Tag Archives: Hollywood

Alice Adams
Directed by George Stevens
1935/USA
RKO Radio Pictures
First viewing

Virgil Adams: Why, you think you’re going to be pushed right spang up against a wall – you can’t see any way out, or any hope at all – then something you never counted on turns up – and you kind of squeeze out of it, and keep on going.

This romantic drama made me get pretty darn misty.  Katharine Hepburn plays Alice Adams, daughter of a working class family, who hides her origins under a facade of “quality” and a nervous laugh.  Her mother (Ann Shoemaker) is constantly after her father (Fred Stone) for “not making something of himself” and calling him a failure for not giving his children what they deserve.  She eventually nags him so much that he quits his job and unwisely opens a glue factory to exploit a formula he developed while working for his employer.

We see Alice suffer the youthful humiliations of being roundly snubbed at a society party, where she appears in a two-year-old dress and wearing hand-picked bunch of violets instead of orchids like the other girls.  But it is here that she meets a wealthy young man (Fred MacMurray).   She continues to play her society act until the fateful evening she must bring him home to meet her parents.

I liked the actors who played Alice’s parents nearly as much as Katherine Hepburn.  They seemed very believable in their roles.  Fred MacMurray played himself but how young he was!  Katharine Hepburn makes you embarrassed along with her at the dance and then convinces as a girl who is desperately acting a part.  I was surprised to learn that this film was a success during the Depression.  It’s not the escapist fare I am used to for 1935.

Alice Adams was nominated for Oscars for Best Picture and Best Actress.

Clip

Charlie Chan in Paris
Directed by Lewis Seiler
1935/USA
Fox Film Corporation
First viewing

Charlie Chan: Joy in heart more desirable than bullet.

Charlie Chan (Warner Oland) visits Paris to investigate a bond forging scheme and meets up with a couple of murders in the process.

This is a pretty good entry in the mystery series.  I was interested to see Erik Rhodes in the role of a bank employee and usually drunk.  I had never seen him in anything but the two Astaire/Rogers movies in which plays comic Italians. He’s OK but his material doesn’t let him be very funny.

Clip

Gold Diggers of 1935
Directed by Busby Berkeley
1935/USA
Warner Bros
First viewing?

I could have sworn I had seen this before but now I think it’s just that the “Lullaby of Broadway” sequence has been anthologized so often.  It is fairly entertaining but does not hold a candle to those sassy, sexy pre-Code Busby Berkeley musicals.

The story concerns the staff and guests at a luxury resort.  Wealthy Mrs. Prentiss (Ann Brady) arrives with her randy son Humbolt (Frank McHugh) and bored daughter Ann (Gloria Stewart) in tow.  Soon thereafter,  Ann’s fiance, daffy millionaire snuff-box collector T. Mosley Thorpe (Hugh Herbert), shows up.  Ann hates Mosley and is longing to have fun.  Her mother agrees that she can have fun that summer if she will promise to marry Mosley afterward and hires hotel clerk Dick Curtis (Dick Powell) to escort Ann around.  It doesn’t take a genius to tell where that part of the plot is going ….

Meanwhile, impresario Nicoleff (Adolphe Menjou) is deep in debt to the hotel.  The hotel manager plots to have Nicoleff direct Mrs. Prentiss’s annual charity show.  Nicoleff plots to milk as much money out of Mrs. Prentiss as possible.  The whole thing ends with the show, naturally.  With Glenda Farrell as Mosley’s gold digging private stenographer.

This is closer to a traditional musical comedy than the earlier Warner backstage musicals in that the opening minutes are a kind of artificially staged narrative and Dick Powell spontaneously bursts into song a couple of times.  Everyone is pretty good and Menjou is very funny as a Russian theatrical type.  The production numbers can be rather clunky at times.  I never fail to be shocked by the tragic ending to the “Lullaby of Broadway” sequence.  It seems so out of place.  Maybe the girl needed to be punished for staying out all night?

Trailer

‘G’ Men (1935)
Directed by William Keighley
1935/USA
Warner Bros.
First viewing

Jeff McCord: We’re gonna make the word “government” poison to them if it’s the last thing we do.

There is something so comforting about putting a James Cagney movie into the player.  I can count on him being good and usually the movie is good as well.  In this case, the movie is quite good.  With this film, Warner Brothers transformed the gangster genre into something the Hayes Code could live with while boosting an FBI that had just received the right to carry weapons and federal crime laws to enforce.

Cagney plays Brick Davis, a guy who grew up on the mean streets of the East Side but was financed by a bootlegger through law school.  When his government agent law school friend is gunned down by mobsters, Davis decides to join the Bureau, severing his ties with his benefactor and Jean, the nightclub singer who is sweet on him (Ann Dvorak).   In Washington, Davis is put under the tutelage of crusty veteran agent Jeff McCord (Robert  Armstrong) who thinks him “soft”.  Davis rapidly sets McCord straight and also impresses with his street smarts and inside info on the criminals he came up with.

The film is full of violent action, perhaps more of it than in the earlier gangster films.  Davis’s colleague is slaughtered by the mob while trying to transport one of their number to prison and there is a montage of armed bank hold-ups.  Later, after the Bureau is armed, there are a couple of spectacular gunfights.  In keeping with the Code, there is no gore and the bad guys are thoroughly despicable and thoroughly vanquished.  With Margaret Lindsay as Jeff’s sister and Brick’s love interest.

This movie sinks or swims on the back of Jimmy Cagney and he does not disappoint.  He has the same cocky charm and energy that Tom Powers had, with the appeal of being in the right, and a good script to work with.  Robert Armstrong plays his part with a healthy dose of humor, refreshing after his super-earnest work in King Kong.  The bad guys are all interesting.  Ann Dvorak was fine, but where did they get her dresses?  I don’t think I’m a Margaret Lindsay fan.

Re-release trailer

Poor, poor Ann Dvorak and her unfortunate costume (and routine!)

Charlie Chan in Shanghai
Directed by James Tinling
1935/USA
Fox Film Corporation
First viewing

Charlie Chan: Hasty conclusion like hind legs of mule – kick backwards.

Master-detective Charlie Chan (Warner Oland) travels to Shanghai ostensibly to visit the land of his ancestors but really to assist in a secret investigation.  But the British agent he was to assist is murdered at Charlie’s welcoming banquet and Charlie soon finds himself dodging murder and kidnapping attempts.  An American agent arrives and he and Charlie start on the trail of a gang of opium smugglers.  With Keye Luke as Lee, Chan’s “Number 1 Son.”

This is a competent, fairly standard entry in the mystery series.  It is notable for giving Oland a chance to show off his rich baritone singing voice when he entertains some children.  Number 1 Son, whom I had not encountered before, is somewhat silly but also comes to his father’s assistance in this one.