Category Archives: 1932

The Most Dangerous Game
Directed by Irving Pichel and Ernest B. Shoedsack
Written by James Ashmore Creeland from a short story by Richard Connell
1932/US
Produced by Merion C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack; Distributed by RKO
IMDb page
Repeat viewing/Amazon Prime rental

Bob: This world’s divided into two kinds of people: the hunter and the hunted. Luckily, I’m the hunter. Nothing can change that.

I’ve seen this film several times through the years and, if anything, my affection for it has grown.  The filmmakers make every minute count in this 63 minute thriller/horror film.

Bob (Joel McCrea is a big game hunter.  As the movie opens he tells the rest of his party that hunting is sport for both the hunter and the hunted.  He soon will find out how wrong he is when their fancy yacht is shipwrecked on a small island.

The island is ruled by psycho-sadist hunter Zaroff.  Bob is introduced to the Tartars who work for him and shown his ravenous savage dogs.  Zaroff has arranged that his island benefit from numerous shipwrecks it seems.  Currently Eve (Fay Wray) and her recklessly alcoholic brother (Walter) are in residence.  Eve takes Bob aside and says that something is wrong.  The shipwrecked sailors that were there when the two arrived have disappeared.

Zaroff is excited to meet Bob, having read his books. Zaroff says that his trophy room is open to visitors only right before they go on a hunt.  Martin asks to see it and is never seen again.  Eve and Bob break into it and gasp at the gruesome mounting of disappeared humans therein.

Now it is Bob’s turn to become prey.  The deal is that the hunt will begin at midnight.  If Bob can survive until dawn, he will win and he and Eve can depart on the launch.  If Zaroff kills Bob he will take Fay Wray and make her his own.  This would be a fate worse than death and she decides to accompany Bob.  Bob is armed only with a large knife.  Zaroff has access to an arsenal of unique weapons. The remainder of the film is non-stop action as the pair surmount one scary obstacle after another.  Noble Johnson plays the Count’s main lackey.

I’ve always liked this one because Joel McCrae runs around in rags displaying his very attractive chest.  But it’s a cracking action movie as well and moves at an admirable pace.

There is nothing “early talkie” about this.  McCrea and Wray are fine.  Leslie Banks goes way over the top in a manner that suits the material  perfectly.    Max Steiner composed one of the very first movie score to  fully integrate the musical score with the images on-screen and to score individual scenes for their content and create leitmotifs for individual characters, as opposed to simply providing vaguely appropriate mood music.  Nothing high brow but awfully entertaining.  Recommended.

The movie was filmed concurrently with King Kong (1933) during the breaks for special effects work.  The same sets were used for the swampy forest setting in which the hunt takes place.

Skyscraper Souls
Directed by Edgar Selwyn
Written by C. Gardner Sullivan from a novel by Faith Baldwin
1932/US
Cosmopolitan Productions for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
IMDb page
First viewing/Forbidden Hollywood Vol. 7

David ‘Dave’ Dwight: They laughed at me when I said I wanted a hundred-story building. They said it wouldn’t hold together. But I had the courage and the vision and it’s MINE and I own it! It goes halfway to hell and right up to heaven and it’s beautiful!

Director Selwyn tries to stuff an expose of capitalism run rampant, a love triangle, and a couple of other romances into 90 minutes with mixed success.

Dave Duke (Warren William) is obsessed with the skyscraper he owns and is named after him.  He needs capital to continue to own the building and will resort to low tricks to keep it.  Duke is a great womanizer.  He has an open marriage with his wife (Hedda Hopper) who lives in Europe.  Currently he is having an affair with his executive assistant Sarah Dennis (Verree) Teasdale whom he keeps at arms length by claiming his wife won’t divorce him.  Soon he begins to mess with Sarah’s secretary and protege Lynn Harding (Maureen O’Sullivan).

Meanwhile, Lynn is being pursued by bank teller Tom (Norman Foster).  She gives him the cold shoulder initially but soon begins to date him.  They fall in love but she tells him she can’t marry a man without money.  Then Dave pounces.  There are a couple of other unresolved romances – one between Jake Sorenson (Jean Hersholt) and prostitute Jenny (Anita Page) and one between Slim (Wallace Ford) and the perpetually hard up Myra (Helen Coburn).  I’ll stop here.  The film gets more and more lurid until its stunning climax.

