Category Archives: 1932

Merrily We Go to Hell
Directed by Dorothy Arzner
Written by Edwin Justus Mayer from a play by Cleo Lucas
1931/US
Paramount Pictures
IMDb page
First viewing/Criterion Channel

Joan Prentice: I spent the morning realizing that we’re living in a modern world – where there’s no place for old-fashioned wives. You seem to want a modern wife and that’s what I’m going to be. You see, I’d rather go merrily to Hell with you than alone.

The sad story of marriage to an alcoholic, expertly delivered by Sylvia Sidney and Fredric March.

Jerry Corbett (March) is an alcoholic newspaper reporter/aspiring playwright.  One night he chances to meet heiress Joan Corbett at a party.  He is attracted and she appears to be swept off her feet despite his evident inebriation.  During their courtship, Jerry lets Joan down over and over again.  Joan’s father violently objects to Jerry and opposes their eventual plans to marry.  But Joan remains madly in love and he realizes he can’t stop them and goes with the flow.

Joan helps Jerry sober up, settle down, and finish writing his play, which is about his breakup with his ex-girlfriend.  They are happy during this time.  Then the play is accepted for production.  The leading lady is the ex-girlfriend and soon Jerry is off the wagon again. The couple moves to New York.

The play is a great success.  Jerry shows up very late and totally blotto to his own cast party.  He takes up with the ex-girlfriend again, making no effort to disguise this from Joan.  So Joan decides that what is good for the gander is good for the goose.  She begins drinking and starts going to drinking parties with other men, including Charlie Baxter (Cary Grant).  Things sort of go downhill from there.  Can Hollywood pull out a happy ending?

I have long maintained that Fredric March makes the most believable drunk in classic cinema and Sylvia Sidney is a favorite.  Arzner saw that the production of this sad story was told with realism and a light touch on the melodrama.  Very worth seeing.

Restoration trailer – English with French subtitles

Hot Saturday
Directed by William A. Seiter
Written by Seton I. Miller from a novel by Harvey Fergusson
1932/US
Paramount Pictures
IMDb page
First viewing/Criterion Channel

Ruth Brock: Immoral women shouldn’t work in banks, you know. They might corrupt the young dollar bills.

Fun movie with a stellar cast and a wonderful unexpected ending.

All the boys are after bank clerk Ruth Brock (Nancy Carroll).  She is playing the field.  She agrees to go to a Saturday dance out by a lake with one of the tellers.  Hunky millionaire Romer Sheffield (Cary Grant) stops by the bank one day, is immediately attracted to Ruth and lays it on heavy with the compliments.  He hears of the trip to Willow Springs and offers to treat all the young people to a party at his mansion with real liquor and everything. Ruth is still not buying what he’s selling.  Everybody goes out to the dance, a traditional part of which is a romantic boat ride.  Ruth’s date, already frustrated by her attention to Romer, insists on some petting.  Ruth runs away to Romer’s house.  She stays up talking with him until late and then his chauffeur takes her home at 2 a.m.

A particularly mean girl of her acquaintance and her date spread the news of Ruth’s late arrival home.  Before the local gossip mill is through playing “Telephone” she has spent the night with Romer.

When Ruth returns home she finds straight-arrow childhood sweetheart Bill Fadden (Randolph Scott) in her kitchen.  They talk over old times.  They spend the next day together and it ends with an accepted marriage proposal.  On Monday, Ruth is fired from her job at the bank for immorality.  Bill has gone off for a week to do a geological survey. Ruth’s mother (Jane Darwell) is outraged at her indiscretion.  Nancy runs away in the pouring rain to Bill’s encampment.  I will go no further except to say that the ending is great and was totally unexpected by me.

This one simply screams Pre-Code.  Grant and Scott so young and beautiful.  I really enjoyed it.  Perfect short fun romance.

Million Dollar Legs
Directed by Edward Cline
Written by Henry Myers and Nick Barrows from a story by Joseph L. Mankiewicz
1932/US
Paramount Pictures
IMDb page
First viewing/Criterion Channel

Opening Title Card: Klopstokia… a far away country – – Chief Exports… Goats and Nuts – – Chief Imports … Goats and Nuts – – Chief Inhabitants … Goats and Nuts

Paramount brought its leading comics together for this hour-long laughfest.

