PLAYING AROUND (1930)

On his ship, Blackbeard the pirate is about to engage in a fight with a rival when a chorus line appears, a woman begins singing, and the camera pulls back to reveal that we are watching an elaborate production number called "You're My Captain Kidd" in a nightclub called the Pirate's Den. At a side table, low-level gangster Nickey Solomon (Chester Morris) is asked by the club's owner to judge a women's leg contest called the Pageant of Knees just as young Jack (William Bakewell) brings his long-time gal Sheba (Alice White) in for dinner. Jack is shocked at the prices—for a drink, he wants her to order buttermilk because it's the cheapest thing on the menu—and wants to leave, but Sheba enters the Pageant. Nickey chooses her as the winner and instead of giving a speech, she sings a song. Jack, a soda jerk who works for her father at a tobacco store, remains irritated the entire evening, but Nickey decides he's going to get her attention, and when the couple leaves, Sheba is impressed by Nickey's fancy car (with a goofy air-horn sounding horn that Nickey uses frequently and obnoxiously). The next day as Sheba tries to hail a taxi, Nickey pulls up and she hops right in. Angry at Jack partly because he hasn't asked for a raise, she starts going around Nickey, and doesn't care what Jack thinks about it. One night Nickey takes her out for a spaghetti dinner. Despite his fine clothes and lounge lizard manner, Nickey doesn't have the three dollars to pay for their meal, so he finagles it out of the diner owner, and even gets a hundred extra bucks to take Sheba out to see George White's Scandals on Broadway. Jack is waiting at her dad's apartment (where Sheba lives) to talk to her, but midnight rolls around and she is still out, giving Jack the occasion for the movie's best line, "Midnight doesn't mean anything to Sheba since she started skating around with this new sheik!" Eventually Jack is all washed up with Sheba, who accepts a proposal of marriage from Nickey, but needing more money, Nickey robs the cigar store and shoots the employee who is, unknown to Nickey, Sheba's dad. Jack witnesses the shooting and though he didn't see Nickey's face, he heard Nickey's car horn right afterward. Now can he get the police to believe that Nickey is guilty?

This very early talkie, shot in 1929, highlights the best and worst of that short era. There are some impressively fluid camera shots, including the opening pull-back into the club and a later scene when Sheba goes running for a taxi, but the acting is stiff with actors still not comfortable with sound. (A silent version was produced but may not have been distributed widely.) Worst is the leading lady, Alice White, who doesn't deliver a single line with anything like depth or meaning. William Bakewell, playing a sort of juvenile role as the innocent pup who is always in the middle of a mild hissy fit, is only slightly better, but as peeved is his default emotion, he got on my nerves by the halfway point of the movie. Chester Morris, who was in his heyday (he was nominated for an Oscar for ALIBI that same year), is much better, but he doesn't display the slightly oily charm that would serve him well in other early talkies, and it's difficult to see what Sheba sees in him besides his nice clothes and slicked-back hair. The only other substantial part is Sheba's father, played competently by Richard Carlyle. A couple of other fun lines: Jack to Sheba, when she expresses sorrow that she failed to see through Nickey's facade: "Women can't be expected to judge human nature like us men"; Sheba referring to herself as "becoming a big league girl"; Sheba's insult to Jack, "Don't be an eggnog!" (I'm dying to use that one myself). Directed a bit unevenly by Mervyn LeRoy who would go on to a long career at MGM. Pictured are White and Bakewell. [TCM]