This movie simply has too much plot.  It could have cut a couple of unnecessary romances that only confuse the point.  Then maybe we would have the time to explore  Maureen O’Sullivan’s sudden and disconcerting change from good girl to bad girl and back again.  Warren William’s character is so despicable that you can only applaud his fate.  We do get a nice art deco office building and some pretty good acting.

The Hatchet Man
Directed by William A. Wellman
Written by J. Grubb Alexander from a play by Achmed Abdullah and David Belasco
1932/US
First National Pictures (Warner Bros.)
IMDb page
First viewing/Forbidden Hollywood Vol. 7

Opening Title Card: San Francisco’s Chinatown of fifteen years ago had the largest Oriental population of any colony outside China. Its forty thousand yellow residents were divided into various political factions known as ‘Tongs”, each governed by a President and Council. These various Tongs were almost constantly at war, so the office of “Hatchet Man” was one of special importance. The honorable title of “Hatchet Man” was passed from father to son by inheritance only, and it was he, with the aid of his sharp axe, who dispensed the justice of the great god Buddha.

If you can get past a ton of racial stereotyping and exclusive use of yellowface, this is an OK gangster/love triangle film with another fine performance by Edward G. Robinson.

The setting is San Francisco’s Chinatown.  Chinatown is full of opposing tongs that are at all out war.  The elders of a tong send for Wong Low Get (Robinson) and his hatchet.  He arrives from San Francisco only to find that the man he is to murder is Sun Yat Ming (J. Carrol Naish), his boyhood friend.  Wong protests but finally goes to call on Sun.  Sun already knows the jig is up.  He shows Wong the will which leaves him everything including his young daughter’s hand in marriage.  Then he calmly accepts his fate.

Segue to 15 years later.  Wong has become a wealthy businessman and the girl has grown up to be Loretta Young.  Both are thoroughly Westernized.  Loretta loves a good time but Wong proposes and she obediently accepts.

Eventually Wong is called on to use his hatchet again on a rival tong member in Sacramento.  Wong’s bodyguard thug Harry En Hi (Leslie Fenton) takes his absence as an opportunity to make Loretta his own.  What will happen when Wong discovers Loretta in a passionate embrace with Harry?  I’ll stop here with plenty of plot yet to come.

I enjoyed this but BOY if you cannot get past the racial stereotyping this movie is not for you.

Downstairs
Directed by Monta Bell
Written by Lenore Coffee and Melville Baker from a story by John Gilbert
1932/US
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
IMDb page
First viewing/Forbidden Hollywood Vol. 6

Albert, the Baron’s Butler: Life downstairs is very simple. But, up there, the rules are different.

John Gilbert pushed making this film to revive his career.  I wonder why he thought his thoroughly amoral character would appeal to audiences.

The setting is a country in Central Europe between the World Wars.  Aristocracy still thrives.  The film opens with a wedding hosted by the Baron and Baroness for Albert , their chauffeur, and Anna (Virginia), their lady’s maid.  Karl (Gilbert), the new chauffeur, strolls in and it is immediately clear that servile decorum is not for him.  In fact, he is a born trouble-maker.  His first move is on Anna, whom he relentlessly pursues.

Paul Lukas walks into his room and finds John Gilbert attempting to seduce his new wife Virginia Bruce.

Gilbert then moves on to seduce the Baroness and even the old cook.  He also lies and steals freely.

John Gilbert makes nice with past conquest Hedda Hopper and future conquest Olga Baclanova

If this had starred Ronald Coleman the character would have been portrayed as a charming rapscallion.  Gilbert plays him more like an uncouth bad boy whose looks have helped him get along all his life.  I found the character unlikeable and his actions deplorable.  So this is not a movie I love.  That said, the acting, even Gilbert’s, is fine and it does have that MGM glamour going for it.

The Wet Parade
Directed by Victor Fleming
Written by John Lee Mahin from a novel by Upton Sinclair
1932/US
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
IMDb page
First viewing/Forbidden Hollywood Vol. 6

Roger Chilcote: [speaking of his drunken son to Judge Brandon and Major Randolph after dinner] Republican tendencies, George, that’s what’s the matter.
Major Randolph: I never knew a Republican who could hold more than a pint.

This is a historically interesting look at alcoholism in America, the potential cure via Prohibition, and its utter failure to fix the problem.

