Category Archives: Pre-Code Reviews

They Call It Sin
Directed by Thornton Freeland
Written by Lillie Hayward and Howard J. Green from a novel by Alberta Steadman Eagen
1932/US
First National Pictures (Warner Bros.)
IMDb page
First viewing/Forbidden Hollywood Vol. 4

Dixie Dare: The nearest I ever got to a swell apartment was a kitchenette and a wall bed.

Missable love quadrangle shortie featuring a bland cast and bland script but lovely trimmings.

Jimmy Decker (David Manners) is the son of a farm equipment tycoon.  Dad sends him off to Kansas to get a deal.  Jimmy says a fond farewell to his socialite fiancee Enid Hollister (Helen Vinson).

In small town Kansas, Jimmy somehow ends up in church and falls for beautiful organist Marion Cullen (a blonde Loretta Young).  She likes him too and dismays her strict parents when she spends all afternoon on a boat ride with him.  He promises to help her with her music career.  They kick her out of the house but not before revealing that her real parents were not married and her mother was a showgirl.

Marion heads off to New York to find Jimmy.  When she gets there, she learns about the engagement.  Jimmy is clearly in love with her but cannot break it off with Enid.  He has many discussions about the matter with his friend Dr. Tony Travers (George Brent) who falls for Marion himself.

Marion decides to make it on her own.  She goes to a casting call where she plays piano for supremely bad dancer Dixie Dare (Una Merkel).  They become roommates later. Impresario Ford Humphries (Louis Calhern) has eyes only for Marion.  He hires her as a rehearsal pianist and reluctantly gives Dixie a place in the chorus.  He then begins to squire the now glamorous Marion all over town and groom her for a position as his mistress.  Things get more dramatic and Marion feels like she must make a decision.

This has very little oomph and the title is false advertising.  All the actors are their usual competent but bland selves with the exception of Calhern who always provides plenty of bite to his roles.  This has a bit of comedy courtesy of Una Merkel but is basically a dramatic picture. I see no reason to seek this out though the production is first-rate and Gregg Toland’s cinematography is nice.

Man Wanted
Directed by William Dieterle
Written by Robert Lord and Charles Kenyon
1932/US
Warner Bros.
IMDb page
First viewing/Forbidden Hollywood Vol. 2

Lois Ames: You see, I’ve been having trouble with secretaries. The work is so uncertain. It needs a man. You understand that our relations will be purely of a business nature.
Thomas ‘Tom’: Of course, Mrs. Ames.

This pleasant. if slight, rom com benefits greatly from the performance of Kay Francis.

Lois Ames (Francis) inherited her father’s publishing business and relishes being in charge. She spends many late hours at work.  After her long suffering secretary refuses to work overtime she has an important vacancy to fill.

Tom Sherman (David Manners) works with his roommate Andy (Andy Devine) at a sporting equipment business.  He is assigned to sell a rowing machine to Lois.  He meets her late in the evening and it is obvious that there is a strong mutual attraction.  David volunteers to act as her secretary.  Time passes and eventually he is her right hand man.

This wouldn’t be a romantic comedy if there were not obstacles.  These come in the form of Tom’s awful fiancee Ruth (Una Merkel) and Lois’s playboy husband Freddie.  He is independently wealthy and plays polo along with partying constantly.  He is also having an affair with socialite Ann Le Maire (Claire Dodd), unbeknownst to Lois.  I’ll stop here.

This is an ok romantic comedy.  Francis is very good in it.  She had sly glances mastered at this point.  David Manners was his usual bland self.  Una Merkel’s role does not allow her to display her comic talents.  It’s missable but at only 62 minutes I enjoyed it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSCI6g3MB1I

Lawyer Man
Directed by William Dieterle
Written by Rian James and James Seymour from a novel by Max Tell
1932/US
Warner Bros.
IMDb page
First viewing/Forbidden Hollywood Vol. 4

Olga Michaels: Remember, I told you it doesn’t pay to take cases against these big uptown lawyers. They got too much pull!
Anton (Tony) Adam: Yeah, well, I got a lotta push.

Joan Blondell and William Powell make a winning pair in their only film together.

The setting is early 20th Century in New York.  Crack defense attorney Tony Adam works the Lower East Side.  He relies on faithful secretary Olga Michaels (Blondell).  Her unrequited love for her boss is evident to everybody except him.  He’s quite a ladies man.

Tony wins a murder case against a high-class lawyer.  It is unexplained why this kind of a lawyer would be on the other side of a murder trial.  Any way, the attorney thinks Tony’s flair for jury trials would be a perfect match for his firm and Tony agrees to become his partner.  Olga moves with him but is forced to witness him take up with the boss’s sister Barbara (Helen Vinson).

