A WOMAN REBELS (1936)

I don't normally get all misty about celebrity deaths, but Katharine Hepburn was not only a great actress but a great person and I was genuinely sad to hear of her passing yesterday. Her greatest performances, in films like THE PHILADELPHIA STORY, THE LION IN WINTER, STAGE DOOR, and LONG DAY'S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT, are absolutely transcendent. I can't exactly say that her presence alone made a movie great (I'm not a fan of BRINGING UP BABY, largely because of Hepburn's grating performance in a silly role) but I've never regretted watching anything she was in (well, maybe THE RAINMAKER...). This film with a strong feminist slant doesn't get much coverage or credit, but it's interesting considering the time in which it was produced, and Hepburn does ultimately make the movie well worth watching. She plays a woman who grows up under the thumb of a repressive father (Donald Crisp) in Victorian England. Early on, we see Hepburn and her sister (Elizabeth Allan) being harshly chastized by Crisp for minor infractions, which only stiffens Hepburn's resolve to become independent. Allan, with a bit less spine than her sister, still manages to get out of the house by marrying David Manners, a dashing soldier, in a coupling of which Crisp approves. Hepburn goes against her father by seeing Van Heflin on the sly--it turns out he is married with a vindictive wife who won't give him a divorce even though they are no longer a functioning couple. She eventually leaves him, then discovers she's pregnant. Off in Italy, Allan, who is also pregnant, finds out that Manners has died and she promptly collapses and dies. Hepburn delivers her child and pretends it's her niece. Only the nurse, Lucile Watson, knows the truth.

She meets rich but stuffy diplomat Herbert Marshall (aren't all of Marshall's characters stuffy?) who wants to marry Hepburn, but she wants to remain free, and she soon has a job at a "ladies" magazine where she shakes things up by writing editorials about topics other than sewing and cooking. Years later, she is a famous writer and her daughter (Doris Dudley) falls in love with Van Heflin's son. Rather than tell her daughter the truth about her parentage, she forbids Dudley to see the boy, not giving her a good reason. Despite her best intentions, public scandal follows and Herbert Marshall comes back on the scene with some common sense to bring things to a relatively happy ending. The strangest thing about the fairly complicated plot is that the strong, truth-telling Hepburn continues lying to her daughter when simply telling her the truth would simplify things, and, of course, make a shorter movie. The plot, with its occasional soap-operaish turns, moves along nicely, cramming many incidents into its 90 minute running time. Eily Malyon is memorable as the mean governess early in the film. Dudley looks remarkably like Hepburn. Manners, in one of his last movie roles, is handsome as usual but doesn't have much to do. Heflin is fine and Marshall is his usual passive self. In fact, all the men are rather weak compared to Hepburn. If you want to watch a Hepburn movie in celebration of her life and career, I'd suggest one of the four I mention above in the second sentence of this review. But this one isn't bad and actually wears better than some of her other RKO films of the 30's. Even though I know she would never had made another picture, I'm still sad that Katharine Hepburn is no longer in this world. Thank goodness we still have her films.

FEMALE (1933)

One of the most interesting pre-Code movies that Turner Classic showed in last month's "Complicated Women" series. Ruth Chatterton is very good as Alison Drake, the head of an automotive company. At the office, she is all work: serious and commanding and good at getting results. But she also keeps an eye open for hunky young men at work. She invites them to her mansion in the evening for a little slap and tickle, strictly on-the-side flings. The next day, they had better be all business; if they moon about romantically or push her for another date, they are likely to get sent to the Montreal office. One young man, Philip Reed, is worshipfully romantic but not lustfully inclinced enough for her taste, so he gets sent all the way to Paris, to study art! (I suspect the character was coded gay.) One night, thinking she needs to get out of her rut, she is on the prowl at a carnival when she meets George Brent. Sparks fly and the next day, she finds out that he is a master engineer just hired by the company. Their affair gets serious, but when he proposes marriage, she more or less laughs in his face, so he splits. Ultimately, she runs after him and agrees to renounce the company if he'll marry her.

That ending makes hash of much that has gone before, forcing a strong and independent woman to settle down at the cost of her career--the situation reminded me a bit of the plot of the recent comedy DOWN WITH LOVE, with Renee Zellweger as an author who seems to advocate casual affairs for women over falling in love. Until the end, however, the film is fun and different. Ferdinand Gottschalk is her secretary, who definitely is coded gay, except for his apparent romantic interest in Ruth Donnelly--they make a rather unconvincing couple in the same way that Edward Everett Horton and Helen Broderick (or Alice Brady) do in the Astaire/Rogers musicals. Other men in Chatterton's life include Johnny Mack Brown, Gavin Gordon, and Douglas Dumbrille. In her office, she has the biggest phone receiver I've ever seen! A few memorable lines: "Unethical? What's that got to do with business?"; "For some women, men are a household necessity--I'd rather have a canary."; she tells her maid, who has been complaining about her husband, "You wouldn't have these problems if you were a fallen woman." I haven't been terribly impressed with Chatterton before, but she's great here. Brent is also good, more charismatic than I've ever seen him. Highly recommended.

TORCH SINGER (1933)

Claudette Colbert brings this predictable soap opera to life, as does the pre-Code atmosphere of sin and decadence. Colbert plays Sally Trent, a chorus girl with, shall we say, aspirations. She gets pregnant by a rich boy (David Manners) who goes gallivanting off to China, not knowing about her predicament. She goes to a charity ward to have the baby and steadfastly refuses to give the father's name, despite the threat that she can be turned away if she doesn't. Afterward, Colbert and another single mom, Lydia Roberti, try to make a go of it as roommates, but ultimately her economic status forces Colbert to give up her child for anonymous adoption to go back to her career. A nicely done montage sequence shows Colbert's rise to fame as a torch singer (using the name Mimi Benton) and all-around figure of scandal. One day, she winds up on the radio, by accident, filling in for a new and nervous children's show host; Colbert does it as a lark, but she's a hit and she remains (under yet another name) on the air, eventually using the show as a way to find her daughter. The futility of the search and the bad influence of her drunken friends cause her to crash and burn, but just then, Manners comes back in her life and manages to locate the girl, adopt her for himself, and reunite with Colbert. We don't see how he accomplishes all this--it's downright supernatural! Colbert is very good throughout whether she's dumpy and weepy, or glamorous and on top of the world; actually, her best scenes are when she's weepy and on top of the world. Manners doesn't have much to do but he looks pretty doing it. Ricardo Cortez is fine as Colbert's society boyfriend who is basically a good egg. Baby LeRoy has a small part as Roberti's child, Charley Grapewin is the radio show sponsor, and Ethel Griffes is Manners' cold-hearted aunt. Despite the occasionally overdone melodrama and the improbable ending, this was fun to watch.

MILLIE (1931)

The actress Helen Twelvetrees has such a unique name, I've always wanted to see a movie of hers. Now that I have, I can safely say that her name is the most memorable thing about her. She's not bad in this fairly interesing melodrama, but the supporting cast outshines her. Twelevetrees is the long-suffering title heroine, whom we first see as a town girl being lusted after by some college boys. From their conversation, it's unclear what her reputation is, but at any rate, she's getting married to James Hall, a businessman from the big city. She has some wedding night jitters, but then we abruptly jump ahead three years; she has a daughter and her husband, she discovers, has a mistress. With some bolstering from gal pals Joan Blondell and Lilyan Tashman, she leaves Hall. Her line to him, "I don't care where I'm seen as long as I'm not seen with you," is reminiscent of Norma Sherear's similar line to her cheating hubby in THE DIVORCEE ("You're the only man in the world my door is closed to"). Millie then gets involved in a string of bad relationships. She moves in with a reporter (Robert Ames) who seems like a nice guy, but who also ends up cheating on her. John Halliday is a longtime admirer who she keeps putting off, and who, years later, has dastardly designs on Millie's teenage daughter (Anita Louise). Halliday takes the girl to his lodge, but Millie finds out and arrives just in time to shoot Halliday. The climax is the court case, where Millie hurts her own chances with the jury by not revealing her motive, hoping her daughter won't get dragged through the mud.

Blondell and Tashman wind up being far more interesting than Twelvetrees. They seem to be subtly coded as lesbians. We first see them sharing a bed, with a landlady present waiting for the rent money. The two are inseparable until Blondell, in a priceless scene, announces her decision to marry for money: "I feel I've done all I can with the present situation," she says, exchanging a loaded glance with Tashman. Twelevetrees and Tashman have a nice scene where, both a bit tipsy, they rail against men ("Nothing but tramps!"). Tashman also has a great, and given the context, wonderfully ambigious line, "When I'm through with a man, I'm just beginning." Frank McHugh has a supporting role as a reporter, and he has his own "queer" moment, mincing through a song called "It's Nice to be a Geranium" at a drunken party. Some long, stagy takes slow the pace occasionally, but it's fairly easy to watch and its pre-Code elements add to the enjoyment.

LEAVE HER TO HEAVEN (1945)

Often referred to has a Technicolor film noir, this is really more like a soap opera with a psycho woman from hell as its main character; it perhaps inspired movies from QUEEN BEE to FATAL ATTRACTION. It has murder and a femme fatale, but it doesn't feel very noirish in atmosphere or other details. Gene Tierney (looking lovely and doing the best acting I've seen from her yet) plays Ellen, a "bad" girl whose main fault, according to her mother (Mary Philips), is that she loves too much. The film begins with the funeral of her father, whom she loved obsessively, and soon she transfers that familial obsession to a romantic one when she meets author Cornel Wilde on a train trip. They grow close quickly and she impulsively announces to her family and her ex-boyfriend (Vincent Price, wasted in a role which plays to none of his strengths) the news that she and Wilde are engaged, news that is a bit of a surprise to Wilde. After a brief idyllic time together, things start going badly as she becomes unreasonably jealous of anyone who captures Wilde's attention for any amount of time, including her sister (Jeanne Crain) and Wilde's handicapped little brother (Darryl Hickman). Most of the film takes place in the great outdoors, near mountains and lakes, at rustic cabins in the woods, and the cinematography is colorful and bright. Tierney has at least one great scene which plays out much like the scene in THE LITTLE FOXES where Bette Davis coldly and calculatedly lets someone die. There's another scene where Tierney, jealous now of her own unborn child, throws herself down the stairs to cause a miscarriage; the look on her face as she does this is something to behold. Other members of the cast include Gene Lockhart as a family doctor, Ray Collins, and Chill Wills. The last part of the movie, which becomes a courtroom drama, is anticlimactic. Definitely watchable, thanks largely to Tierney and the lovely settings.

