THE GLASS KEY (1942)

An archetypal hard-boiled film noir, based on a novel by Dashiell Hammett, which clearly was an influence on the Coen brothers when they made MILLER'S CROSSING. The convoluted plot doesn't matter as much as the character dynamics. Brian Donleavy is a big-shot political boss and Alan Ladd is his trusted right-hand man. Donleavy decides to support a judge (Moroni Olson) in an election and winds up sweet on the judge's daughter (Veronica Lake). Ladd isn't sure the whole thing is such a good idea as it sets up some bad blood with a gangster (Joseph Calleia). The judge's son, an effete wimp played by Richard Denning, ends up dead and Donleavy is implicated, partly because his sister (Bonita Granville) was dating Denning. Ladd, as his counterpart Gabriel Byrne does in MILLER'S CROSSING, seems to betray his boss but is actually sniffing around trying to clear Donleavy. There is more, but that's the crucial plotline.

Ladd ends up in the hands of Calleia's goons and suffers an extensive and brutal beating (more precisely, a series of beatings) from brawny William Benedix. Many critics find homoeroticism in this relationship, as Benedix keeps calling Ladd "sweetheart" and seems unduly excited about dishing out the beatings. Ladd's make-up after he's been worked over is unusually realistic for the era; his face is pulped and he's almost unrecognizable. He escapes in a great sequence involving a fire, an awning, and a kitchen. There is a subplot with a shady newspaper editor and his wife, with whom Ladd flirts. Dane Clark has a small role as a thug who gets thrown through a plate glass window in an early scene, then gets more punishment later on. Lillian Randolph, the Bailey's maid in IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE, is a nightclub singer. The happy ending is rather improbable (and apparently quite different from the novel's outcome), but it doesn't ruin what's come before. The most interesting scene is the one where Benedix catches up with Ladd and takes him up to his squalid little room to finish the beating (to the death, perhaps)--the tension is high, but the violence, when it comes, winds up aimed at a surprising target. I'm not really a big Alan Ladd fan, but he's very good here; Lake doesn't have a lot to do. Quite good, and a must see for fans of film noir and/or the Coen Brothers.

End of Summer Catch-Up

THE THREE MUSKETEERS (1935)
The first English-language sound version of Dumas' novel, and a very drab and low-spirited movie. Walter Abel, a solid supporting actor who I liked very much as the manager in HOLIDAY INN, is totally miscast as the youthful, romantic D'Artagnan. Paul Lukas, another actor I usually like, seems a bit too old to play Athos, leader of the Musketeers. He's clearly a pro, however, which is more than can be said for much of the rest of the cast. The whole thing comes off like a bunch of amateurs found some cool sets, costumes, and movie cameras lying around an abandoned studio and decided to have at it. A stage actress named Rosamond Pinchot does a nice job as the queen; this is the only movie she ever made. Heather Angel is OK as Constance, Abel's love interest. The swordplay is unconvincing and the cinematography uninspired. Stick with the glossy MGM version with Gene Kelly.

YES MY DARLING DAUGHTER (1939)
A romantic farce that set off quite a stir among the censors. It's all about what happens when a young unmarried couple (Priscilla Lane and Jeffrey Lynn) head off for a weekend together at a private cabin in the woods. Fay Bainter plays Lane's mother, a woman who in the past had been a Greenwich Village bohemian feminist but who now holds more solidly middle-class suburban values. Lynn is about to leave for three years overseas and he and Lane decide a last weekend together is in order. Even though we're pretty sure nothing untoward will happen, their plans still send the family into conniptions. A strong supporting cast includes Ian Hunter as the father and May Robson as the lively grandmother, who is the catalyst for the story's last act (in which almost everyone spend the night in jail). Roland Young is his usual fine self as a former friend (and, we are to assume, lover) of Bainter's from the old days who happens to show up for the weekend. Things work out in the end, though only through the sacrifice of character consistency and a sense of reality. Fun if seen as a period piece (the central premise would hardly cause a stir today).

