Category Archives: Pre-Code Reviews

Her Man
Directed by Tay Garnett
Written by Tom Buckingham; story by Tay Garnett and Howard Higgin
1930/USA
Pathe Exchange
First viewing/YouTube

[box] Tagline: YOU’LL NEVER FORGET IT! The blood-firing romance of a girl WHO DARED THE WORLD FOR LOVE! She was tender, young and beautiful, but she knew LIFE in the raw, vivid, colorful, elemental! Daring and soul-stirring is the story of a girl who found real love in the crucible of flaming desire and elemental thrills![/box]

Unsung pre-code gem is a heady mixture of lowlife atmosphere and tender romance told to the tune of “Frankie and Johnny”.

The film begins in the chaotic world of a dockside dive in Havana.  We see the interaction of sailors, hoods, drunks, and prostitutes.  Gradually, the story focuses in on Frankie (Helen Twelvetrees), a tough but good-hearted bar girl who specializes in petty larceny while drinking with the clientele.  She yearns for a better life but is squarely under the thumb of mean, evil pimp Johnnie (Ricardo Cortez).

Then Dan (Phillips Holmes) walks into Frankie’s world.  He is immediately attracted to the goodness and vulnerability he senses from her.  But Frankie must play tough to protect him from Johnnie.  One beautiful day, however, Dan takes Frankie out on the town and she can resist no longer.  The film closes with a nail-biter battle between Dan and Johnnie.

This movie really drew me in.  I was so worried that it would end tragically that I could hardly bear to watch.  I had fallen in love with Holmes and Twelvetrees and their romance. This is the first movie I have seen with Twelvetrees in it and I will be looking out for others.  She was excellent.  Unfortunately, her career did not much outlast the pre-Code era,  Recommended.

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The Doorway to Hell
Directed by Archie Mayo
Written by George Rosener from a story by Rowland Brown
1930/USA
Warner Bros.
First viewing/Amazon Instant

[box] Title Card: [closing title] The “Doorway to Hell” is a one-way door. There is no retribution – no plea for further clemency. The little boy walked through it with his head up and a smile on his lips. They gave him a funeral – a swell funeral that stopped traffic – and then they forgot him before the roses had a chance to wilt.[/box]

Second banana James Cagney steals this movie out from under the feet of preppy gangland boss Lew Ayers.

Louie (Ayers) is bootlegging beer in the big city.  He envisions himself as a Napoleon of crime and has the clout to order other mobsters to “organize” under his control.  After this scheme works peacefully for several months, Louis is ready to get out of the game and marry the fickle Doris, who would really rather play around with his right-hand man Mileaway (Cagney).  Louie leaves Mileaway in charge while he takes Doris on a honeymoon to Florida where he  has a touching reunion with his beloved kid brother.

All hell breaks loose without Louis on his throne.  He resists repeated calls to return but the gangsters figure out a way to get to him through his brother.  Vengeance and fate draw Louie back into a bloody gang war.

One of the most interesting things about watching these pre-Code movies is seeing future stars developing their personae.  Cagney’s is fully formed in only his second film – his first as a mobster.  The story is notable mostly for the fact that Ayers is totally miscast. He’s just too inherently nice to keep company with a bundle of mean street-wise energy like Cagney.  And I like Ayers in most things.  Otherwise routine gangster fare burdened  by early talkie technique.

Any one looking for “a love story beyond compare” need not apply! – LOL – note Dwight Frye toward the end

Clip – Cagney’s star quality is present from the beginning

Westfront 1918 (Westfront 1918: Vier von der Infanterie)
Directed by G.W. Pabst
Written by Ladislaus Vajda from a novel by Ernst Johannsen
1930/Germany
Bavaria Film/Nero-Film AG
First viewing/FilmStruck

[box] “We are not youth any longer. We don’t want to take the world by storm. We are fleeing. We fly from ourselves. From our life. We were eighteen and had begun to love life and the world; and we had to shoot it to pieces.” ― Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front[/box]

Pabst’s first talkie tackles the horrors of war.