Tony is soon courted by gang boss John Gilmurry but refuses to join his organization. Gilmurry tries to destroy him by introducting him to beautiful Virginia St. Johns (Claire Dodd).  Virginia has Tony eating out of her hand in short order and gets him to pursue a phony breach of promise case against an associate of Gilmurry.  This doesn’t go so well for him.  Later Gilmurry offers Tony a job as Assistant DA  to get him on his side and the tables turn.  With Roscoe Karns as a reporter and Sterling Holloway as Olga’s chum.

This movie’s plot is far too convoluted for the 68 minutes devoted to it.  But Powell and Blondell are in top form and their scenes together are all excellent.

Wild Boys of the Road
Directed by William A. Wellman
Written by Earl Baldwin from a story by Daniel Ahern
1933/US
Warner Bros.
Wild Boys of the Road
Repeat viewing/Forbidden Hollywood Collection Vol.

Edward ‘Eddie’ Smith: Go ahead! Put me in a cell. Lock me up! I’m sick of being hungry and cold. Sick of freight trains. Jail can’t be any worse than the street. So give it to me!

Hard-hitting Warner Brothers pre-Code exposé about kids who leave home to seek work when their parents lose their jobs.

The story starts in small town USA where high school sophomores Eddie Smith (Frankie Darrow) and Tommy Gordon (Edwin Phillips) are trying to get into their class dance.  Tickets cost 75 cents and they have only 75 cents between them.  Their disguise attempt fails and the boys and their dates drive off in Eddie’s beloved jalopy. The kids are typical goofy teenagers.

The next morning brings bad news.  Eddie’s father has been permanently laid off from his job.  Eddie eventually sells his car for scrap to help out.  Eddie’s father can’t find work and eventually his folks are threatened with eviction as their credit for groceries etc. is cut off.

Tommy’s mother has had very little work for months.  The two boys think the best thing is to move to a big city and try to find work there.  They plan to send money home to their parents.

So they start hopping trains.  The first fellow migrant they find is Sally (Dorothy Coonan) who is traveling disguised as a boy.  The three will stick together throughout the story.  The little band keeps growing as more and more youth travel the rails in search of work.  But there is no work and the railroad and police intercept any attempts to settle.  Finally,  the  kids fight back against the relentless pressure to move on.  With Sterling Holloway as one of the gang and Ward Bond as a predatory railroad guard.

This is powerful, terrific stuff up until the the abrupt and unearned ending. The lead, Frankie Darro, is splendid. He had the talent, energy and athleticism to be another Cagney but was hampered by his small stature. Wellman again shows his mastery of crowd scenes and love of trains. Recommended.

Trailer with commentary from Trailers from Hell (spoiler alert)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uu6XZ-2Y6_w

Very nice clip montage set to “(I Am) A Poor Wayfaring Stranger”.

Frisco Jenny
Directed by William A. Wellman
Written by Wilson Mizner and Robert Lord
1932/US
First National Pictures (Warner Bros.)
IMDb page
First viewing/Forbidden Hollywood Vol. 3

Frisco Jenny Sandoval: Born in a cellar under a fish market; but, a gentleman, Amah. A real man. Nothing beyond his reach. District Attorney. Governor. Even President.
Amah: Confucius says: Fortunate is the mother of a man-child.

This is sort of like Madame X with an earthquake.  The earthquake is the best part.

The story is set in San Francisco just prior to the 1906 earthquake and fire.  Frisco Jenny Sandoval helps her abusive father (Robert Emmet O’Conner) run a low-rent saloon on the Barbary Coast.  She is in charge of the many prostitutes that ply their trade there.  Jenny is in love with piano player Dan McAllister (James Murray).  They want to marry but Dad won’t have it.  Before the lovers can come up with a Plan B, the earthquake destroys the saloon and kills both Jenny’s father and Dan.

This leaves Jenny a pregnant orphan.  She gives birth in squalor in Chinatown and raises the boy she names Dan for a couple of years.  During this time she decides to open a brothel and eventually has a big success with it.

Jenny is present when her attorney and partner Steve Dutton (Louis Calhern) shoots a man.  She helps him dispose of the evidence.  Dutton advises Jenny to let a wealthy couple adopt her son, at least until the heat is off. But Jenny never gets him back.