FRISCO JENNY (1932)

This pre-Code melodrama was apparently inspired by a classic weeper called Madame X which Ruth Chatterton had starred in during the silent era. Here, Chatterton plays Jenny Sandoval, a notorious madam in San Francisco. Her story starts in 1906 when she's a young woman helping her father run a rowdy saloon. She wants to marry a man (James Murray of the silent classic THE CROWD) of whom her father doesn't approve, but before the situation can be resolved, the famous earthquake hits, killing both men. It turns out that Jenny was pregnant by Murray; she has her child with the help of her faithful Chinese companion (Helen Jerome Eddy). As she makes a living for herself through shady activities, she gets involved in helping a big shot lawyer (Louis Calhern) cover up a murder; she winds up implicated, but nothing can be proven so the charges are dropped. Still, a child welfare group takes her baby away to be raised by a well-off family. Many years later, Jenny is living well as a high-class madam and has followed from afar the career of her son (Donald Cook) who is now district attorney. The melodramatic plot machinations kick into overdrive here; suffice to say that just as Chatterton decides to retire and go to Europe, Calhern threatens to expose her ties to her son. Right in front of her son, Chatterton kills Calhern before he can blurt out her secret. Of course, Cook winds up prosecuting his own mother. There is some interesting camerawork here and there, and the earthquake scenes are nicely handled. Chatteron and Calhern are good, and Cook bears enough of a resemblance to Murray that briefly I thought Murray was playing a dual role as father and son. Eddy doesn't come off all that well--the main way she is made to seem Chinese is to have thick and shiny black hair. It didn't seem to occur to anyone to have a Chinese actress play the part. The up-front depiction of prostitution is the film's primary pre-Code quality; the story ends (predictably) rather badly for Chatterton, so she winds up punished for her independence and her strength. Interesting, especially in its first half, but not exactly compelling.

SO BIG (1932)

An adaptation of a "sprawling" Edna Ferber novel (she also wrote Showboat). I haven't read the book but this feels like an abruptly truncated adaptation. It's the story of one woman's life, from her relatively carefree youth to hard working farm wife and mother. A couple of major chunks of plotline seem to have been left out in the film. Barbara Stanwyck is the woman, raised in Chicago by her decent but somewhat shady gambling father. Just as she graduates from college he dies, leaving her with nothing. She gets a job outside the big city as a teacher in a farming community. Although it takes a while for her to fit in, she develops a mentoring friendship with a teenage boy (Dick Winslow); he longs to be educated and has an artistic bent, but his father (Alan Hale) needs him around the farm. Stanwyck gives him books to read and encourages his sketching—they both find some aspects of the rough land to be beautiful. Stanwyck marries and has a son and is sad to see Winslow leave home to find his way elsewhere, but she tries to raise her son to be independent and to go after his dreams. The movie makes an abrupt jump of over 20 years; Stanwyck's husband dies but she runs a business (involving prized asparagus) that allows her to live better; this plotline is very vague, as though quite a bit had been cut out from the book. Her son (Hardie Albright) goes to school to be an architect but decides that there's more money in selling bonds. The neighbor boy grows up to be a well known artist (George Brent) and eventually tracks Stanwyck down to let her know how much she inspired him. Much of the movie plays out like an episodic melodrama, though things rarely get too bogged down in pathos. Winslow is especially good as the young neighbor; Albright's callowness suits his character. Bette Davis has a small role as Albright's girlfriend but she has very little to do. OK, but not a classic; mostly for hardcore Stanwyck fans.

TEAR GAS SQUAD (1940)

The title of this Warner Brothers B-film has almost no relevance to its plot. Still, this is a fairly enjoyable hour-long potpourri of crime story, romance, and even musical. The movie opens with George Reeves, a clerk at a drugstore, getting held up. Through fast thinking, he saves the day, collects a reward, and buys the store (talk about entrepreneurship!). The story then focuses on his brother, Dennis Morgan, a nightclub singer who does a humorous number dressed as a policeman, designed to get some kisses from the female clientele. The act backfires with Glenda Dickson, who comes from a family of policemen (Irish, of course), so Morgan decides to impress her by joining the force. He has to put up with Dickson's cop boyfriend (John Payne, young and lovely, but with an unflattering pencil-thin mustache), who really puts him through the paces during training. Hot-headed Morgan winds up suspended from the force for fighting, but when Reeves (remember him?) is killed by the gang behind the first hold-up, Morgan helps the cops track down the bad guys and saves Payne's life (and finally wins Dickson once and for all). Payne is much more likeable here than Morgan, who is too cocky for me; I kept wanting him to get knocked down a peg. John Hamilton, who played Perry White to George Reeves's Superman on TV, is the head cop. Fast-paced and fun, though I really thought Dickson should have chosen Payne.

FRONT PAGE WOMAN (1935)

A newspaper romance that borrows a bit from THE FRONT PAGE (and therefore anticipates HIS GIRL FRIDAY). Bette Davis and George Brent are rival reporters who are also sort of in love. He wants her to give up her career for marriage and she wants him to admit that she is the equal of any male reporter. They both end up covering a murder case which in itself is not particularly interesting and never developed enough for the audience to care about, unlike the similar case in HIS GIRL FRIDAY. The two cheat each other in order to scoop each other and get into plenty of trouble with their bosses and the law. Finally, in a foregone conclusion, he admits that she *is* a great reporter and she agrees to quit her job and marry him. Except for the rather dispiriting ending, the movie is light and diverting. Roscoe Karns is Brent's photographer pal who seems to be subtly coded gay--and a dyke reporter named Nell (!) makes a brief appearance. Davis has two memorable lines: "Why don't you build a statue of yourself and hold services on Sunday?" and "When you smile like that, you look like a sick cat."

CENTRAL PARK (1932)

This is one of those short B-films that today would wind up as a TV pilot. Joan Blondell and Wallace Ford are two good souls who are at present down and out in New York City; they meet in Central Park and rather improbably fall in love--I like Ford, but he isn't really Blondell's speed. She is approached by some cops and asked to be a decoy for them in a sting operation later that evening; it turns out the "cops" are actually crooks who are using her as a front to pull off a jewelry heist at a big charity function. Meanwhile, we see a seemingly unrelated story develop, with Guy Kibbee as a Central Park cop just days away from retirement; the secret he's keeping, so that he will be sure to get his pension, is that he is going blind. He can fake it just enough to get by and is counting the days until he retires, but he has reason to worry when he hears that a former park zookeeper turned lunatic has escaped and may come back to his old haunt. That night, all the stories converge in the park, where a lion escapes from the zoo and terrorizes the area. Kibbee is responsible for letting the lunatic escape, but he gets a chance to redeem himself when the jewel crooks cross his path. Ford and Blondell are good together, but they seem more like buddies than potential lovers. Kibbee is a little less befuddled and a little more serious than his usual persona. There is footage of the real Central Park interspersed throughout the movie, though it seems pretty clear that the stars weren't on location. Lots of chases and fisticuffs in the last half keep this moving along nicely.

THE AGE OF CONSENT (1932)

Not *all* forgotten pre-Code movies necessarily deserve to be found. I'm not sure if this one, an early production of David O. Selznick's, was actually ever lost, but it's very difficult to find information about in the reference books. Directed by Gregory LaCava (MY MAN GODFREY), it's like a "Reefer Madness" view (both in content and production values) of college students and their dating behaviors. Richard Cromwell (future husband of Angela Lansbury, and looking here a bit like Leonardo DiCaprio) plays a nice college boy who is in love with Dorothy Wilson, but flirts actively with others to stay "cool." The two have a fight and he stays up all night with the exotic but somewhat slutty waitress Arline Judge. Her father, Reginald Barlow, discovers them at 4 a.m. and demands a shotgun wedding. Professor John Halliday, who himself had a sad experience with love as a youth, helps the boy out of his dilemma. Eric Linden plays Duke, the slick lad who winds up, with Wilson, in a serious car crash. Grady Sutton has a small role as a student looking for his missing boxer shorts! The college atmosphere seems a bit more realistic than in a movie like GOOD NEWS, with lots of comic scenes between students stressing their casual attitudes about love and sex--and like most movies about college, there is almost no talk about classes. Moderately interesting if only because of the subject matter, but it certainly has its tedious stretches.

SINNER'S HOLIDAY (1930)

This was James Cagney's first film, and it's kind of a dry run for his later, more well known roles as a mother-obsessed bad guy in THE PUBLIC ENEMY and WHITE HEAT. Cagney wasn't first-billed, but he is the most compelling presence in the movie. The story takes place in a Coney Island-type amusement park where Cagney's mother (Lucille LaVerne) runs a penny arcade. Cagney helps out a little, but spends most of his time hanging out with shady characters and gambling. When big-time gangster Warren Hymer leaves for a few days, he puts Cagney in charge of his bootlegging business. Cagney skims a little off the top and when Hymer returns, he finds out and comes after him. In a middle of the night confrontation, Cagney shoots him dead, then loses his nerves and confesses, scared and blubbering, to his mother, who will do what she can to help her boy, even it it means framing innocent Grant Withers, a big lug who works odd jobs at the park and is sweet on Cagney's sister (Evalyn Knapp). Joan Blondell plays Cagney's girl--she doesn't have a lot to do with the plot, but like Cagney, she brings the movie to life whenever she's on screen. Withers looks the part, but his character is underwritten and he doesn't have the charisma that Cagney does, so despite getting first billing, Withers is overwhelmed by Cagney and Blondell. One character, played by Noel Madison, is named Buck Rogers! Short and sweet, with Cagney's breakdown the highlight of the movie.

DESIGN FOR LIVING (1933)

Turner Classic Movies featured pre-Code (1930-1934) movies in May, highlighting some wonderful films in conjunction with a very good book by Mick LaSalle called COMPLICATED WOMEN. I'm planning on spending much of this month getting around to some of those TCM films, and other movies of the same era. This one is a good starting point, as it's a film that certainly could not have been released after the Code crackdown in the summer of 1934. It's about a woman who can't choose between two suitors and so winds us having them both. The opening is a delight, and the best scene in the film. On a train to Paris, two buddies are stretched out and snoozing in their compartment: Gary Cooper is an artist and Fredric March is a playwright, neither very successful, and both perhaps a little proud of that. Miriam Hopkins enters the car and settles down across from them, between their propped-up feet. She, a successful commercial artist, sketches them then stretches out herself and nods off. As Cooper slowly wakes up, his hand grazes Hopkins' leg, leading to a moment of confusion before they all wake up and get to know each other. In Paris, they embark on a platonic menage a trois, living together with a "gentleman's agreement" to avoid sex. She helps both men attain success, and when March heads off to London for the opening of his play, Hopkins, deciding that she's "no gentleman," breaks their agreement and has an affair with Cooper. March takes it fairly well, but when he returns to Paris months later while Cooper is away, he and Hopkins have what amounts to a one-night stand. Cooper returns and catches them during what is clearly a post-coital breakfast. They all quarrel and Hopkins leaves them both for a passionless marriage to her stuffy mentor, Edward Everett Horton (playing an early and far less sinister version of the Clifton Webb character in LAURA). Later in New York, the two men come to Hopkins' rescue during a boring buisnessmen's party.