We follow a group of young German infantry men in the trenches of France as they suffer through bad conditions and pure terror.  R&R spent in a French village behind the lines provides some relief but mostly it’s long waits for all hell to break loose.

Pabst’s first talkie came out the same year as Milestone’s All Quiet on the Western Front and has a lot in common with it. The director is still feeling his way with the format and this suffers from some over-obvious symbolism and poorly-paced combat footage. Still a powerful anti-war film which includes a glimpse of what life was like on the home front — not great.

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Whoopee!
Directed by Thornton Freeland
Written by William M. Conselman; story by William Anthony McGuire; from a play by Owen Davis
1930/USA
The Samuel Goldwyn Company
First viewing/Amazon Instant

[box] Another bride, another groom/ Another sunny honeymoon/ Another season, another reason/ For making whoopee –Lyrics by Gus Kahn[/box]

Busby Berkeley starts his dance director career with a bang in this fun musical.

For some reason Jewish hypocondriac Henry Williams (Eddie Cantor) is taking a rest cure in an Old West Town.  He is attended by a lovestruck nurse who is constantly trying to seduce him.  The remainder of the plot, such as it is, involves  a love triangle between a white lass, a boy raised by Native Americans and the local Sherriff.  Hijinx ensue.  In two-strip Technicolor.

This could not more clearly be a filmed stage play with a little bit of movie magic to allow Berkeley to do overhead shots and fit a bevy of beauties in the frame.  But if you are in the mood for some simple merriment, as I was, this is amazingly good.  I’m not that familiar with Cantor and he was really entertaining and had the opportunity to deliver two standards “Making Whoopee” and “My Baby Just Cares for Me” as well as some good lesser known songs. Those deeply offended by black face and some mild thirties racial humor need not apply,  Otherwise, recommended for lovers of musicals.

Classic Berkeley right out of the box — chorus girls emerge at about 2:00 – so good!

Eddie Cantor sings “Making Whoopee”

Smilin’ Through
Directed by Sidney Franklin
Written by James B. Fagan and Donald Ogden Stewart from a play by Jane Cowl and Jane Murfin
1932/USA
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
First viewing/Amazon Instant

[box] Kathleen: I don’t care what happens the day after tomorrow! Any more than I care what happened 50 years ago![/box]

This A-budget romantic melodrama didn’t quite do it for me.

Elderly Sir John Carteret (Leslie Howard) spends much of his time alone communing with the spirit of his lost love Moonyeen (Norma Shearer).  She was killed by frustrated suitor Jeremy Wayne (Fredric March) on their wedding day.  Shortly thereafter, Carteret becomes the guardian of his orphan niece Kathleen whose parents were lost at sea.

Kathleen grows up to be Norma Shearer.  She happens to meet American Kenneth Wayne (March again), the son of the man who killed her aunt.  He is in England having joined up early for World War I.  They quickly fall in love but John adamantly forbids the romance.  Kathleen is willing to defy her uncle but Kenneth is not.  Four long years pass before she sees Kenneth again.

This has the strong cast and production values one expects from an MGM picture of this era.  Unfortunately, I’ve been unable to warm up to Shearer, whom I never quite believe ,and it is she that carries the film.  The pathos is milked for every last tear.  Your mileage may vary.

Smilin’ Through was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture.

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The Eagle and the Hawk
Directed by Stuart Walker
Written by Seton I. Miller and Bogart Rogers from a story by John Monk Sanders
1933/USA
Paramount Pictures
First viewing/YouTube

[box] Henry Crocker: Why don’t you get wise? This is a war. I’m hired to kill the enemy, and there ain’t no book of rules about that. Every one I put away means one less to kill me. That’s my job, and I’m doing it.[/box]

A great cast ensures a solid anti-war film.

The setting is an RAF squadron in WWI.  Jerry Young (Fredric March) is a hot shot pilot. Henry Crocker (Cary Grant) is a cocky gunner.  They hate each other.  When the squadron is moved to France they get along even worse.  They are on surveillance duty and young “observers” accompany each flight.  Jerry agonizes each time a youngster dies.  Henry shares no such scruples and does not hesitate to shoot unarmed enemy observers who are trying to parachute to safety.

