Category Archives: 1933

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

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

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

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.

Picture Snatcher

Patricia Nolan: What do you think you are, a reporter? Why you’re the lowest thing on the newspaper. A picture snatcher!

Spending an evening with Jimmy Cagney is never a bad thing.

When mob boss Danny Kean (Cagney) is released from prison, he decides to go straight and gets a job as a photographer for a sleazy tabloid, working for City Editor McLean (Ralph Bellamy). He goes after all the hard targets, specializing in photos the subjects don’t want taken. He finds that his gangster skills serve him well as he connives to get to his victims.

He is called to take a high school group on a tour of the newspaper offices.  It is there he meets and chats up teenage Patricia Nolan (Patricia Ellis).  Her father is the policeman who arrested him and he is none too happy about this development.  When McLean vouches for Danny, the father softens only to get demoted for allowing the photographer to sneak into an execution.  Danny’s other romantic complication is the advances of McLean’s girlfriend (Alice White).  Further plot developments will allow Danny to save the day.

I enjoyed this movie, though it certainly isn’t the best of the many pre-Code newspaper movies or anything.

Lady for a Day

Judge Henry G. Blake: Never in all my questionable career have I gazed upon such divine loveliness.

Frank Capra’s build up to his Oscar for It Happened One Night (1934) is an excellent urban fairy tale.

Apple Annie (May Robson) lives a meager existence on the streets of New York City selling apples.  Her best customer is Dave the Dude (Warren William), a gambler that believes her apples are lucky.  Annie has a daughter she has not seen for years who was sent to Europe for school.  Annie has maintained the persona of a wealthy woman by her access to the stationary of a luxury hotel and an accomplice who mails her letters.  Then there are two pieces of bad news.  One, her contact is fired.  Two, her daughter Louise (Jean Parker)  has fallen in love with the son of a Spanish count and announces she will arrive soon with her fiance and his father in tow so the families can meet.  Annie slides into a deep funk and stops selling apples.

Dave’s response is to organize a team of his low life cronies and try to teach them high society manners.  His girlfriend nightclub owner Missouri Martin (Glenda Farrell) cleans up Annie very nicely and helps with the crash course in decorum.  A pool shark judge (Guy Kibee) with a glib tongue is enlisted to pose as Annie’s husband.  There are many suspenseful moments leading up to a truly fairy tale ending.

Despite a little schmaltz, this is one of my favorite Capra movies. Robson is just wonderful. It was nominated for Oscars in the categories of Best Picture, Best Actress, Best Director, and Best Writing, Adaptation. I had never heard Glenda Farrell sing before and she delivers a truly boffo rendition of “I Wanna Man”.  For his last feature film, Capra would remake this story as A Pocketful of Miracles (1961), starring Bette Davis and Glenn Ford..

Every version of this timeless story makes me weep. This is a particularly good one.

Four teenage girls in Massachusetts and their wise and kind mother “Marmee” hold down the fort at the March house while their preacher father is comforting troops during the American Civil War. The family has fallen on hard times, but somehow finds it possible to be charitable to  those still more unfortunatel. The girls are Meg (Frances Dee), the maternal one; Jo (Katharine Hepburn), the clever one; Beth (Jean Parker), the shy one: and Amy (Joan Bennett), the conceited one. During the course of the story, the girls will be given many opportunities to fight against their little vices and become virtuous young women (This is not near as pious as it sounds!).

The Marches live next door to wealth, stern Mr. Laurence (Henry Stephenson).  He shares his home with grandson “Laurie” (Douglass Montgomery) and Laurie’s tutor John Brooke.  Jo is a free thinker and a tom boy who is up for anything and becomes fast friends with Laurie.  She works for her even more cantankerous Aunt March (Edna May Oliver).  The aunt is impossible but has all but promised Jo she will take her along on her next visit to Europe.

I will stop here.

I don’t know what it is about this story that chokes me up so but I cry at every version. This time I was in tears almost all the way through. It’s kind of hard to rate a movie that hits you so deep. I probably read the novel 10 times as a child.

Any way, all the acting is superb with Katharine Hepburn having been born to play her character and Edna May Oliver so perfect as a crusty aunt with a heart of gold. Cukor did a fine job with this material.

The damn trailer makes me cry! (Several spoilers)

Montage of scenes from early in the movie featuring Hepburn.

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I also watched Blessed Event (1932), a very good “newspaper” movie starring Lee Tracy as an unscrupulous gossip columnist.  I saw it the last time I did a Pre-Code binge.  It is reviewed here.

Flying Down to Rio

Honey Hale: [watching a Carioca dance] What’s this business about the foreheads?
Fred Ayres: Mental telepathy.
Honey Hale: I can tell what they’re thinking about from here.

Fred and Ginger got their start here and bring the screen alive whenever they appear.

Bandleader Roger Bond (Gene Raymond) gets a yen for Delores del Rio when they meet in Miami. But it turns out she has been engaged since childhood to Raul Roulien, a friend of the family. This slows down Gene not at all.

Coincidentally, Raymond’s band gets a gig to open del Rio’s father’s hotel. Fred Ayres (Fred Astaire) and Honey Hale (Ginger Rogers) are members of the ensemble. Bad guys try to deny the hotel an entertainment license but the band gets the idea of having the entertainment in the air.

What makes this movie a must for me is that it is Fred and Gingers first movie together and they dance the Carioca divinely. The chorines on the wings of bi-planes are also an attraction. The actual plot is predictable and the principal actors are kind of dull.  It is certainly pre-Code by virture of the see-through costumes on many of the girls.

Producer Merion C. Cooper reportedly came up with the idea for the aerial title song number. He also did the world a gigantic favor when he married actress Dorothy Jordan who was slated to play Fred Astaire’s partner. He took her on a year long honeymoon and Ginger Rogers got the role.  The rest is history.