In the original Noel Coward play, there are hints of homoeroticism between the two men, but those are gone in the film, and I think it actually works better that way. Cooper and March are close friends who genuinely love each other and fall in love with the same girl, who falls for both of them. When the sexless menage doesn't work, the ending strongly implies that they will reach some kind of understanding between them; whether than means "time-sharing" or love as a trio is up to the viewer. Hopkins is sexy and frothy, playing a very independent woman; even when she gives in to the sexless Horton, it's clear that she's thought it through and made what seems like the most logical decision for the situation. March is almost as good, though Cooper feels a bit out of his element here. The most memorable line aside from Hopkins' "...and I'm no gentleman" is Horton's warning to both Cooper and March when he suspects early on that they are both (separately) carrying on with Hopkins: "Immorality may be fun, but it's not enough to take the place of 100% virtue and three square meals a day!" The Paris apartment set is nice, looking quite bohemian and lived in. The film loses some energy in the middle, but the first and last sections are great fun. Franklin Pangborn and Jane Darwell also appear. Ernst Lubitsch directed from a script by Ben Hecht that he was pround of having almost totally rewritten from the Coward play.

FORCE OF EVIL (1948)

Spoilers Below!
A classic film noir that gets off on the wrong foot for me since it's about the numbers racket and I always get lost in that kind of story. John Garfield plays a lawyer for a mob boss (Roy Roberts); the boss is about to launch a plan to turn his racket legit, but it involves driving out of business most of the "small guy" operators, one of whom is Garfield's brother, Thomas Gomez. The brothers aren't close but Garfield thinks he owes it to Gomez to help him out without giving away just how much he knows from being on the inside. Gomez, however, won't take a hint and his business falls apart, hurting him, his wife, and his employees, most of whom don't seem to know that they're involved in an illegal operation. Garfield gets close to Gomez's goody-goody secretary (Beatrice Pearson), though there is a brief subplot in which the mob boss's wife (Marie Windsor) comes on to him as well. Eventually, Gomez is killed and Garfield, in an attack of conscience, turns informer. The tense last 10 minutes or so is the best part of the movie, ending with a nicely symbolic journey downward for Garfield's catharsis. I may have gotten a few of the plot points garbled, but the film is worth seeing; it's moody, dark, and claustrophobic, and Garfield is at his best.

THIEVES FALL OUT (1941)

A Warners B-comedy which, like many of them, begins well but peters out quickly. The charm of the young, attractive Eddie Albert goes a long way toward giving this movie life, but his character isn't particularly well-written or consistent. Albert, the son of a mattress factory owner (Alan Hale), marries the daughter (Joan Leslie) of his father's chief competitor. At the urging of his meddling grandmother (Jane Darwell), he sells his mother's legacy to get the money to buy a company that supplies both his father and his father-in-law with mattress parts. Naturally, things go awry. Darwell is pretty good in a role that's very different from Ma Joad (THE GRAPES OP WRATH). Anthony Quinn and Frank Faylen are gangsters that Albert gets tangled up with. Other supporting cast members of note are John Litel, Edward Brophy, and William T. Orr as a rival for Joan's affections. The film is short but the last half drags, redeemed when Darwell stands up to her kidnappers, who have mistaken her for Albert's mother. The earlier sparring between Darwell and Hale is fun, and Albert carries as much of the picture as he can. At heart, it's a feisty grandma movie.

THE FRESHMAN (1925)

I need to preface this by saying that I am not an expert on, nor a big fan of, silent movies. I've seen and liked a number of the acknowledged classics, like GREED, INTOLERANCE, and CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI, but I don't tend to seek out silent films. Charlie Chaplin's appeal is beyond me and I don't think I've ever seen a Buster Keaton silent film. But I very much enjoyed this Harold Lloyd film, part of TCM's recent festival of his movies, most of which have not been seen in many years. Lloyd's persona seems to be sprightlier and more immediately likeable than Chaplin's--he's a generally nice guy who is mostly unaffected by the setbacks suffered in his adventures. In this one, Lloyd plays a lad named Harold whom we meet as he is about to set off to college. Because of a movie he saw, he thinks that the best way to introduce himself will be to dance a little jig, stick out his hand, and say, "Just call me Speedy!" When he gets to campus, this routine doesn't go over very well and he becomes the laughing stock of the freshmen class, but Lloyd remains oblivious to their reactions and assumes he is well on his way to becoming the next Big Man on Campus. Pretty young Jobyna Ralston is smitten with Lloyd and feels sorry for him as he is made the butt of jokes by unkind upperclassmen. Eventually, he manages to more or less accidently score the winning touchdown for his football team during the big game and he really does become accepted, with everyone adopting his shuffling jig greeting.

I love Lloyd's jig, cracking up each time he did it, and I liked his unceasing upbeat attitude. Three scenes stand out to me: a school dance where his tuxedo, which isn't quite finished, comes apart on the dance floor; his tryout for the football team, in which he winds up being used as a tackling dummy by the whole team; and the final game, which surely must have been an inspiration for the similar climactic scene in the Marx Brothers' HORSE FEATHERS a few years later; it comes off better here. There is a funny joke, still relevant in many a college town, about the school being "a football stadium with a college attached." The effect of the mass media on people's expectations and behavior, reflected in Lloyd's jig, also remains a relevant theme. Lloyd is funny and sweet and the movie never bogs down. Great fun.

OLIVER TWIST (1948)

David Lean directed this wonderful adaptation of the Dickens classic which I've never read but feel like I know well through the musical OLIVER! (stage versions and soundtrack albums, not the rather drab film version). The atmospheric opening feels very much like GREAT EXPECTATIONS, but in this instance with a stormy moor and a lone figure heading for a bleak building. It turns out to be a pregnant woman who gives birth in a workhouse. She dies soon after, leaving a locket with a midwife as the only clue to her identity. The boy, named Oliver Twist (John Howard Davies), is raised in an orphanage and is generally mild and passive, except when he makes the mistake of asking for more food, which gets him kicked out and sold in apprenticeship to an undertaker. He escapes that wretched situation and is befriended by a gang of youthful pickpockets who work with the grungy old thief Fagin (Alec Guinness, excellent in the role and made up to look much older than his 34 years) who acts as their fence and father figure. The plot seems to adhere to Dickens fairly well, except that Nancy (Kay Walsh) isn't particularly close to Oliver before she risks her neck to save him from the dangers of tough guy Bill Sikes (Robert Newton) toward the end. Her sacrifice seems to come out of the blue and doesn't have the resonance it does in the musical (and, I assume, in the novel). A young Anthony Newley is the Artful Dodger and Henry Stephenson is Oliver's rich benefactor. The scene of Bill Sikes' attack on Nancy is quite well done--all we see is Bill's dog frantically trying to scratch its way out of the room through the door as Sikes brutally beats Nancy offscreen. The ending is an overblown scene of mob justice that doesn't work; it's difficult to imagine that hundreds of people would get so worked up over the capture of a common thief and a hooligan who killed a whore. The sets are good, especially Fagin's rather spacious hideout. Overall, as good as, and maybe better than, Lean's earlier GREAT EXPECTATIONS.

PAGE MISS GLORY (1935)

A strong supporting cast is wasted in this weak comedy. Marion Davies plays a hick from the sticks who comes to New York City for no apparent reason other than to be the protagonist of the movie. She gets a job as a maid at a fancy hotel, working with Patsy Kelly. They strike up a friendship of sorts with two guys, Pat O'Brien and Frank McHugh, who are fast running out of money and face eviction. In a farfetched scheme, the group creates a composite photo from the faces of Garbo, Dietrich, Harlow, and Kay Francis to enter in a radio beauty contest and the ficticious creation wins first prize. The two guys and McHugh's girlfriend (Mary Astor) rake in the bucks making endorsement deals until aviator Dick Powell proposes to the girl (named Dawn Glory) over the radio and they have to come up with a flesh-and-blood Miss Glory. They get Davies to impersonate the photo which leads to various shenanigans involving reporters, gangsters, and competing yeast companies. The farcical proceedings eventually become tedious, but aside from the bland Davies, the cast is fun to watch. Lyle Talbot is a reporter, Lionel Stander is a lug who is sweet on Davies, and Allen Jenkins and Barton MacLane are the gangsters. Al Shean, a vaudeville mentor to the Marx Brothers, plays one of the yeast company presidents. Powell has a couple of songs, one of which he sings from inside a picture frame as Davies fantasizes about him. Astor is misused (could you ever picture her being romantically involved with someone like Frank McHugh?), but is still a bright spot. Silly and overlong, but a chance to see a solid cast of supporting players.

RHYTHM ON THE RIVER (1940)

I haven't been a big Bing Crosby fan, even though GOING MY WAY is one of my favorite movies, but this is a light and likable musical that has made me decide to search out some other Crosby/Paramount musicals of the era. Bing plays a laid back fellow who can't quite commit to a full-fledged musical career, so he ghostwrites melodies for a famous songwriter (Basil Rathbone) who lost his touch after the great romance of his life went sour. Unknown to Crosby, Rathbone has his lyrics ghosted as well, and when his ghost drops dead one day, he hires young Mary Martin as a replacement. Soon, by typical Hollywood coincidence, Crosby and Martin meet up at Crosby's uncle's country inn (cleverly called the Nobody's Inn). At first, they rub each other the wrong way, but soon they pair up, romantically and musically, still not aware of their Rathbone connection. Musical complications lead to romantic complications, particularly when she thinks that he has stolen a private love song of theirs to sell to Rathbone.