Klopstokia is a tiny bankrupt country who principal products and inhabitants are goats and nuts.  These days it is more bankrupt than usual.  Brush salesman Migg Tweeny (Jack Oakie) comes to town.  Angela (all the girls in Klopstokia are named Angela) and Migg immediately fall madly in love.  Angela (Susan Fleming) is the daughter of the President (W.C. Fields), who rules on the basis of his ability to win at arm wrestling with his Cabinet.

Klopstokia is full of unheralded athletes and Migg gets the bright idea of asking his company to pay a prize to each athlete that wins a medal at the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics.  Rebellious Members of Cabinet send spy Mata Machree (Lyda Roberti), the most irresistable woman in the world, with the team.  The idea is that she will seduce each in turn and destroy morale.

The plot, of course, is a device to hang a constant stream of sight gags and jokes.  These are silly but genuinely funny.  I had a smile on my face throughout.  Recommended.

Clip

The Devil Is Driving
Directed by Benjamin Stoloff
Written by P.J. Wolfson, Allen Rivkin, and Louis Weitzenkorn from an orginal story by Frank Mitchell Dazey
1932/US
Paramount Pictures
IMDb page
First viewing/Criterion Channel

All art is theft. — David Shields

Drama about the auto theft racket is too short to really develop characters or the story.

‘Beef’ Evans (James Gleason) is a family man who has an adorable little son.  He also is the manager of a bizarre auto theft racket, in which luxury cars are stolen then given a nice new paint job on the sixth floor of an eight-story building which also contains a parking garage and a speakeasy.  The nominal boss of the operation is Jenkins (Alan Dineheart) but the real brains and unquestioned leader is a very weird deaf mute.

Beef takes pity on his friend ‘Gabby’ Denton (Edmund Lowe) and gives him a job in the auto shop.  He does not reveal the criminal activity of the business.  Time marches on and Gabby is sweet talking Jenkins’s girlfriend ‘Silver’ (Wynne Gibson) who reciprocates. Jenkins is very jealous.  Beef’s son is hit by a car but survives.  Beef tries to find the culprits and is killed for it.  The rest of the movie is devoted to Gabby and Silver’s search for the killer.

This is certainly not a must see and has the flaws common to movies of this length in this era.  But I like Gleason and Lowe a lot and was entertained.

Tribute to character actor James Gleason

Red Dust
Directed by Victor Fleming
Written by John Lee Mahin from the play by Wilson Collison
1932/USA
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
First viewing/FilmStruck

Vantine: [sarcastically] What a pleasant little house party this is gonna be

The sparks fly when Clark Gable gets all pre-Code with Jean Harlow and Mary Astor.

Dennis Carson (Gable) is the manager of a Southeast Asian rubber plantation.  Conditions are primitive and the coolies stop working any time the boss’s eyes are turned.  Into this milieu comes Vantine (Jean Harlow), a sassy “working girl” who is lying low from authorities at the moment.  At first, Carson looks down his nose at her but soon they are going at it hot and heavy.  It is clear there is a genuine affection.  She gets on the boat back to Saigon at the same time rookie engineer Gary Willis (Gene Raymond) arrives to take up duties at the plantation with his wife Barbara (Astor) and some tennis rackets in tow.

It is clear the Willises are out of their depth.  To make matters worse, Gary comes down with a serious bout of malaria and Dennis must nurse him back to health.  This brings Dennis and Barbara into alliance and he is drawn to the beautiful and proper married lady at first sight.  While Dennis schemes to get alone with Barbara, Vantine returns from the boat, which will be out of commission for the next six weeks. This is going to get very interesting …

I have been dying to see this for ages.  It just turned up on FilmStruck with a bunch of other movies starring Harlow.  Red Dust did not disappoint.

Gable and Harlow were at the peak of their sex appeal and the tension among the three leads is palpable.  The film has the kind of snappy 30’s dialogue that I love so much and Fleming provides the energy that makes everything hang together beautifully.  Highly recommended.

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