Despite everything, Jerry is continuously showered with medals after he completes his successful missions.  This only makes him feel worse.  His impending crackup is assisted along by copious amounts of alcohol.  Henry suggests to the brass that Jerry needs R&R in London.  There he is offered momentary comfort by The Beautiful Lady (Carole Lombard).  But things only continue to go downhill when Jerry returns to France.  With Jack Oakie to supply some laughs.

March and Grant were born to play these particular parts.  March, one of the great screen drunks ever, is the soul of sensitivity while Grant is the hard nut with a soft interior. Lombard has about five minutes of screen time and seems to have been added for some sex appeal in an otherwise all male story.  Quality film.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLkJ7bpLJN0

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Back Street
Directed by John M. Stahl
Written by Gladys Lehman and Lynn Starling from a novel by Frannie Hurst
1932/USA
Universal Pictures
First viewing/YouTube

[box] Ray Schmidt: I know myself so well – it’s all the way or zero with me.[/box]

Irene Dunne gives heart to this top-drawer melodrama.

Fun-loving Ray Schmidt (Dunne) is playing the field around the turn of the last century when she falls hard for rich, handsome Walter Saxel.  It just so happens that he is engaged.  On the day he is supposed to introduce Ray to Mama as a potential future bride she is called away by a family emergency.  They meet again in New York five years later.  Ray does not wait for a wedding ring from the now married Walter and he begins to “keep” her in an apartment.

Walter refuses to let Ray work or have a child so she spends a lot of lonely time waiting around while he is with his family or on extended business trips.  Eventually, his children discover the affair but are unable to break it off.  Twenty-five yers of mutual devotion end as they inevitably must, even in the pre-Code days.

John Boles overdoes it but Dunne is solid as a rock in this.  I believed every one of her tears without feeling manipulated in the least.  Recommended.

Back Street was remade in 1941 with Margaret Sullavan and Charles Boyer and in 1961 with Susan Hayward and John Gavin, neither of which I have seen.

Montage of clips

Holiday
Directed by Edward H. Griffith
Written by Horace Jackson from a play by Philip Barry
1930/USA
Pathé Exchange
First viewing/YouTube

[box] Linda Seton: Do you realize life walked into this house today?[/box]

I liked this original version of Holiday almost as much as its more famous 1938 .

Johnny Case (Robert Ames) and Julia Seton (Mary Astor) meet and fall in love while on vacation.  He proposes and she accepts.  Then she takes him home to meet her family in the big city.  She had kept quiet about the family’s immense wealth.  Johnny is of working class origins but has made good as a corporate lawyer.

Father rules the roost in the Seton family and is the soul of propriety.  He gives Johnny the once over and when he learns of the lucrative deals he has put together decides he is worthy.  Father’s domineering ways, however, have left sister Linda (Ann Harding) lonely and frustrated and son Ned a burgeoning alcoholic.

Johnny has kept a secret, too.  He is determined to take a long holiday from working once he has saved twenty thousand dollars.  He wants to find out who he is and what he really wants while he is still young enough to do something about it.  Things come to head on the night of the engagement party.  The sides square off with Linda and her free-thinking friends in the playroom, Julia and Dad in the ballroom and Johnny somewhere between the two …  With Edward Everett Horton as one on Linda’s friends.  He went on to reprise the same part in the 1938 version.

I wasn’t following along but I imagine most of the dialogue is word-for-word the same between the two versions of the story.  Robert Ames is a non-entity in the role very colorfully played by Cary Grant.  In contrast, Ann Harding is more than adequate in the Katharine Hepburn part.  She is less zany but perhaps more convincing in her thoughtful way.  Mary Astor is sublime, as usual.  Recommended.

Holiday was nominated for Academy Awards in the categories of Best Actress (Harding) and Best Writing (Adaptation).