SPOILER ALERT

Time marches on and with it Dan becomes a successful athlete and scholar.  He gets a job with the District Attorney’s office and has plans to run for District Attorney.  Dutton wants to reveal Dan’s origins to spoil his chances in the election.   So Jenny shoots Steve.  The film ends with a trial in which Dan unknowingly prosecutes his own mother.

Wellman directs a mean earthquake.  Although this film includes several pre-Code topics it has few light moments or any of that snappy patter I love so much.  The acting is OK.  I always like Louis Calhern.  I hadn’t know his career was so long.  The costumes and sets are lavish.  Unless you are in the mood for a well-made but badly scripted melodrama, I would give this a miss.

Female
Directed by Michael Curtiz (William Wellman uncredited)
Written by Gene Markey and Kathryn Scola suggested by a story by Donald Henderson Clarke
1933/US
First National Pictures (Warner Bros.)
IMDb page
First viewing/Forbidden Hollywood Vol. 2

James – Alison’s Main Butler: It was the custom of Catherine the Great to serve vodka to her soldiers to fortify their courage.

Fun role-reversal movie rushes to its more conventional ending.

Alison Drake (Ruth Chatterton) inherited her father’s automotive company.  She runs it like a pro, barking orders, making split second decisions etc.  She also hires a stable of attractive young men she treats like bimbos.  She asks them to discuss business at her home, plies them with vodka, and lets the fun begin.  One of these is George Cooper (Johnny Mack Brown).  When he brings flowers in the morning, Alison makes it clear that a courtship was not what she was looking for.

Alison thinks the company’s car designs need an upgrade and sends for a prominent design engineer.

One night, Alison goes out cruising the streets incognito and runs into Jim Thorne (George Brent).  They have fun at a shooting gallery and then enjoy dining and dancing Depression style.  Jim wishes her a platonic goodnight, which definitely wasn’t what she was expecting.

Of course, it turns out Jim is actually her design engineer.  None of Alison’s ploys work on Jim, who is a manly man and will do the asking thank you very much.  What’s a girl to do?  No points for guessing correctly. With Ruth Donnelly as a nervous secretary.

The first two-thirds of this movie are immense fun.  Chatterton looks like the cat that swallowed the canary throughout and is clearly enjoying herself.  In the final third, the film races to its moralistic conclusion.  I have become used to this in pre-Code films so I can’t complain to much.  It would have been better if the film ran more than an hour and developed the relationship so that it earned its ending.  Brent is his old reliable self.  That first two thirds makes the film well worth seeking out.

There were three directors on this film.  William A. Wellman shot most of the film after William Dieterle had to bow out due to illness.  Then Jack Warner decided he didn’t like the actor playing the George Cooper part and subbed in Johnny Mack Brown.  Wellman was no longer available and Michael Curtiz re-shot those scenes.  Oddly, Curtiz got the directing credit.

Trailer (basically gives away the plot of the movie)

Three on a Match
Directed by Mervyn LeRoy
Written by Lucian Hubbard from a story by Kubek Glasmon and John Bright
1932/US
Warner Bros.
Repeat viewing/Forbidden Hollywood Vol. 2

Ruth Wescott: [Referring to Vivian] Some people get all the luck.
Mary Keaton, aka Mary Bernard: [Musingly] I wonder.

I enjoyed this Pre-Code classic.  What a cast!

The film begins on the playground of P.S. 62.  Three middle-school girls are spotlighted. Ruth, the “smart one”, Vivian, “the popular one”, and Mary “the bad one”.  We follow their story as they turn into Ruth (Bette Davis),  Vivian (Ann Dvorak, and Mary (Joan Blondell). Ruth, who couldn’t afford to continue her education, becomes a stenographer.  Vivian marries wealthy lawyer Robert Kirkwood (Warren William) and has an adorable son and lavish lifestyle.  Mary went to reform school and then on to become a chorus girl.

They meet by chance and catch up over lunch.  Vivian reveals that something is missing from her life.  The three become friends.

Time marches on.  Vivian becomes depressed.  Robert agrees she should take a cruise alone with their son.  This brings her into contact with gangster Michael Loftus (Lyle Talbot) and she loses herself to debauchery and addiction.  In her haze, she neglects her son. Things will go downhill from here for Vivian.  Ruth and Mary’s fortunes take a turn for the better.  With Humphrey Bogart in a small role, his first as a hoodlum.

The first half of this movie is great pre-Code fun.  The second half descends into lurid melodrama touching on such pre-Code themes as adultery, child neglect, addiction, and untimely death.  Vivian’s drug of choice looks to be cocaine, which I didn’t know was a thing in 1932.  So we get the complete package.  These actresses are great together and it’s basically a must-see for the pre-Code obsessed.

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.