The first thing that struck me as I was watching was the overlap of some elements between this and HOLIDAY INN, a more famous Crosby/Paramount musical of two years later. There's a country inn, some snow, Crosby sitting at a piano smoking a pipe as he composes and falls in love, and the showbiz career plotline, including Crosby being torn between taking it easy and maintaining a career. The next thing that struck me was how good Mary Martin was, which made me sad that her Hollywood career wasn't stronger. She made a handful of movies in the early 40's, most of which seem to have been forgettable and forgotten, except for her wonderful number "Hit the Road to Dreamland" in STAR SPANGLED RHYTHM, then headed to Broadway to become a success there. Rathbone is pretty good playing against type, though at times he does seem a bit uncomfortable; George Sanders or an older character actor like Charles Coburn might have been fun in the part. Or, if they'd wanted to make a romantic triangle, Tyrone Power. Oscar Levant steals most of his scenes as Billy Starbuck, Rathbone's musical secretary--the problem is that he's so clearly talented that one wonders why Rathbone didn't just hire Levant to write his songs. Charley Grapewin is the uncle and William Frawley has a small role as a music publisher. There are some memorable songs including "Only Forever" (which was nominated for an Oscar), "Ain't It a Shame About Mame," and the fun title song, done with Crosby and a "hot jazz" combo in a hock shop. Billy Wilder had a hand in the screenplay. One clever in-joke: Starbuck (Levant) is seen at one point reading a book by Oscar Levant. This film is available on a Bing Crosby "twofer" DVD and I recommend it highly--not one for the ages, but very enjoyable.

THE DEVIL IS A WOMAN (1935)

The last movie that Josef von Sternberg made with Marlene Dietrich. In some places, this one is almost as surreal and delirious as SCARLET EMPRESS, but it's not nearly as satisfying as most of their collaborations. In Spain during a street festival, young revolutionary Cesar Romero meets up with older military man Lionel Atwill, who warns him about succumbing to the charms of the lovely Concha (Dietrich), the local femme fatale. In a flashback sequence that takes up most of the film's length, we see Atwill fall for the fickle (and perhaps sadomasochistic) Dietrich, who leads him on a humiliating chase involving money, favors, and cheating. It's a little difficult given the Production Code strictures to know if and when Atwill and Dietrich actually consummate their relationship, but there's no doubt that she leaves a string of disappointed and frustrated men in her path. Despite Atwill's warning, Romero falls for Dietrich, and Atwill winds up in a duel with him.

Like most of Von Sternberg's films, this is visually striking, with elaborate costumes, detailed sets, and shimmering black and white cinematography. Romero is sexy and interesting, before he became something of a fluffy stereotyped Latin lover; Atwill does a fairly good job playing against type as a romantic hero (or anti-hero), though someone like John Barrymore or maybe even Gary Cooper would have given the role more heft. Dietrich is sometimes too petulant; it feels like she couldn't quite get a handle on her character, and therefore she comes off as not quite believable. One scene, where she won't kiss Atwill because she doesn't want to muss her hair, reminded me of a similar scene played for laughs between Madeline Kahn and Gene Wilder in YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN. Edward Everett Horton has a small role, and Alison Skipworth is fine as Dietrich's scheming mother. Not a great film, but like all of the Dietrich/Sternberg films, quite watchable.

TORTURE SHIP (1939)

A fairly inept Poverty Row thriller that blends elements of horror and science fiction. Lyle Talbot is the skipper of a ship for his uncle Irving Pichel, a scientist who has helped a number of convicted killers escape prison so he can take them out in international waters to perform experiements on them; by messing around with the endocrine glands, he is developing a serum that would stop the criminal urge. One of the killers, Jacqueline Wells (who later in her career took the name Julie Bishop), is actually innocent, and after Talbot discovers what's going on, the two of them bond. The first two subjects of Pichel's experiments don't fare well so he decides he needs to work on a person free of criminal taint, Talbot. Under the influence of the serum, Talbot tries to strangle Wells, then becomes a zombie, then recovers but pretends not to so he can try to get control of the ship after the killers rebel. Poor sets and indifferent acting mar a decent idea that goes nowhere. Oftentimes, atmosphere is all these B-films have going for them, so given that this was directed by Victor Halperin, who did the low budget classic WHITE ZOMBIE, the total lack of atmosphere is quite disappointing. Both of the doctor's assistants, Anthony Averill and Julian Madison, are handsome and sturdy-looking, but spend most of their time standing in the background, until the climax when Averill helps Talbot tackle the killers one by one. Eddie Holden is a ludicrously cliched Swedish sailor who has an amusing scene in which he is being given a shave by one of the killers, Russell Hopton as Harry the Carver. Holden slowly realizes during the shave who is barber really is, and that's about it for any comic relief in the picture. Talbot and Pichel are OK, though Pichel is a little too low-key; they both would have benefited from better writing and direction. For Lyle Talbot fans only.

Two B-movies with Eleanor Parker:

THE MYSTERIOUS DOCTOR (1943)
The critics who bother to mention this Warner Brothers B-thriller don't much care for it, but I was pleasantly surprised. A doctor (Lester Matthews) arrives at a small English village one night during the war. He claims to be on a walking tour of Cornwall, but the locals don't take kindly to him, suspecting that he may be a spy. The doctor takes a particular interest in an abandonded mine which is supposedly haunted by a headless ghost. Other characters we get to know include Sir Henry (John Loder), lovely young Letty (Eleanor Parker), an RAF lieutenant (Bruce Lester) and a mildly retarded man (Matt Willis) with a secret in his past. Our sympathies shift occasionally as we learn more about the characters. The movie eventually becomes rather propaganda-heavy, but despite a few loose ends, the ending is satisfying, and at just over an hour, it's exactly the right length. Clearly done on the cheap, but nicely atmospheric. Parker is fine and Loder is better than usual.

THE LAST RIDE (1944)
A bland wartime crime story. Richard Travis is a cop who poses as corrupt in order to uncover a bootleg tire operation, rubber being scarce due to war consumption. The bootleg tires are actually worn and shoddy, but spruced up to look new, and therefore potentially dangerous for the buyers. Travis' brother, Charles Lang, winds up being involved in the scam, though he gets a chance to redeem himself at the end. Frequent B-movie bad guy Jack LaRue is also in the cast, as is Eleanor Parker, who doesn't have much to do. It all feels more like an episode of a second-rate TV cop show. Travis, who was so terrible as Bette Davis' love interest in THE MAN WHO CAME TO DINNER, is a little better here, more in his element. All Movie Guide claims this was the last movie made by the Warners' B crew, but based on many inaccuracies I've found on that web site, I'd take that with a grain of salt.

BIOGRAPHY OF A BACHELOR GIRL (1935)

By coincidence, here's another Ann Harding movie from 1935 that I watched the day after ENCHANTED APRIL. Harding is better in this one, but her biggest weakness remains her inconsistent comic touch. She plays an infamous artist who paints portraits of the rich and famous and who has become fairly famous herself. As far as the rich part, she seems to spend money as fast as she makes it; early on, we see her furniture being repossessed. Magazine editor Robert Montgomery approaches her, fresh off the boat from Europe, with the idea of helping her write her life story for his magazine, Everyweek. He'll edit her memoirs and pay her good money. She takes him up on the offer, not realizing the distress she causes an old boyfriend, Edward Everett Horton, who happens to be running for the Senate. Horton and his powerful future father-in-law (Charles Richman) try to sabotage the publication of the articles. Horton's fiancee (Una Merkel) is a good egg and doesn't seem to care much about the possibility of scandal. We're never sure just what transpired between Harding and Horton that would be considered so scandalous; apparently, the play the movie was based on may have been more forward about it, but some material was cut to satisfy the Production Code.

The lack of this background and the murky motivations of most of the characters (we never really get to know even the two principals very well) make it a little difficult to get involved in the story, though the actors and the light tone make it mostly fun to watch. Edward Arnold does a nice job (with a German accent) as a rich admirer of Harding's; he serves little purpose in the plot except to show us that Harding wants to marry for love, not money. Greta Meyer is fun as Harding's protective maid; Donald Meek and Mischa Auer have small roles. Merkel, as usual, doesn't have enough to do, but she's a delight whenever she's on screen. The themes of class and tolerance crop up in rather disjointed fashion; see THE PHILADELPHIA STORY for somewhat more coherent treatment. Harding and Montgomery are not among my favorite actors, but both are fine here. Montgomery wears glasses that make him look startlingly like Clark Kent. One amusing line, from Harding to Horton on his political ambitions: "Do you *want* to be a senator, or can't you help it?"

ENCHANTED APRIL (1935)

I've wanted to see this ever since I saw the 1992 remake with Miranda Richardson and Joan Plowright. I recall that film as being enjoyable, in a "Merchant-Ivory lite" way, and this version, though not as strong on characterization, is almost as much fun. It opens on a rainy English afternoon, with Ann Harding visiting her local ladies club, meeting up with a stranger (Katherine Alexander), and expressing her frustration with her husband, Frank Morgan. He had been a mild-mannered scholar until, with her prodding, he started writing bestselling romanticized biographies; Alexander happens to be reading his book on Madame Dubarry. Morgan has moved out of the house into a studio (temporarily, he insists) and Harding is feeling at sea. Similarly, Alexander suffers quietly with her husband, Reginald Owen, a stuffy blowhard, something of a exaggerated variation on the charcter of Mr. Banks in MARY POPPINS. The two women decide to rent an villa in Italy for the month of April and to help with expenses, they get two upper-class women, Jessie Ralph as an old dowager and Jane Baxter as a young and lovely heiress, to share the place. The women have some problems adjusting to each other at first, but just as things are going smoothly, the husbands show up. Owen follows out of admiration for his wife's initiative; it turns out that Morgan has been having an affair with Baxter and he arrives to see her, unaware of his wife's presence. Adding to the complications, the villa's owner, Ralph Forbes, a dandyish painter, shows up to flirt with anyone who responds. Very short, just over an hour, and therefore character development is sacrificed. Background about Morgan's affair is nonexistent, and Jessie Ralph's character, though amusing, is made up of superficial stereotypes with no depth. Things are wrapped up far too quickly, as though the studio had a stopwatch running. Harding looks the part, but can't handle the light comic dialogue--clever lines that might have sounded sparkling from Myrna Loy or Irene Dunne fall flat out of her mouth. Unlike the '92 verison, this was not shot on location, but the sets work well enough. Short and sweet, and worth watching.