YOUNG IDEAS (1943)
Silly B-movie fluff which wastes completely the potential of its two adult stars. Mary Astor plays a widow who impulsively marries a rather stuffy professor (Herbert Marshall). Her kids (Susan Peters and Elliot Reid) plot to get them to divorce so they can leave their boring college town and move back to New York City. Astor is reliable as always, but the plot never rises above Brady Bunch-type sitcom shenanigans. Richard Carlson is a young academic who Peters secretly marries. George Dolenz, father of Monkee Mickey Dolenz, is in the cast, and supposedly Ava Gardner has a bit part, though I didn't see her.

Two Pre-Code "Complicated Women" Movies

BLONDIE JOHNSON (1933)
Joan Blondell is a poor girl screwed over by the world: she quits her job when the boss harasses her, and her sick mother dies when Blondell can't pay for her medical costs. She works her way up through the rackets, becoming a gangster's moll and eventually taking over as head of illegal activities in the city. She's sitting pretty, but without the man she loves (Chester Morris); through a misunderstanding, she thinks he ratted her out to the cops and she has him set up for a kill. She finds out the truth and tries to stop the hit. Blondell's character is interesting in that she feels totally justified turning to crime to get back at a society that has done her no favors. At the same time, she steadfastly guards her "purity" and comes off as a good girl, despite her involvement in crime. Morris is hot but his character is passive and ineffective--Blondell has to goad him into getting ahead, then drives him out when she finds out he's marrying someone else. Also with Allen Jenkins and Claire Dodd, and a Japanese actress named Toshia Mori in a unstereotyped part. Sterling Holloway has a fun bit as a streetwise taxi driver--maybe the only time he's ever played a character who could be called streetwise.

SHE HAD TO SAY YES (1933)
Loretta Young is a secretary in love with Regis Toomey, a business hotshot (in sales, I think). They spend hours a day making out, or so it's implied. The big boss decides that business would be improved if the secretaries started showing visiting customers a good time in the evening. Young doesn't want to get involved, but as a favor to Toomey, she agrees to do it one time with the handsome Lyle Talbot. He misreads her intentions but she escapes with her virtue intact and Talbot is properly chastised. He falls for her just as she discovers that Toomey is flirting with an office floozy. There are further complications, but suffice to say that in the rushed conclusion typical of many short 30's movies, Young and Talbot work things out. As other reviewers have noted, it isn't really a happy ending since we get the sense that she is settling for the lesser of two evils in choosing Talbot over Toomey (or maybe she's just choosing purely based on looks!). Busby Berkeley directed, and one early scene in a nightclub shows a bit of the flair he would bring to musicals a little later in the decade.

IS PARIS BURNING? (1966)

A dramatization of the liberation of Paris during WWII with an all-star international cast (mostly French). The non-fiction book that the film is based on is presented somewhat like an oral history as we follow dozens of people, Allies and Germans, through the days of liberation in August of 1944. The movie doesn't do a very good job of setting up the context of the events. I'm pretty sure I would frequently have been at sea if I hadn't just read the book (which is the reason I rented the movie). The closest thing the movie has to a cental character is the Nazi officer (General von Choltitz, played by Gert Frobe, better known as Goldfinger) who is put in charge of defending Paris after the Normandy invasion; if he cannot hold the city against the inevitable attack by the Allies, Hitler orders him to destroy it. Frobe does a nice job as the confused man who wants to follow orders but can't bring himself to be responsible for the destruction of such a beautiful city--it's made clear in the book but not in the film that Choltitz believed that Hitler had become an ineffective leader and a raving madman. Another problem for the Germans (and to some degree, the Allies) is the Resistance, or more precisely the various Resistance groups that are squabbling about the timing for an uprising in Paris. Pierre Vaneck is the Resistance representative who goes through enemy lines to make contact with the Allies (Kirk Douglas is General Patton). Alain Delon and Jean-Paul Belmondo play other Resistance fighters; Charles Boyer is a doctor who helps Vaneck on his mission; Orson Welles is a Swiss diplomat.

