Category Archives: 1936

Edgar Brodie: We aren’t hunting a fox, we’re hunting a man. He’s an oldish man, with a wife. Oh, I know it’s war and it’s our job to do it, but that doesn’t prevent it being murder – simple murder!

Peter Lorre makes this early Hitchcock film a ton of fun despite a plot that is even more implausible than usual.

For reasons unknown, a novelist who is serving in the British army in World War I is renamed Richard Ashenden and selected by British Intelligence ito assassinate a German spy in Switzerland.  The identity of the spy is, of course, unknown.  Ashenden (John Gielgud) is given a phony wife, Elsa (Madeleine Carroll), and a crazy double agent called “The General” (Peter Lorre) to assist him.  Elsa is carrying on a flirtation with American Robert Marvin (Robert Young),but is immediately attracted to Ashenden.  Ashenden’s mission is made more difficult by his and Elsa’s distaste for cold-blooded killing, even of an enemy.

Although I have read that Lorre’s addiction made him quite a problem on the set, he still manages to turn in a bravura comic performance.  He is priceless as the randy “hairless Mexican”, so named because he is neither hairless nor Mexican, alternately delivering quips and exuding menace.  Madeleine Carroll is also wonderful.  Gielgud is good but he’s not really romantic lead material.  The story is one big McGuffin crowned by a head-scratcher ending but Hitchcock makes it all go down painlessly.

Clip – opening

Mrs. Lyons: Believe me, Donna, ten million at the altar is worth twenty million in the bush!

Deanna Durbin’s feature film debut is an entertaining, if predictable, light comedy..

Kay, Joan, and Penny Craig live with their divorced mother in Switzerland.  When the newspapers run a headline that their millionaire father (Charles Winninger) intends to remarry, it makes their mother cry.  So the enterprising young ladies head for New York determined to break up the marriage.  When the girls meet their father’s gold-digging fiancée Donna (Binnie Barnes), they are even more eager to interfere.  So they hire a penniless count (Misha Auer) to alienate Donna’s affections.   Along the way, Kay and Joan find love and Penny sings a few songs.  With Ray Milland as a monied aristocrat and Alice Brady as Donna’s mother.

Somehow, Deanna Durbin’s trained soprano voice doesn’t match her girl-next-door charm and comedic talents but I always enjoy her.  The movie, too, was fun with a top-notch cast of character actors.

Trailer

Stampede
Directed by Ford Beebe
Written by Robert Watson from a story by Ford Beebe
1936/USA
Columbia Pictures Corporation/Kenneth J. Bishop Productions/Central Films
First viewing

While I was out of town I watched a couple of 1936 B Westerns on my iPad.  This was the first.

Rancher Dale Milford desperately needs to sell his herd of horses to pay off a loan and save his ranch.  However, all buyers are being warned off his property by mysterious forces. His fate changes when brave Larry Carson (Charles Starrett) rides into town and starts investigating the death of his livestock buyer brother. There is no stampede.

This forgettable programmer was quite OK. The best part was the beautiful British Columbia scenery. Columbia shot this in Canada to fulfill a production quota; the story’s setting was Montana.

Clip – opening

Big Brown Eyes
Directed by Raoul Walsh
Written by Bert Hanlon and Raoul Walsh based on a story by James Edward Grant
1936/USA
Walter Wanger Productions for Paramount Pictures
First viewing

Editor: Wait! Wait!
Eve Fallon: You wait… you look like a waiter anyway.

This movie was a sure sign that Raoul Walsh was not to make his name for directing snappy romantic crime films.

Eve Fallon (Joan Bennett) is a manicurist in a hotel salon.  She trades wise cracks with all her flirtatious customers and her boyfriend Police Detective Dan Barr (Cary Grant).  There is an epidemic of jewel thefts in town and it seems like insurance detective Richard Morey (Walter Pigeon) always recovers the jewels.  We soon find out that Morey is the ringleader of the gang of thieves.  The editor of the local newspaper thinks Eve has brains and hires her as a reporter.  One of the gang members accidentally kills a baby in a park.  Eve uses her nose for news to help Dan catch the bad guys.  Throughout, the couple are bickering merrily.  With Lloyd Nolan as a gangster.

Poor reliable Cary Grant and Joan Bennett just couldn’t overcome the material they had to work with.  The plot is full of holes and most of the comedy falls flat.  A running thread is Eve’s jealousy of Dan’s supposed flirtation with a jewel theft victim.  Only trouble is that the woman is a ditzy society matron at least 20 years older than Dan.  I never believed that she would have given Bennett a moments heartache.

I have to go out of town for a couple of weeks to get my parents’ house ready for sale and will be away from my trusty DVD player.  I trust I’ll have some more exciting fare waiting for me when I get back.