LIGHTS OF NEW YORK (1928)

We are told that this is a tale of two milieus: small-town Main Street and big-city Broadway, a story that "might have been torn out of last night's newspaper" (just like TV's Law & Order!). Two bootleggers who have been hiding out in a small town hotel not far from New York City find out that legal charges against them have been dropped so they plan to head back to Broadway to run a speakeasy. They talk Eddie (Cullen Landis), the hotel barber, and his pal Gene (Eugene Pallette) into coming with them to run a barber shop in Manhattan—Eddie even gets his mother, owner of the hotel, to give him some money to invest in the shop. Sadly, once they get to the city, they discover that the shop is a front for a speakeasy. However, Eddie is happy to catch up with old gal pal Kitty (Helene Costello), a singer at the Night Hawk, a club run by slick gangster Hawk Miller (Wheeler Oakman). Eddie's in love with Kitty, but Hawk has the hots for her as well, much to the disgruntlement of Hawk's long-suffering mistress Molly (Gladys Brockwell). When a cop is shot dead by one of Hawk's bootleggers, the heat is turned on and Hawk sets Eddie up to take the fall for the illegal booze and the murder.

This much-maligned crime drama is historically important as the first all-talking movie—THE JAZZ SINGER was actually mostly silent, with only a few talkie sequences. But most critics make a point of noting that the film is not that good. However, I found it watchable and interesting, even it never quite becomes compelling. Plotwise, it's an oft-told tale of the innocent rube being taken advantage of by the urban crooks, and as such, it's predictable. The romance is bland, and there isn't much action, but the camera is not completely stationary, a problem which causes some early talkies to be difficult to enjoy for modern viewers. Performances are mostly good. Cullen Landis makes for a solid leading man; he had a lengthy career in silent movies but retired from the screen a couple years later. Wheeler Oakman's name was not familiar to me, but he has over 150 screen credits to his name, mostly as henchmen in B-movies; he is fine here. Of course, Pallette of the deep croaking voice (pictured with Landis), will be very familiar to fans of 30s movies (the wealthy patriarch in MY MAN GODFREY, Friar Tuck in THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD).

There is some fun dialogue, and some lines, though probably new at the time, would quickly become clichés. When Hawk wants someone killed, he says, very dramatically, "Take him for a ride"; Eddie expresses satisfaction with "Everything’s Jake!"; when Molly's life takes a bad turn, she moans, "I've lived and I've loved and I've lost!” Earlier, when Molly sees Hawk take in interest in the younger Kitty, she calls him "a hound for chickens." Best of all is a musical number in the night club sung by Harry Downing called "At Dawning"—yes, it's about early morning sex: "When I wake up in the early morning/That's when I love her the best." There's also an overwrought death scene that is hard to watch without a chuckle or two. This movie won't be everyone’s cup of tea, but at just under an hour, I found it fun. [DVD]