THE EARL OF CHICAGO (1940)

An odd and none-too-successful mix of "fish out of water" comedy and crime drama. Robert Montgomery plays a Chicago gangster who has gone more or less legit in the booze business. In the opening scene, he picks up Edward Arnold, just out of prison. Arnold was an honest lawyer who wound up in jail because Montgomery framed him seven years ago; he is understandably bitter, but Montgomery gives him a legit job as manager of his business. Arnold takes the job, but it seems clear that his thirst for revenge will still need an outlet someday. Reginald Owen arrives from England to let Montgomery know that he has inherited some British estates, and the title of earl. Montgomery and Arnold head to England where Arnold, using a forged power of attorney, proceeds to run the Chicago business into the ground. The betrayal leads to tragic consequences all around. It's an interesting plot, but the main reason it doesn't work is Montgomery who is irritating throughout, partly because he adopts a patently fake tough-guy voice and staccato laugh that grate on the viewer's nerves. His slow change in England from selfish to "noblesse oblige" is fun to watch, but the melodramatic twists at the end negate much of that fun. Edmund Gwenn is fine, as he always is, as the loyal butler who facilitates Montgomery's transformation. Arnold and Owen are also very good. The castle sets are nice. More character development and a better leading man would have helped this movie tremendously.

THREE STRANGERS (1946)

This film, co-written by John Huston, has a fairly interesting set-up in its first 15 minutes but it's unable to follow through on that promise. The atmospheric opening, set in London on Chinese New Year's Eve, 1938, has Geraldine Fitzgerald collecting a couple of random strangers (Sydney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre) from the street and bringing them back to her apartment. Legend has it that her statue of the Chinese goddess Kwan Yin will open its eyes at midnight on New Year's and grant the wish of three strangers, as long as they all wish for the same thing. All three are in need of money, so they put a horse race/lottery ticket in a drawer beneath the idol and wait for midnight. (The plot point of the ticket remained a bit vague to me, but they wind up with the possibility of splitting 30,000 pounds between them.) As the bells toll 12, a wind blows out Fitzgerald's candles, but she is sure she sees the goddess open her eyes. The rest of the movie follows the stories of the three: Greenstreet is a lawyer who has been embezzling from a rich widow (Rosalind Ivan) and tries to get her to marry him so he won't be found out; Lorre is a small time crook who was tricked (by Robert Shayne) into participating in a robbery which ends in murder; Fitzgerald wants financial independence, hoping to win back her estranged husband (Alan Napier) who is "living in sin" with Marjorie Riorden because Fitzgerald won't give him a divorce--the situation with Napier and Riorden is surprisingly clear given that this is a mainstream Code movie of the 40's.

The moody, almost supernatural tone of the opening gives way to a somber, almost noirish feel, but because none of the three are particularly likeable, none of the stories is all that compelling. Ultimately Lorre, with some help from sweet kid Joan Lorring (who resembles Vivien Leigh), is cleared of charges stemming from the murder, but by the time the three meet again to find out if the ticket is a winner, Greenstreet and Fitzgerald's situations will take turns for the worse. The ending, at least as far as the money goes, is reminiscent of Huston's TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE. John Alvin plays a Bob Cratchit-like clerk to Greenstreet; Arthur Shields (Barry Fitzgerald's brother) is a prosecuting attorney. One scene of Lorre in jail has him playing a phonograph record of one of my favorite songs, "I Dreamed I Dwelt in Marble Halls." Word has it that Bogart and Mary Astor were originally lined up to play the Lorre and Fitzgerald characters, and they might have been able to give the movie the spark it's missing. Although I like Lorre, as a romantic lead he doesn't quite cut it here.

THE MOONSTONE (1934)

Mongram Pictures makes hash of Wilkie Collins' great Victorian detective novel, which I read last year. The copy I saw of this film ran roughly ten minutes less than the recorded running time that's given in most film reference books, but even allowing for that, there are still loopholes and unexplained plot points galore. It's an early work from "Poverty Row" and everything about it reeks low-low budget: shoddy sets, weak writing, static cinematography, inconsistent acting. The plot centers around a stolen and cursed gem from India that winds up in England and puts a bunch of people in an old dark house in harm's way. David Manners, who was in a couple of Universal horror films in the 30's, plays possibly the most passive hero in movie history (partly due to the way the character was written in the novel); Phyllis Barry is OK as the heroine; Gustav von Seyffertitz, who I remember from THE BAT WHISPERS, is the over-the-top bad guy. Elspeth Dudgeon is fine as the housekeeper (who in the novel was a male). The element of "mysterious India" is greatly diminished from the book, distilled here into one red herring character, played by John Davidson (most assuredly NOT the well-known TV host). A considerable disappointment, and despite the bad shape of the print, probably not a film worth going through a lot of trouble to restore.

QUEEN BEE (1955)

A Joan Crawford camp fest, and perhaps the inspiration for Faye Dunaway's performance as Crawford in MOMMIE DEAREST. With big shoulders, flowing gowns, and eyebrows that could cut glass, Crawford plays a restless, scheming, man-hungry Southern belle gone to seed; she feels her power over friends and relatives slipping away and she is desperate to hang onto as much as she can. The plot feels like underdone Tennessee Williams or dumbed-down Faulkner. We see the bizarre, dysfunctional family situation through the eyes of a young cousin (Lucy Marlow) who has come for an indefinite stay at the Crawford family mansion. Barry Sullivan is Crawford's constantly drunk husband and Betsy Palmer is Sullivan's sister, who is planning to marry John Ireland, who it turns out was once a lover of Crawford's. Marlow falls for Sullivan (I have no idea what she sees in him), and in order for them to have a happy ending, artificially melodramatic tragedy has to strike everyone else. It's a 50's movie, so it's overblown and stiffly acted and drably shot, but some of Crawford's scenes are campily fun, even when some of the plot twists make no sense (including the fate of Palmer's character). For me, Ireland was the only sympathetic character; the fact that Marlow winds up happy at the end didn't make *me* happy. Fay Wray has a small role as an older woman who has suffered at Crawford's hands in the past. She has a couple of scenes and vanishes, perhaps aware that she couldn't compete with Crawford and her wardrobe. High in camp value, but not as fun as I'd hoped.

KANSAS CITY PRINCESS (1934)

Fairly amusing gold digger story from Warner Brothers, starring Joan Blondell, though this one's not a musical. Blondell is Rosie, a manicurist who dates Robert Montgomery, a small-potatoes gangster. Like Adelaide in GUYS AND DOLLS, Blondell has been waiting for her man to get serious, but he finally offers her a ring, her buddy Glenda Farrell tells her she could do better financially. When Armstrong leaves town on business, Blondell lets Gordon Westcott take her out; he steals her ring and, to escape Armstrong's wrath, the girls head overseas via passenger liner, getting bankrolled along the way by millionaire doofus Hugh Herbert, who is having romantic problems of his own. They all wind up in Paris, with Herbert's wife conspiring with a crooked lawyer to get a good divorce settlement from him. In the end, Herbert gets the divorce to settle down with Farrell, and Blondell and Armstrong patch things up. Not great but not bad--typical of its genre and time. The two halves of the film are fun but they don't connect in a pleasing way, with the pre-Paris stuff working the best. Armstrong (finder of the ape in KING KONG) is far more animated than I've ever seen him. Osgood Perkins, Anthony's father, plays the lawyer; T. Roy Barnes is a handsome alderman on the ship; Vince Barnett is a sidekick of Armstrong's who spies on Blondell for him. Blondell, Farrell, and Herbert all do their trademarked things and do them well. Definitely worth seeing for Blondell fans.

THE MAYOR OF HELL (1933)

A typical 30's prison movie, but set in a reform school; I assume this was the model for later films like the Dead End Kids' CRIME SCHOOL. Dudley Digges is the sadistic warden at a boy's reformatory; James Cagney is the gangsterish fellow who gets appointed deputy commissioner as a political favor for delivering votes. Cagney arrives at the reform school one night with buddy Allen Jenkins in tow, planning on putting in a token appearance and leaving, but instead he gets fired up about reforming the reformatory at the instigation of the pretty school nurse (Madge Evans). The focus among the inmates is a group of boys who, during a dime store robbery, seriously injure the store owner. Frankie Darro is the sulking ringleader who wears his bad attitude like a badge. Eventually he comes to trust Cagney & Evans, and when they institute a self-governing policy, Darro becomes "mayor," helping to preside over the school store and the court. In an odd plot twist, Cagney winds up shooting a rival in the city and has to go on the lam. While he's gone, the disgraced warden takes control of the school, clamping down hard and overriding the reforms. Soon a sickly boy who Digges has put in solitary dies and the kids, led by Darro, revolt. Fire and death result, but everyone ends up let off rather lightly, including Cagney. I imagine a year later, after the Production Code was toughened up, punishments for the "guilty" characters would have been more severe.

Cagney is good, though Evans is stilted and totally unconvincing once she falls for Cagney. But Darro steals the show. His energy, presence, and good looks should have gotten him further in Hollywood, but like so many teen actors, he never broke out of that mold, although he did sustain a career in B-movies, appearing in over 150 films from the silent era up through the late 50's. His character here is predictable, but Darro is always commanding on screen. Truth to tell, he's more likeable when he's being sullen and stubborn; he's less interesting when he straightens up. But then, so is Cagney! Jenkins is comic relief as the tough guy who becomes an unlikely "uncle" figure to the kids. Allen Hoskins, known as "Farina" in some of the early Our Gang movies, plays the lone black kid. Sidney Miller is Izzy, the lone (and occasionally obnoxiously stereotyped) Jewish kid. A good Warners juvenile crime film, worth catching for Cagney and Darro.

THE LADY TAKES A SAILOR (1949)

Not quite a screwball comedy, but very silly--it makes BRINGING UP BABY seem like Ibsen. Jane Wyman plays a consumer advocate who runs a "Consumer Reports"-type company. Her motto is, "Truth always." In the midst of some important negotiations involving grant money, she gets lost during a storm and is saved by Dennis Morgan, a scientist working for the government on a top secret mission involving a weird submarine/tractor contraption. Wyman tells her strange rescue story to the press but they fail to believe her and Morgan, because of the secrecy surrounding his job, doesn't speak up to save her reputation, so her career winds up in jeopardy. The supporting cast includes William Frawley and Allen Joslyn, and best of all, Eve Arden, criminally underused as Wyman's best friend, the kind of part she could play in her sleep. Plot loopholes abound and get bigger and more ridiculous as the movie goes on. The worst part is that, as in so many movies of the time, the female ends up chucking her career to land a man. Wyman seems uncomfortable in this trifle, and Morgan looks tired, just past his mid-40's prime.

