Doctor Mirakle who displays his “man-ape” in a carnival sideshow by day and conducts evil experiments on young ladies in an attempt to combine ape and human blood by night. With Leon Ames (still billed as Leon Wycoff) as Pierre Dupin, here a medical student in love with the Sidney Fox, the ape’s choice for a bride.

This film is marred by some ham-handed comic relief and unconvincing ape effects. On the other hand, it does feature some pretty spiffy cinematography by DP Karl Freund.

The American Kingdom

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

Doctor X

Dr. Haines, Academy of Surgical Research: If you ask me, I think Dr. Xavier is using very unethical methods.
Dr. Rowitz: Necessity has no ethics, sir.

It’s not easy to make a comedy that is also a horror film and I wish the filmmakers had not attempted it here.

A series of “Moonlight Murders” leave bodies with weird surgical mutilations that tie them to a research laboratory headed by Dr. Xavier (Lionel Atwill). An enterprising reporter (Lee Tracy) interferes with the good doctor’s efforts to keep his investigation of the crimes private. With Fay Wray as the doctor’s daughter.

This film was billed as a horror/romance/comedy and therein lies its problem. The comedy is just not funny enough and is so prominent as to weaken the horror. The last 10 minutes are fairly scary, however. Second of two films at Warner Bros. to be shot in “improved” two-strip Technicolor. The studio then abandoned the process due to its expense and lackluster box office.

Restoration Demo