THE WET PARADE (1932)

This story of the effects of both alcohol consumption and prohibition begins in 1916 Louisiana as Chilicote (Lewis Stone), once rich and respected, has descended into an alcoholic haze, stumbling in and out of bars. His daughter Maggie (Dorothy Jordan) tries to take care of him and gets him to stop drinking for a month, but he backslides, loses a huge amount of family money while gambling drunk, and commits suicide in a pigsty. At his funeral, when friends toast his memory, Maggie has an outburst, ranting against alcohol. Her brother Roger (Neil Hamilton, pictured below left), a writer, heads to New York City and stays in a hotel managed by Kip Tarleton (Robert Young) who runs the place for his aging father (Walter Huston), who himself has become an alcoholic—we see him take money meant to buy Bromo Seltzer for a tenant and use it to buy booze. Kip is a teetotaler and his mother prays for prohibition, and in a couple of years, she gets her wish. By now, Maggie has come to New York to check up on Roger who has become quite a drinker himself. Prohibition doesn't stop everyone from drinking as bootleggers step in to keep an underground supply going, using copies of legitimate liquor labels on their bottles even as the odds of much of that alcohol being poisoned increase. When Kip's mother tries to keep her husband from drinking from a bad jug, he attacks her and beats her to death. Kip and Maggie, united in an anti-alcohol stance, get married and Kip takes a job as a Prohibition enforcement agent. As he collects evidence, he has to learn to drink alcohol himself, and his partner Abe notes the irony that Kip had to "join Prohibition services to get his first drink." Ultimately, Prohibition doesn't work as people keep drinking, in private and in illegal speakeasies, and bad booze causes illness and death. The film ends in a kind of limbo, with Kip urged by his dying partner (shot in a raid) to get out of the service to take care of Maggie and their newborn son. The last line of the movie has Kip hoping that, by the time their son is grown up, "they’ll have it all figured out."

Historically speaking, this is an interesting document for a couple of reasons. The first is that it was made and released while Prohibition was still the law of the land but with the Democratic Party platform that year calling for repeal, change was in the air. Secondly, the movie avoids taking a strong stand about the issue of Prohibition. Certainly the fates of several characters make strong anti-booze points, but Prohibition is not seen as an effective solution. The film is based on a novel by Upton Sinclair which was apparently more pro-Prohibition than against. I think the movie works best as a mini-family saga. At two hours, it bogs down here and there, and two of the best performances, by Stone and Huston as the booze-soaked patriarchs, are limited as both characters leave the narrative prematurely, with Chilicote dying and Tarleton sent to prison. But 25-year-old Robert Young, in one of his earliest featured roles (he is billed below many of the other actors but arguably has the lead role in the narrative) is very good; he doesn't overdo the clean-living innocence of the character and is very good as a gung-ho crimefighter who slowly realizes that his work may not be terribly effective at fighting the effects of booze on society. 

Dorothy Jordan (pictured with Young at top right) is sidelined for much of the film as the long-suffering daughter and sister. Neil Hamilton's role starts off strong but his plotline is largely lost in the muddle. Jimmy Durante, as Young's partner, provides comic relief in a mostly serious role, and is OK, even getting a good death scene (though he uses his signature "ha-cha-cha" bit too many times). There are good turns from Wallace Ford as a buddy of Roger's, Myrna Loy as a good time floozy, Emma Dunn as Chilicote's wife, Clara Blandick as Tarleton's wife, and John Miljan as Kip's boss who is against Prohibition but does his sworn duty to uphold the law. At one point, it's observed that, under Prohibition, "peach fuzz kids are getting loaded at high noon," certainly not the intent of the law. Despite the tragedies of excessive drinking, we really do get the feeling by the end that Prohibition didn't help, and may have made this social problem worse. [TCM]