SUN VALLEY SERENADE (1941)

Last month, I badmouthed a Fox musical, ALEXANDER'S RAGTIME BAND, for being bland and underproduced. and for taking itself and its fictional biographizing (I'm sure that's not really a word) too seriously. This Fox musical from a few years later is much more enjoyable, perhaps because it's not serious in any way, but also because of the presence of Glenn Miller and his orchestra. Miller himself plays second-in-command to bandleader John Payne, who is very handsome and has a nice voice, but is not very convincing looking as a piano player. Payne, Miller, and their Dartmouth Troubadours are looking for a gig and are lucky enough to be present in a studio as diva Lynn Bari quits her dysfunctional band in the middle of an audition. Payne volunteers to back her up; they finish the audition and get the job, playing at Sun Valley, an upscale ski resort in Utah. Payne and Bari fall for each other, but complications arise when Sonja Henie arrives; she's a Norwegian war refugee who is assigned to accompany Payne, due to a publicity stunt dreamed up by Payne's manager (Milton Berle). They thought they were getting a kid, but Henie is a fully grown blonde who immediately sets her cap for Payne. Henie is OK (she was known more for her skating than her acting, though she only really gets one full-out skating number here), but I found her character irritating and unlikable, motivated by nothing more than a whim to land Payne and mess up his thing with Bari--which itself plays out rather half-heartedly.

The silly plot mechanisms, however, are strictly secondary to the fun musical numbers. The Miller band does "Moonlight Serenade," a great version of "In the Mood," and best of all, "Chattanooga Choo Choo," written for the film and nominated for an Oscar. The 10 minute long number consists of three different versions of the song: an instrumental, a vocal version with Tex Beneke and the Modernaires, and a jazzy dance number with the fabulous Nicholas Brothers, with vocals by Dorothy Dandridge. That number alone makes the 90 minute film worth sitting through. The tone of the movie is light, though the stuff that is intended as "comic relief" is mild at best: Berle's schtick is so-so, mostly because he doesn't really have much to do, and "wacky" Joan Davis has so little to do that she barely gets a chance to register. Almira Sessions has a nice moment as the disapproving maid who was hired to take care of "the little refugee," and who assumes she's been made a fool of when she meets Henie. The Sun Valley settings are lovely, as are the skiing scenes, although it's clear that most of that stuff is second unit and the stars are all shot in the studio in front of rear projection. It takes place at Christmas, according to a passing reference early in the movie, but there are virtually no holiday trappings present. Overall, a delightful movie, especially for Glenn Miller fans.

MONEY AND THE WOMAN (1940)

A B-thriller, sort of a film noir forerunner, based on a short story by James M. Cain, author of THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE and DOUBLE INDEMNITY. Jeffrey Lynn plays a bank official sent to a branch office to check up on a teller (Roger Pryor) who is going gangbusters at getting and keeping investors. When Lynn offers Pryor a transfer to a better position at a different bank, he balks, then suffers a heart attack. While he recovers, his wife (Brenda Marshall), a former bank employee, fills in for him. Soon Lynn discovers that Pryor's accounts are $9000 short. Lynn and the local bank manager (John Litel) suspect that Marshall and Pryor are in on some scam together, but Marshall insists she isn't, so Lynn puts his own job on the line to clear her. Is Marshall the femme fatale, or could it be Lee Patrick as the mousy (and wonderfully named) Martha Church, who is Pryor's accomplice? The cast is practically a who's who of the Warner Brothers B-movie company (also with Henry O'Neill and Henry Kolker, and Willie Best as Lynn's obsequious butler), and though most of them are clearly second string, they all do fine considering the obvious budget limitations as far as the set and the direction--though there is a nice little montage of daily bank operations that opens the movie. Not exactly worth searching out, but worth its 70 minute running time if you stumble across it on TCM some afternoon.

THE MAJESTIC (2001)

This isn't an old movie, and it's not likely to be remembered as a classic, but to a certain degree, it's about old movies, and classic movie fans will have fun noticing the influences and references. The director, Frank Darabont, was clearly trying to update Frank Capra; the extent to which you think he succeeds will depend on your tolerance for "Capracorn" and for totally shameless emotional manipulation. There are really the seeds for three different movies here, and only one comes to fruition. The opening makes us think we're in for some scathing satire of Hollywood--in 1951, a lowly B-movie screenwriter (Jim Carrey) is subjected to a conference in which a bunch of producers (unseen by us, but heard, in the voices of Carl and Rob Reiner, among others) try tweaking his story so it will be more marketable. The satire, however, pretty much ends in the first three minutes as the second film, about the Hollywood blacklist, begins: Carrey finds out he will be called before the House Un-American Activities Committee because, years ago, he attended a Communist function (solely to impress a girl). His studio and his current girlfriend dump him. Distraught and drunk, Carrey accidentally drives off a bridge into a river.

The blacklist movie basically ends here and the third movie, the Capra one, picks up: he washes up with amnesia in a small California town. It turns out that he looks a lot like a soldier who was declared dead overseas during WWII. The townspeople believe he has been miraculously restored to them, and Carrey, not knowing any differently, buys into their fantasy. The soldier's father, Martin Landau, gets a new lease on life and decides to reopen the long-shuttered movie house, the Majestic. The rest of the town comes back to life (they've all been basically "walking wounded" because they lost a disproportionate number of young men in the war), but of course, you know it won't be long before the truth comes out. The movie is way, way too long (2 1/2 hours) and Darabont has to hit every possible emotional button he can. He out-Capras Capra as far as attempts at noble and inspiring tear-jerking moments, and though some hit their mark (as some are bound to), there are just too many thrown at us in the last hour of the film. Jim Carrey, who I am not a fan of, is very good; he manages to completely avoid his usual tics and shtick and he brings his character fully to life. Landau is superb, and the cast includes James Whitmore and Hal Holbrook. I'm a Capra fan but even I got tired of the constant and very predictable manipulation; on top of which, the production values are just too glossy for the movie's good. Nonetheless, it was worth watching once.

STELLA DALLAS (1937)

Spoiler below!!
An archetypal "woman's picture," a 30's version of a "chick flick"; it has a melodramatic soap opera tone, but it also has a great performance by Barbara Stanwyck at its center. She plays the title character, a girl from a working class family who falls in love with John Boles, a former upper-class fellow who fell from grace when his rich father lost his fortune and killed himself. She's loose and fun loving, and he's uptight; they're a bit like a 30's Dharma & Greg. He gets the opportunity to go back to his roots in New York City, but Stanwyck is afraid she won't fit in with his old friends, so she stays behind and raises their daughter (Anne Shirley). Stanwyck remains resolutely lower-class in her tastes and choice of friends (particularly the loud and vulgar Alan Hale) and begins, unwittingly, to tarnish her daughter's chances at upward social mobility. When Boles divorces Stanwyck and marries a rich widow (Barbara O'Neill), Stanwyck is torn between holding onto her daughter or letting her become part of her father's social set. One memorable scene involves Shirley's birthday party, which is boycotted by her too-tasteful friends. By the end, Stanwyck gives up her daughter so she can make a good marriage (to Tim Holt), and the famous climax has Stanwyck standing in the pouring rain, watching Shirley's marriage through a window. Throughout, Stanwyck does a fine job looking dowdy and tacky, and acting loud and trashy. It's a bit of a stretch for Stanwyck and she pulls it off very well. Marjorie Main has a small role as Stella's beaten-down mother.

HELL'S HIGHWAY (1932)

RKO released this about two months before Warners released Paul Muni's I AM A FUGITIVE FROM A CHAIN GANG, but this is the one that feels like a cheap retread of the same material. It's got a B-movie feel and a largely second string cast, but it has its moments. The movie is anchored by a solid performance from silent film star Richard Dix as a career criminal stuck on a chain gang, though he never really comes as scruffy or hardened as he should. An escape that Dix and some pals are about to pull off is derailed with the arrival of Dix's younger brother (Tom Brown). The clean cut innocent is clearly not the criminal type and a sympathetic overseer (Stanley Fields) knows that, so he arranges for Brown to get a fairly soft clerking position, and Dix doesn't join the breakout, opting to stay and watch out for his brother. There's a weird subplot involving a polygamous prisoner (Charles Middleton, coming off a lot like John Carradine) who pretends to be able to read people's fortunes in the stars; Warner Richmond plays a guard who is driven to kill his wife based on Middleton's predictions of adultery. The use of a sweatbox as punishment leads to a prisoner's death and brings unwanted pressure on a construction boss (Oscar Apfel) who is using the gang to finish a project and the overseeing warden (C. Henry Gordon, who briefly shows a softer side to his character when we see him practicing his violin). An uprising, triggered unwittingly by Brown, leads to fire and mass escape and death. Dix, who discovers he has been sentenced to death, redeems himself at the end. Also with Louise Beavers as a prisoner's wife and Rochelle Hudson as Brown's girl. The soundtrack has a lot of gloomy spirituals sung impeccably by the segregated black prisoners. Short and fairly well paced, though it has nowhere near the power of the Paul Muni chain gang movie.

SYMPHONY OF SIX MILLION (1932)

A predictable melodrama with a plot trajectory very similar to the later THE CITADEL. Ricardo Cortez plays a young man who grows up poor and Jewish on the lower East side of New York City; he and his family sacrifice so he can to go medical school. He becomes a doctor and returns to his old neighborhood to tend to the poor, often for little or no payment. But egged on by his well-intentioned family (mother Anna Appel, father Gregory Ratoff, and brother Noel Madison), he moves uptown and soon has fame and fortune thanks to his idle rich patients. In a nice touch, we see that he is the subject of a Vanity Fair article that refers to his "million dollar hands." He helps his family move to a better neighborhood, but he ignores his poor patients, including his crippled childhood friend Irene Dunne. Eventually, things start to fall apart: he forgets that he scheduled an operation for one of the poor children and consquently, the child dies; he tries but fails to save his sick father. Of course, when he hits bottom, all that's left is for him to reorder his priorities, with the help of Dunne. Cortez is aged well through the film (unlike Dunne or Ratoff) and is mostly fine in the part. One important scene is set at a Jewish ritual I'd never heard of called the Redemption of the First Born, when the father of a new firstborn "buys" the child from God. The movie has the reputation of being an effective tearjerker, but I found it a bit too much, particularly Cortez's big confrontation with Dunne which comes off as overheated soap opera.

