Daily Archives: November 29, 2021

In Old Arizona
Directed by Raoul Walsh
Written by Tom Barry from a story by O. Henry
1928/US
Fox Film Corporation
IMDb page
First viewing/YouTube rental

[last lines] The Cisco Kid: Her flirting days are over. And she’s ready to settle down.

The plot is corny and the acting is over-the-top. But these things only added to the charm for me.

The Cisco Kid (Warner Baxter) is a stagecoach robber who steals only from companies not from passengers.  He’s an affable sort of Robin Hood who dotes on his girlfriend Tonia Maria (Dorothy Burgess), unaware of her serial infidelities.

Sergeant Mickey Dunn (Edmund Lowe) is on his trail.  He easily convinces Tonia to help bring her man in by promising her a share of the reward money.  Will the two be successful?

Baxter and Burgess take their characters way over-the-top, using every Latinex stereotype in the book, and Lowe is not far behind.  Despite, or maybe because of, this I found the film thoroughly entertaining.  It could not have been made post-Code for a couple of reasons.

Warner Baxter won the Oscar for Best Actor.  The film was nominated in the categories of Best Picture, Best Director, Best Writing and Best Cinematography.

I hadn’t really thought of Warner Baxter as a handsome man until I saw this tribute.

The Big House
Directed by George W. Hill
Written by Frances Marion
1928/US
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
IMDb page
First viewing/YouTube rental

John Morgan: You know it means the rope, Butch, if they catch you? Who’s in on it?
‘Machine Gun’ Butch Schmidt: Well, me and Olsen and Joe and the Hawk.
John Morgan: The Hawk? That means blood.
‘Machine Gun’ Butch Schmidt: No, he promised me he wouldn’t bump nobody off.
John Morgan: Why, he croaked his own mother.
‘Machine Gun’ Butch Schmidt: Sure he did. He cut her throat. He was sorry for it. He’s all right.

This forerunner of many better prison escape movies of the 30’s is made watchable by its actors.

Kent Marlowe (Robert Montgomery) is sent up to the “Big House” for 10 years for killing a person while drunk driving.  He is young, naive, and very nervous.  He is put in a cell with ‘Machine Gun’ Butch Schmidt (Wallace Beery) who is serving a life sentence for murder and John Morgan (Chester Morris), a thief also serving a ten-year sentence.  The two hardened criminals try to show Kent the ropes but he is a coward who would rather snitch than fight.

The story covers the planning and execution of an escape attempt.  Morgan falls in love with Kent’s sister (Leila Hyams) in a minor subplot.

The acting is good but I didn’t find too many thrills.  The main point of the movie seems to be to point out crowding and corruption in the prison system.

The Big House won Oscars for Best Writing and Best Sound.  It was nominated for Best Picture and Best Actor (Beery).  Amazing how Wallace Beery could be both so darn lovable and so damned menacing at the same time!