Flickers in Time

Evelyn Prentice
Directed by William K. Howard
1934/USA
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM)
First Viewing

Evelyn Prentice: There’s nothing wrong with those letters.They’re innocent.
Lawrence Kennard: Then why are you here?
Evelyn Prentice: There’s nothing safe with a man like you.

Engaging “women’s picture”/courtroom drama.  John Prentice (William Powell) is a high-powered defense attorney whose practice keeps him away from home most of the time.  Evelyn Prentice (Myrna Loy) is his long-suffering but adoring wife.  Their happy home is threatened when a beautiful client (Rosalind Russell) throws herself at John and an unsavory “poet” insinuates himself into Evelyn’s life.  With Una Merkel as Evelyn’s wise-cracking friend and permanent house guest.

I thought this one was a whole lot of fun.  It goes to show that Powell and Loy were the perfect screen couple even when the material gets more serious as here.  I had never heard of the director but he certainly keeps things moving right along.  I adore Una Merkel and she has a meaty part here.  This was Rosalind Russell’s screen debut.  She was still finding her way.  I seem to always get annoyed at courtroom dramas and here neither the judge nor the attorneys ever seem to have heard of concept “conflict of interest”.  The film was strong enough that the improbable ending was fine by me.

Trailer

Our Daily Bread (1934)
Directed by King Vidor
1934/USA
King W. Vidor Productions (as Viking Productions, Inc.)
First Viewing

John Sims: Don’t worry Mary. I know things are hard now but we’ll make it in the end.
Mary Sims: But how, John? Who’s going to save us?
John Sims: Not who, Mary, what. The bread will save us, the bread.

John and Mary Sims (Tom Keane and Karen Morely) are about to be evicted when Mary’s uncle offers them a farm which is about to be foreclosed on. Although they know nothing of farming, they move there. They meet a dispossessed Swedish farmer (John Qualen) who shows them the ropes. Then John gets the idea of starting a cooperative where tradesmen will work on the barter system. Before he knows it, he has an entire village on the land and the men are plowing the fields.

King Vidor made this film with his own money as a labor of love, having been captivated by the “back to the land” movement as a solution to the woes of the Great Depression. The acting is earnest, but not particularly great. Unfortunately, I could not watch the film without questioning most of the basic premises. If these people could make a go of it why were so many farmers losing their farms in the Depression? Of course it helped that the land was essentially free (somehow these people manage to get it for $1.85 at a foreclosure auction). The seed etc. was miraculously available free. Finally, these folks dam and divert a stream a couple of miles away to solve their drought problem. In real life, the farmers whose lands were naturally irrigated by the stream would have been there in a heartbeat with guns.

Excerpt – Jinnovation in Depression-era farming

Cleopatra
1934/USA
Directed by Cecil B. DeMille
Paramount Pictures (A Cecil B. DeMille Production)
First viewing

Cleopatra: Together we could conquer the world.
Julius Caesar: Nice of you to include me.

Cleopatra (Claudette Colbert) seduces Julius Caesar (Warren William) and then Marc Antony (Henry Wilcoxson) in an attempt to save her beloved Egypt from conquest by Rome.

The Hollywood epic is my least favorite genre of movie.  While spectacular, the sets here are more reminiscent of the studio backlot than of Egypt.  Claudette Colbert can’t help but be just a bit charming but the other acting is over-the-top when it is not just wooden.  Colbert wears many revealing gowns and there is plenty of suggestive dancing and gore to be had, but nothing near to that on display in DeMille’s <i>The Sign of the Cross</i> a couple of years earlier.

Re-release trailer

Little Miss Marker
Directed by Alexander Hall
1934/USA
Paramount Pictures
First viewing?

[box] Marthy Jane, Little Miss Marker: My mommy used to read to me about King Arthur.

Bangles Carson: Where is your mother, Marky?

Marthy Jane, Little Miss Marker: My mommy got awfully tired, and went away. She’s never coming back anymore.[/box]

Wow, this was kind of a let down after Bright Eyes.   The plot of the movie is based on a Damon Runyon story and all of the characters are gamblers or their associates.  Marthy Ann’s (Shirley Temple) father doesn’t have the money to bet on a race but leaves his daughter as a marker.  After he loses his bet, he commits suicide (!), leaving Marthy Ann an orphan.  Sorrowful Sam, the bookmaker (Adolphe Menjou), is stuck with the adorable child and spends most of the movie trying not to fall in love with her.  Bangles Carson (Dorothy Dell), nightclub singer and moll of a crooked racehorse owner, helps Sam take care of her.  Will Sam and Bangles turn Marthy Ann over to the authorities?

The gamblers try to get Little Miss Marker to believe in fairy tales again.

I’ve liked Damon Runyan adaptations including 1933’s Lady for a Day but Alexander Hall is no Frank Capra and he can’t make the sodden screenplay sparkle.  I am beginning to wonder about how cavalierly the movies treat tragedy in the ’30’s.  I can’t imagine slapping the suicide of a small child’s father in the middle of a comedy in a modern movie or that the child would scarcely react to such an event.  Puzzling.

Pedophilia didn’t seem to be a big concern then either.  We are treated with a scene in which Sam and Markie share a room.  Markie complains that she can’t go to sleep in her underwear and proceeds to strip down in front of him wearing Sam’s pajama top but revealing a lot.  It was clearly a much more innocent age.

Clip – “Laugh, You Son of a Gun”

The Old Fashioned Way
Directed by William Beaudine
1934/USA
Paramount Pictures
First viewing

Cleopatra Pepperday: [after McGonigle takes a heavy fall] Marky, are you hurt?
The Great McGonigle: [sarcastically] No, I had the presence of mind to fall on my head.

It is the Gay Nineties and W.C. Fields plays The Great McGonigle, proprietor of a travelling theater company that puts on melodramas.  As usual, there is a romance involving his daughter.  There’s some comedy singing by a rich widow and straight singing by the daughter’s beau.  The film is capped by Fields’s juggling act.

Some quality time with Baby LeRoy

I found this less annoying than the other Fields pictures I’ve watched for 1934. The juggling act at the end is actually pretty good. Fields got his start in vaudeville as a juggler and is talented at it.

Fields’ juggling act

Sadie McKee
Directed by Clarence Brown
1934/USA
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM)
First Viewing

Opal: Lady, when you say, “I do take thee,” how you take him.

Sadie McKee’s mother is a cook for a wealthy family and Sadie grew up with son Michael. She is engaged to Tommy. Michael fires him for stealing. Tommy takes off for New York and Sadie tags along with the understanding they will marry. But Tommy skips out on her with a night club singer. Penniless (she went with Tommy with the clothes on her back), Sadie gets a job dancing at a night club and meets alcoholic millionaire Jack Brennan, whom she marries. Sadie and Michael spend most of the movie at odds with each other because 1) Sadie’s never forgiven him for firing Tommy and “ruining her happiness” and 2) Michael thinks Sadie is a gold digger for marrying Jack, his client. With Joan Crawford as Sadie, Franchot Tone as Michael, Edward Arnold as Jack Brennan, and Gene Raymond as Tommy. Also with Jean Dixon in a nice performance as Sadie’s buddy and Esther Ralston (who can’t carry a tune) as the night club singer.

What a plot! And I omitted a lot of it ….  Anyway, this is your standard glossy MGM melodrama. It’s pretty good for what it is but numerous aspects of the story annoyed me. I don’t usually care for Joan Crawford, particularly when she is being deified as here.  If you like her, I think you’d like the movie more than I did.  The trailer gives a fair representation of what is in store.

Trailer