TOWER OF FEAR (1938)

This creepy thriller, filmed in England and starring Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi, was a victim of the anti-horror film movement of its time; it never got a full release in England and only limited showings in the States. It was long presumed lost but has survived into the DVD age, albeit in a grainy and murky print. The film has elements of a previous Karloff/Lugosi collaboration, THE BLACK CAT (cursed land, Karloff as a bad guy and Lugosi as a self-sacrificing good guy), and even anticipates later horror films like THE WICKER MAN (human sacrifice and secret doings by villagers). The famous opening scene is hard to beat: on a clear, moonlit night, a man is chased through a wheatfield by a menacing inhuman figure. He enters the tower (of the title), which reminds me of the tower in VERTIGO, and races up the steps to the top to find Karloff standing there. He begs Karloff for help, but Karloff steps back and lets the thing in the shadows onto the parapet. We see a close-up of the man shrieking at the camera, then we see him leap off the tower into the wheatfield below. The last shot of this masterful opening is of a trickle of blood seeping into the ground. It turns out that Karloff is Lord Belvedere, owner of the most fertile land in the country; he ensures good crops by literally feeding the land with blood sacrifices as his family has done for generations. Karloff has an army of supernatural creatures who look like werewolves and lurching scarecrows and are mostly only seen in shadow. They rise from the fields at night whenever a sacrifice is needed. This happens three or four times in the film and each time, it's unsettling. Lugosi comes looking for his lost brother-in-law, the victim from the opening scene. David Manners and Gloria Stuart are the romantic leads (they're visiting Americans so they don't have to do British accents). Tommy Hoddle and Billy Bingo, who were apparently the British Laurel & Hardy, are the slapsticky comic relief, and the film gets so intense that the comedy is actually welcome. The satisfying climax has Karloff facing his own creatures at the top of the tower as Lugosi tries to save Manners and Stuart. Directed by Giles Spence and made by Campbell Films, this is certainly as good if not better than any of the classic Universal films.

JUNE BRIDE (1948)

An fair-to-middling romantic comedy that isn't quite as frothy as it needs to be, largely due to the casting. Bette Davis (in the years just before ALL ABOUT EVE when her career was foundering) is the editor of Home Life magazine. Her publisher (Jerome Cowan) busts her old flame (Robert Montgomery) down from war correspondent to human interest reporter and forces Davis to hire him. The prickly pair head off with a small crew from New York City to suburban Indiana to supervise a wedding that will be written up for a special June issue--though it's still winter outside. Once they all arrive and take over the house and the wedding preparations, the plot becomes a variation on THE MAN WHO CAME TO DINNER, with Davis and company the sophisticated interlopers surrounded by midwest yokels. Fay Bainter and Mary Wickes are magazine staffers; Tom Tully is the father of the bride, always nipping off for a drink; Barbara Bates (Phoebe in the last scene of ALL ABOUT EVE) is the bride, but it's her younger sister (Betty Lynn) who gets more attention; she has fallen head over heels for the groom. Davis and Montgomery are a bit long in the tooth for their parts and come off like touring company replacements for Russell and Grant in HIS GIRL FRIDAY. The repartee between them doesn't sparkle as much as it should. Montgomery especially comes off as old and tired. The rest of the cast is fine. The disappointing and predictable ending, with Davis having to choose between her man and her career, is another strike against the movie. According to most sources, Debbie Reynolds has an uncredited bit, but I missed it.

THE SECRET SIX (1931)

MGM treads on Warner Brothers' turf with this hard-boiled gangster picture filled with bluster, violence, sex, and star power. Apparently, the plotline is a thinly veiled recounting of the story of Al Capone. Wallace Beery plays beefy lug Louis Scorpio, nicknamed "Slaughterhouse" for the job he held before he started working with bootlegger Ralph Bellamy (in his first movie role). Beery works his way up the line to become second only to crooked lawyer & crime lord Lewis Stone. Johnny Mack Brown is a reporter who follows the gang and writes about their exploits. He falls for Jean Harlow, a kind-hearted waitress who works for the mob. Clark Gable shows up as a rival reporter. One early scene uses overlapping dialogue as Brown and Gable both call in stories and flirt with Harlow at the same time. Beery takes over the town (Centro, rather than Chicago) while a group of six businessmen, who wear masks and go by the name "The Secret Six," arrange to have Gable work undercover to leak info on the gang to the district attorney. Brown gets caught up in the action as well. Even though Brown gets star billing, Gable effortlessly steals every scene he's in. Eight years before GONE WITH THE WIND, you can hear Rhett Butler in his voice now and then. It's a bit of a change of pace to see Bellamy (usually the nice-guy romantic loser) and Stone (Judge Hardy and kindly grandfather types) play bad guys. A fast pace and good acting (aside from the rather wooden Brown) make this worth catching.

ALEXANDER'S RAGTIME BAND (1938)

Among the studios that were regularly releasing musicals in the 30's and 40's, Fox comes in pretty much dead last behind MGM, Warners, and RKO. This movie is a good example of why. It's not terrible, and it has some talented people and some great songs, but it's just so bland and mediocre. This might well be the first of the fictional show biz bio musicals that became so popular in the 40's. Later ones, like MGM's TILL THE CLOUDS ROLL BY and WORDS AND MUSIC, were based very loosely on real people; this one, though filled with the music of Irving Berlin, is completely fictional and painfully predictable, and the production numbers are not spectacular enough to overcome the film's dramatic problems. Tyrone Power plays Roger Grant, a "serious" musician who decides he'd rather take a shot at making a living playing popular music, much to the dismay of his guardian (Helen Westley) and mentor (Jean Hersholt). As he and his band make the audition rounds, they cross paths with ill-tempered singer Alice Faye, who happens to have a new song sent to her by Mr. Berlin. The song, "Alexander's Ragtime Band," gets them a job and provides the band with a name. The rest of the film charts their rise and fall, together and apart. Piano player Don Ameche falls for Faye, but after an initial spell of rubbing each other the wrong way, she falls for Power. Soon the feeling becomes mutual--it happens while she sings a song written to and for her by Ameche--but she is discovered by a Broadway producer and she leaves without the band.

Over time, Ameche and Faye work together and get married, though the coupling is clearly a passionless one on her part. Meanwhile, Power enlists Ethel Merman to sing with his band; they're half-heartedly attracted to each other, but we know that somehow, Faye and Power will wind up in each other's arms by the last song. The plodding story is punctuated with solid renditions of Berlin songs like "Blue Skies," "Easter Parade," "Oh How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning," and "My Walking Stick," but few of the numbers have the razzle-dazzle of the Busby Berkeley or Fred Astaire films of the time. I hate to say this, but it might have stood the test of time better if it had been filmed in color. Power and Faye are fine, Merman is in great voice, and the supporting cast features Jack Haley, John Carradine, and Douglas Fowley. The climax occurs at a swing concert the band gives at Carneige Hall (probably patterned after similar real-life events by Benny Goodman and Paul Whiteman), but it doesn't help that the music is neither ragtime nor swing!

UNDERCURRENT (1946)

Vincente Minnelli directed this fairly big-budget MGM film noir which one Internet critic dubbed "glossy noir." It's not just the high-class treatment that does it in, but the length--at a full two hours, it can't sustain the tense mood that a movie which borrows from GASLIGHT, SUSPICION, LAURA, and REBECCA needs to have. The long opening section sets a misleadingly light tone that throws off the balance of the whole thing. Katharine Hepburn is the old-maidish daughter of a famous scientist (Edmund Gwenn). She's a bit long in the tooth to be playing a coy lass who still lives with her father and is courted by drab suitors (and this same problem crops up a few years later with Hepburn in THE RAINMAKER). A rich industrialist (Robert Taylor) visits Gwenn and falls for Hepburn. After they marry, little signs crop up that he is not exactly what he seems to be. The messy plotline suggests, among other things, that Taylor may have done some embezzling and killed his ne'er do well brother. Hepburn becomes fascinated with the dead brother (as Dana Andrews does with the dead LAURA) and begins to fear her husband. Marjorie Main has a thankless role as a maid in the first half of the movie. Robert Mitchum pops up later as a mysterious stranger (is he friend or is he foe?). The film climaxes in a fairly exciting horse chase (unlike the average noir, it's set not in the city but out in the wide-open country), but by then, it has worn out its welcome. This is a case where a smaller budget and a scrappy B-film director might have improved the movie.

PHANTOM SHIP (1935)

A very early film from the British Hammer Films; despite their later reputation, this one isn't really a horror film as much as a fairly traditional psychological mystery. It's a speculation about a possible solution to the real-life mystery of the ship Marie Celeste (or Mary Celeste, as it was called in the original American title MYSTERY OF THE MARY CELESTE) which was found floating intact but abandoned at sea. Captain Briggs (Arthur Margetson) sets sail with his new wife (Shirley Grey) and a crew rounded up mostly at the last minute. There is trouble even before they leave when they try to shanghai a man to complete the crew. Another captain (Clifford McLaglen) is jealous because Margetson married his former girlfriend; for revenge, he gets a man put on the crew who is supposed to make sure that harm comes to the captain during the voyage. Bela Lugosi is a one-armed old salt who has aged beyond his years due to his brutal shanghaiing by the man who is now the Marie Celeste's first mate (Edmond Willard). Lugosi joins the crew under an alias and appears to be a somewhat eccentric religious man who weeps hysterically when he kills a someone who was about to attack the captain's wife, but actually he is there to get his own revenge. Lugosi is quite good, getting to show a little more acting range than he usually could in his straightforward horror roles. Crew members start winding up dead and a nice TEN LITTLE INDIANS atmosphere is built up, although coherent character and plot development are sacrificed, particularly in the case of the captain and his wife--it seems that the wife will be of some importance in the plot, but aside from being a reason for McLaglen's revenge, she isn't. To be fair, it appears that some footage, including a framing device of a maritime trial, is missing and presumed unrecoverable. It's a low budget film, but the storm effects are well done, and most of the exteriors were shot on a real ship, which gives those scenes some interesting verisimilitude. Gibson Gowland, star of Von Stroheim's great GREED, has a small part as a crew member. Clifford McLaglen is the brother of Victor McLaglen, Oscar winner in 1935 for THE INFORMER. A decent mystery/thriller.

BIG CITY BLUES (1932)

Fast paced, entertaining trifle with a solid supporting cast. Eric Linden strikes the right tone as an innocent but enthusiastic lad from rural Indiana who uses some inherited money to finance a trip to New York City to make his fortune. The ticket agent at the train station, Grant Mitchell, expresses skepticism and bets that he'll be back within a month. Staying in a fancy hotel room that he can barely afford, he seeks help from his older cousin, Walter Catlett; Linden thinks his cousin is a well-off man about town, but we know that he's a grifter, living day to day by whatever means possible, so Catlett looks upon Linden as his current meal ticket and soon the boy is squandering all of his nest egg on Catlett and his unsavory friends. Joan Blondell is Vida, a tough skinned chorus girl who happens to hail from a small town herself and soon falls for the kid. A drunken party in Linden's room gets out of control and a girl is accidently killed. Linden and Blondell are hunted down as likely suspects, while Guy Kibbee, the alcoholic hotel security man, eventually stumbles on the real killer in a rather quirky little plot twist that I won't spoil. Linden is blandly handsome, a bit like a second-string Jimmy Stewart, and he plays the role well with just enough piss and vinegar to make Blondell's crush seem realistic--although his standard way of flirting with her is to stare intensely at her like she's from another planet. Among the fine Warner Brothers supporting players present are Ned Sparks as a dissolute partyer (or is that "partier"? Neither one looks quite right!), Lyle Talbot as a young ruffian, and Humphrey Bogart as a slightly older ruffian who is always at odds with Talbot. Clarence Muse has a out-of-the-blue musical number at a nightclub, singing a nice little song called "Everyday Can Be Sunday." It really is a nice song, and I wonder why it never caught on. Fairly well written, well performed, generally amusing where it should be, and short enough not to wear out its welcome.