The film spans the period from 1916 to 1932 and examines the fate of two related families. The wealthy Chilcote family still live the plantation lifestyle in the deep South. Roger Chilcote (Lewis Stone), the patriarch of the family, seems to drink all day long and has many buddies who do the same. Roger Jr., his son, is also usually soused. Daughter Maggie May (Dorothy Jordan) is a teetotaler and keeps begging her father and brother to stop drinking and get to work. She has very poor success.

The Tarlton family are the Chilcote’s poor Northern cousins.  Mrs. Tarlton and her teetotal son Kip (Robert Young) struggle to keep the family’s hotel running while patriarch Pow Tarlton is busy drinking heavily and campaigning on behalf of Woodrow Wilson.  Roger Chilcote turns up trying to flee his family and drink in peace.  His sister Maggie May follows and eventually she and Kip fall in love.

The introduction of Prohibition in 1919 is very hard on Pow.  Finally he is brought low by bad liquor he is sold for cheap on the black market.  With Jimmy Durante as a G-man.

I thought this was pretty interesting.  Walter Huston is fantastic in it.  The other actors are a mixed bag.  Fun to see Jimmy Durante in a somewhat serious role, though he is always cracking jokes.  Dorothy Jordan is not a good actress and overdoes the melodrama whenever she has the chance.  The film is almost two hours long and it held my interest throughout.

Nothing for this specific movie so here’s a tribute to Walter Huston. The film is currently available for free on YouTube.

Miss Pinkerton
Directed by Lloyd Bacon
Written by Niven Bush and Lillie Hayward from a novel by Mary Roberts Reinhart
1932/US
First National Pictures (Warner Bros.)
IMDb page
First viewing/Forbidden Hollywood Vol. 5

Nurse Adams, aka Miss Pinkerton: Oh, I’m tired and I’m bored! I think I’ll donate my pink and white body to science and commit suicide.

Move over Una O’Conner.  Move over Fay Wray.  Joan Blondell has you beat in the screaming department.

This is a 66-minute old dark house murder mystery.  Nurse Adams (Joan Blondell) is complaining about boredom.  Her boss assigns her to assist the police to solve a mystery that took place is said old house.  Adams’s cover is to tend to an elderly bedridden relation of the victim.  She certainly gets the excitement she was seeking!  And then Police Inspector Patten (George Brent) is easy on the eyes.

You can’t guess the mystery because key suspects are introduced in the last ten minutes of the mystery.  Plus the length does not allow character development.  It’s actually more of a scary movie than a mystery and there are some effective jump cuts.  Blondell is always fun to watch and she does not disappoint here.

Hard to Handle
Directed by Mervyn LeRoy
Written by Robert Lord and Wilson Mizner; original story by Houston Branch
1933/US
Warner Bros.
IMDb page
First viewing/Forbidden Hollywood Vol. 5

Lefty Merrill: Did Ruth tell you I was in town?
Lil Waters: Yeah. You and the rest of the Depression.

A dose of James Cagney is always a great pick-me-up.  The rest of this cast not so much.

The story begins in Southern California.  Lefty Merrill (Cagney) is a con man.  His latest scam is a rigged dance marathon.  His girlfriend Ruth Waters (Mary Brian) is one-half of the winning pair.  Her mother Lil (Ruth Donnelly) is counting on the $500 to pay her back rent. But the joke is on Lefty when he is left holding the bag by his partner who takes the entire proceeds including the prize money.  Now Lil hates Lefty and wants her daughter to have nothing to do with him.  Lil proves herself to be a pretty ruthless scam artist herself.

Ruth and Lil move to New York City and Ruth gets a job as a photographer’s model.  The photographer is sweet on her and Lil covets his $25,000 a year salary.  Lefty can’t stay away and comes up with more crooked get-rich-quick schemes to try to win Ruth back. The scams are both outrageous and obvious and Lil’s opinion of him rises and falls with his fortunes.  With Allen Jenkins as a radio announcer reporting on the dance marathon.

Jimmy Cagney, as always, is a magnetic force of nature in this film.  However none of the rest of the cast can match him.  Also, I love Ruth Donnelly.  She overacts shamelessly to provide a lot of stupid comic relief here.  Also I thought the fact the mother and daughter wear matching outfits throughout much of the movie was distinctly odd.  Not a bad way to kill an hour and 18 minutes I suppose.

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.