Flickers in Time

I Lived with You
Directed by Maurice Elvey
Written by Ivor Novello, George A. Cooper, and H. Fowler Mear from Novello’s play
1933/UK
Gaumont British Picture Corporation/Twickenham Films/Julius Hagen Productions
First viewing/YouTube

[box] Things which do not require effort of some sort are seldom worth having. – Ivor Novello[/box]

I just loved this Ivor Novello penned British farce.

Gladys Wallis i(Ursula Jeans) s a shopgirl from a lower middle-class family.  She goes on an outing to Hampton Court with a girlfriend and gets lost in the Maze.  There she meets Felix (Novello),  a Russian prince to tells her all about his sad life since the Revolution. Gladys does not believe him until he shows her a pendant given to his mother by the Czar.  Felix is homeless and penniless.  The royalty-crazed Gladys takes him home and offers him a place to stay.

It turns out that the pendant contains several very valuable diamonds. Felix is soon adopted by the whole family.  His money and worldly ways soon turn the household upside down.  With 15-year-old Ida Lupino as Gladys’s wild sister and Jack Hawkins as her erstwhile boyfriend.

The plot summary does not do the extreme wit of the screenplay justice.  Novello is simply superb – ridiculous and charming at the same time.  My only previous acquaintance with the actor-songwriter-playwright was in Hitchcock’s The Lodger.  Now I have to seek out some of his other movies.  Highly recommended.

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Possessed
Directed by Clarence Brown
Written by Lenore J. Coffee from a play by Edgar Selwyn
1931/USA
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
First viewing/FilmStruck

[box] Marian Martin, aka Mrs. Moreland (to her mother): If I were a man it wouldn’t frighten you! You’d think it was right for me to go out and get anything I could out of life, and use anything I had to get it. Why should men be so different? All they’ve got are their brains and they’re not afraid to use them. Well neither am I![/box]

Beautiful people and MGM Class-A production values enliven this otherwise standard woman’s picture.

Marian Martin (Joan Crawford) is a small-town middle-school dropout who works at a paper box factory.  Hard-working childhood friend Al Manning (Wallace Ford) has been after her to marry him for years.  A chance meeting with a drunk millionaire gives her the final push she needs to try her fortune in New York instead.

Almost immediately, she meets wealthy lawyer-politician Mark Whitney (Clark Gable).  He sets her up in an apartment, educates her on the ways of society, and takes her around the world.  In short, he is the best sugar daddy ever.  Marian holds herself out as a wealthy divorcee living on her ex’s alimony but fools nobody.  After a while, she chafes at her lack of marital status. But Mark is gun-shy and has high political ambitions that conflict with taking a woman with a past as his wife.  That’s when Al comes back into the picture.

I loved looking at the beautiful sets and gowns.  Joan Crawford was at the height of her beauty at this time as is the mustache-less young Gable.  I was enjoying the story, too, until the last 20 minutes when Crawford goes all noble on us.  Fans of Crawford are likely to appreciate the film even more than I did.

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Once in a Lifetime
Directed by Russell Mack
Written by Seton I. Miller from the play by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart
1932/USA
Universal Pictures
First viewing/YouTube

[box] George Lewis: I don’t know anything about elocution.

May Daniels: You don’t know anything about anything, George, and if what they say about the movies is true, you’ll go far.[/box]

Hollywood did not spare itself in this funny satire about the transition from silent pictures to talkies.

Vaudeville is dying with the advent of talkies and the act of George Lewis (Jack Oakie) and May Daniels (Aline MacMahon) is dying with it.  May gets the bright idea of going to Hollywood and holding themselves out as elocution instructors.  George is as dumb as a box of rocks and he soon becomes infatuated with Susan Walker (Sidney Fox), a wannabe actress who is his intellectual soulmate.  Through sheer luck and chutzpah George takes tinsel town by storm.  The fictional studio head Herman Glogauer (Gregory Ratoff), who rejected Vitaphone, is mercilessly skewered.

The play was a big hit on Broadway.  I read about its creation in Moss Hart’s autobiography, Act One, and this was my first chance to see it.  It really is as funny as all that despite the staginess of the production.  Oakie and MacMahon are two of my favorite character actors of the period but perhaps my favorite part was Sidney Fox’s frequent recitations of the Kipling poem “Boots”.  Recommended and on YouTube.

Air Mail
Directed by John Ford
Written by Frank Wead from a story by Dale Van Every
1932/USA
Universal Pictures
First viewing/YouTube

[box] Duke Talbot: I’da made that flight to Paris but Lindy beat me to it.[/box]

John Ford gives us a glimpse at early aviation full of action and heart.

Stalwart pilot Mike Miller (Ralph Bellamy) runs the airmail operation at Desert Airport.  The location is beset by weather ranging from dense fog, to rain, to snow giving these “couriers” a chance to prove their mettle.  Early on, Mike loses one of his pilots in a fiery crash and gets obnoxious hot shot pilot Duke Talbot (Pat O’Brien) as a replacement.  The dead pilot just happens to be the brother of Mike’s sweetheart Ruth (Gloria Stewart).

Duke immediately starts showing off and, worse, putting the moves on willing Irene Wikins (Lilian Bond), the floozy wife of one of the other pilots.  Pilots start dropping out one by one for various reasons.  Mike’s eyes are not suited for night flying or bad weather.  Who will deliver the mail?  With Slim Summerville as a mechanic.

The main draw of this early Ford picture is some pretty stunning flying.  The director proves that he could keep everything very cinematic even early in the talkie years.  The story is filled with all the usual tropes for this kind of thing but it’s very human for all that.  Ralph Bellamy makes an attractive and likable leading man.  Recommended.

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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”