THE FALLEN SPARROW (1943)

Spoiler included!!
None of my film noir reference books list this movie, but it certainly looks and feels like a noir, what with lots of shadowy atmosphere, a potential femme fatale (actually three), and attention to psychological matters. John Garfield is a veteran of the Spanish Civil War who went through torture, survived, and has just been released from psychiatric care. He returns to his friends in New York City in the aftermath of the death of a war buddy; the cops called it suicide (a jump through a window at a party), but Garfield suspects foul play and decides he owes it to his friend to investigate. Some of the folks who might have some knowledge of the real circumstances of the death include Martha O'Driscoll (a singing socialite), John Banner (her pianist), Hugh Beaumont, Patricia Morison, and Maureen O'Hara. They all have connections to Walter Slezak, a well-regarded European war refugee in a wheelchair, whom we quickly suspect may be up to no good. It turns out that Nazi spies are after a war flag that Garfield and his dead friend had taken from a battleground. Garfield spends a lot of time creeping around in dark apartments, trying to get to the bottom of the situation, even as he suffers flashbacks from his torture, particularly the sound of a swishing limp that he frequently heard outside his cell. The plot becomes needlessly convoluted, but as with many a film noir, the plot isn't really the point. It is crystal clear from about 15 minutes in that Slezak is the Nazi boss, but from the way he is revealed toward the end, it seems like the director really thought we'd be surprised by that information. The real question is, which of the three women is the femme fatale? About midway through, another noir connection dawned on me: it's a lot like a wartime version of THE MALTESE FALCON. There's the noble loner who feels dutybound to hunt for the killer of his friend, there's a suspicious fat man, there are women involved with the hero who may not be what they seem, and there's the McGuffin at the center (the flag instead of the Falcon) that winds up being one of the least important elements of the movie. Garfield gives a fine performance and, despite the hard-to-follow plot, this one is worth sticking with to the end.

THE KENNEL MURDER CASE (1933)

According to the critics, this is the best of the movies in the Philo Vance series. I read one of these a year or so ago, The Casino Murder Case, and liked it quite a bit, and was surprised to find out that William Powell played Vance in a few of the films. In S. S. Van Dine's books, the character is rather fey and talks like a highfalutin' hillbilly, and neither characteristic do I associate with Powell. Thankfully, they let Powell act and talk like Powell. Other movie Vances include Paul Lukas, Basil Rathbone, and James Stephenson (I hope to review his film soon). Most of the Vance movies are from the early 30's and difficult to run across--I'm keeping my eye out for CASINO. This one is pretty standard murder mystery fare. Powell solves a case involving the killing of a dog at a ritzy dog show, followed by the apparent suicide of the nasty man who might have killed the dog. Of course, it turns out to be a locked-room murder and Philo Vance has to solve it. Powell is handsome and charming, rather like a sober Nick Charles (THE THIN MAN would come the next year). Others in the cast include Mary Astor (sexy but ultimately just red herring material), Eugene Pallette, Ralph Morgan, and Helen Vinson. This may not be the first movie to show the solution to the murder by a reenactment flashback through the eyes of the killer, but it must be one of the earliest. Standard but quite watchable mystery with all the stereotypes intact. [I later caught up with the film of THE CASINO MURDER CASE, reviewed here.]

JOE SMITH, AMERICAN (1942)

Released in January of '42 and therefore certainly written and filmed before Peal Harbor, this B-film is an awkward blend of crime thriller and preparing-for-war propaganda. Robert Young is a factory worker who is tested by some government men and given a job working on a top secret bombsight for military planes (we assume for eventual war use). Through the episodic opening, we see that Young is an average, everyday Joe (literally), friendly, laidback, a good husband and father, and a loyal American. After his first day on the job, he is abducted at the end of his shift by enemy spies (Nazis, certainly, though I don't think they are identified), roughed up and eventually tortured in an attempt to get him to spill the beans about his secret project. Badly bruised and bound, he holds out, partly through thinking about his wife and family--we even get flashbacks to their courtship. He eventually escapes from a moving car and, though blindfolded for most of his ordeal, he manages to reconstruct the events of the night for the police who work backwards to try to find the spies' hideout. Despite the flag-waving defense of patriotism, strength, family, and American ingenuity, this is mostly too bland to be inspiring. The last half-hour generates some noirish atmosphere, utilizing shadows and off-kilter, point-of-view photography (for example, we don't see the faces of the brutal spies while Young is blindfolded). His wife is played by Marsha Hunt and his son is Daryl Hickman; his boss, who winds up playing a surprise role in the proceedings, is Jonathan Hale. Frank Faylen and Ava Gardner have bit parts. Young's roughing-up is carried off well, but overall, the crime/mystery elements and the progpaganda elements don't work together that well. This might have come off better had it been made a few months after Pearl Harbor rather than before.

DANCING LADY (1933)

An MGM version of the Warner Brothers backstage musical, and a pleasant surprise as it stars two actors I'm ambivalent about: Clark Gable and Joan Crawford. I'm not a big fan of either one of them after they became superstars in the 40's, but I like them well enough earlier in their careers before their screen personas became so solidified. Crawford plays an ambitious chorus girl who strips at a burlesque house while waiting for a big break. A millionaire playboy (Franchot Tone, in the kind of second fiddle part he did best) falls for her and tries to get her to marry him. A career is more important to her, however, and she gets a job in a Broadway musical being staged by Gable, with backing money from Tone. Romantic complications ensue; just as she gets a shot at a leading role (and just as Gable is finding her attractive rather than irritating), Tone withdraws his support, knowing the show will be shut down and assuming Crawford will settle down with him. In the end, however, she manages to get both Gable and a career.

This is glossier than the WB musicals but also more slowly paced with less witty (and naughty) dialogue. The musical numbers are Berkleyesque, although staged by Sammy Lee and Eddie Prinz. They are all clustered together in the last third of the film and contain stage-defying effects, with the occasional ceiling shot. One interesting effect has people dressed in 18th century clothes who pass through an arch and emerge in modern dress. Another has Fred Astaire (playing himself) and Crawford levitating on a flying carpet. Other cast members include May Robson as Tone's grandmother, Winnie Lightner as Crawford's buddy, and Robert Benchley as a drunken gossip columnist. Look closely and you'll catch Sterling Holloway (as a sensitive and maybe gay playwright), Grant Mitchell, Nelson Eddy, and Eve Arden. Oh, and the Three Stooges if you like that sort of thing. Good fun all around, even if Crawford does make a rather clunky dancer.

FIVE CAME BACK (1939)

A solid RKO B-picture with a familiar plot which transcends its roots through good acting and some interesting characterizations. A small planeload of people crash in a South American jungle; like on Gilligan's Island, the survivors make do until the plane is fixed as little psychodramas occur among them. Chester Morris is the solid, square-jawed pilot and Kent Taylor is his co-pilot. Allen Jenkins does a nice turn against type as a gangster's confidant who has been entrusted with taking care of the gangster's young son; though he has some comic moments, his part is mostly played straight. Lucille Ball is a whore whose motherly heart of gold is brought out by Jenkins' situation. John Carradine is escorting an anarchist, Joseph Calleia, to prison and execution. In a neat twist, Carradine unravels to become the weak link in the group, and Calleia develops and grows as a character. I think he also serves as a mouthpiece for screenwriter Dalton Trumbo's socialist views--the group bonds together like a commune to survive. Trumbo was blacklisted in the 50's for his ties to the Communist party and this movie's plotline probably wound up as evidence against him. C. Aubrey Smith is an older man who bonds with Calleia. Patric Knowles is an alcoholic asshole who becomes the thorn in everyone's side. When it develops that the crippled plane will only be able to take off with five people, and the rest will have to stay on the ground at the mercy of torturing headhunters, it's pretty clear that Knowles won't be one of the five! An interesting and compelling movie.

When Bad Movies Happen to Good People

THE MASK OF DIIJON (1946): Erich von Stroheim was perhaps more important to the history of movies as a director, but he didn't do badly as an actor, appearing in some 70 movies and embodying the archetype of the stiff, ruthless, but honorable Prussian (GRAND ILLUSION and SUNSET BOULEVARD). Between those two great films, he was in some good movies, like FIVE GRAVES TO CAIRO, and some bad ones, like this Poverty Row thriller about a down-on-his-luck stage magician who dabbles in hypnosis (theoretically as a way to get "in touch with the infinite," a phrase which made me think of Professor Marvel in THE WIZARD OF OZ). He manages to stop a robbery using the reflected light off of his lighter, but when he tries to use hypnosis in his stage act with his wife (Jeanne Bates), it fails. Thinking his wife is in cahoots with another man (William Wright) to sabotage his career, he winds up using his power for evil, getting someone to commit suicide and trying to force his wife to kill. Aside from a very effective opening that looks like a French Revolution beheading but turns out to be a stage trick, the whole thing is plodding and silly and would be totally forgettable except for von Stroheim. I can't believe that this junky little sub-B film is available on DVD but ALL THAT JAZZ and TOP HAT aren't!

LADY SCARFACE (1941): Dame Judith Anderson's niche in Hollywood was playing supporting roles as tough, often sinister women. Her best and most indelible role was one of her first, as Mrs. Danvers in REBECCA. It's hard to believe that she got stuck in this trashy film the very next year. I suppose her name and the interesting title led me to expect too much--it's basically a shoddy B-crime story with Dennis O'Keefe and Frances Neal as a cop and his gal who try to track down the members of a crime gang. The only trick the movie has is that the cops don't know the boss is a woman (Anderson). Despite her title billing, Anderson has little to do and the "star" couple are bland beyond belief. Arthur Shields (brother of Barry Fitzgerald) has a small bit and Eric Blore, who usually livens up any movie, doesn't really get a chance. Don't bother.