Others in the large cast (mostly with only a few minutes of screen time) are Simone Signoret, Anthony Perkins, Glenn Ford, Yves Montand, and Leslie Caron. There are some nicely surreal moments, one with a fancy hotel lobby in flames, and another with Resistance fighters carrying on a fierce battle from an old lady's apartment while she causally sips tea. The movie is in black & white, which allows smooth integration of actual footage of the street fighting and celebrating that accompanied the city's liberation, though the last shot (an aerial view of present-day Paris) suddenly turns to color. At three hours, the lack of a central hero works against the cohesion of the various plot elements. Vaneck, Delon and Belmondo (all quite handsome) get a fair amount of attention, but we never get to know them as characters and they mostly vanish in the last hour. This is infamous for being a badly dubbed film--it's in English and it seems like almost all the dialogue, even that of the American actors, is post-dubbed. It does hurt the film a bit, but I got used to it. Recommended, especially if you're already a war buff, though be warned that this is not a traditional war film with a lot of bloody battle scenes.

THE FALCON TAKES OVER (1942)

The best Falcon film I've seen yet (I've also seen THE FALCON IN HOLLYWOOD and THE FALCON'S ALIBI), perhaps partly because it's based on a Raymond Chandler novel, "Farewell My Lovely." George Sanders gets tangled up in a murder at a nightclub, Club 13; the manager is killed by ex-con (and ex-wrestler) Ward Bond, and Sanders' sidekick (Allen Jenkins) is forced into driving the getaway car. Sanders' fiancee is out of town and a lovely rookie reporter (Lynn Bari) accompanies him as he investigates. It turns out that Bond is searching for a mysterious damsel named Velma, who done him wrong. Other fishy characters include a fey rich guy (Hans Conreid), a psychic (Turhan Bey), and a beautiful blonde (Helen Gilbert). The supporting cast includes James Gleason as a cop and Anne Revere as a scared underling. Most of the cast members only get one good scene before getting bumped off. Bond comes off a bit like the Frankenstein monster, threatening to break people's necks with his bare hands. The plot is more coherent than the average B-mystery, fairly easy to follow until the end, and the fates of the characters are satisfying. There is quite a bit of humor, with Jenkins referring several times to "corpus delicious," and Sanders telling someone that he never drinks before sunset, but "after that, the deluge." At 65 minutes, it clips along nicely.

STAGE DOOR CANTEEN (1943)

This is the New York City version of HOLLYWOOD CANTEEN, a wartime revue set at a USO club for soldiers. As with the Hollywood version, this one has a thin plot line involving a forbidden romance and features stars acting like "normal" folks as they volunteer at the club. As far as the story goes, Lon McAllister is California, a naive boy looking for his first kiss; Sunset Carson is Tex who falls for a li'l old Southern gal; William Terry is Dakota, who has sworn off women for the duration, but who winds up involved with the icy Cheryl Walker. He also helps his buddy Jersey (Fred Brady) write love letters to his gal. Marjorie Riordan is sweet on California and, as a hostess at the club, isn't supposed to get involved with the men, but she eventually gives California his kiss, if a rather anti-climactic one. The somewhat tedious story is broken up with lots of songs: Peggy Lee croons "Why Don't You Do Right," the song made famous 40 years later by Jessica Rabbit; Ethel Merman belts out lustily about marching through Berlin; Gracie Fields sings about killing Japs, then performs "The Lord's Prayer." There are big band numbers by Count Basie, Xavier Cugat, Benny Goodman, and Kay Kyser. George Jessel does a vaudeville routine set in a phone booth; Katherine Cornell plays Juliet to a GI's Romeo. Other celebs who pop in include Edgar Bergen, Merle Oberon, Gypsy Rose Lee, Judith Anderson and Talullah Bankhead. Katharine Hepburn, playing herself in a short bit at the end, comes off just like one of her film characters. As one might expect, the comics and musicians are fine, but the filmmakers didn't quite know what to do with the actors (particularly those like Cornell, Alfred Lunt, and Lynn Fontanne who didn't do many movies), and they seem a bit at sea. The movie is good for one go-around, but it's not a keeper.

YOU'RE TELLING ME! (1934)

One of the few W. C. Fields movies I've seen where the plot actually counts for something, at least for a while. Fields plays Sam Bisbee, a dreamer who spends most of his time coming up with offbeat inventions in his back room, most notably a chair that knocks out the person who sits in it. His most promising invention is a puncture-proof tire. His sweet daughter (Joan Marsh) wants to marry a boy (Buster Crabbe) from a high society family, but the boy's mother (Kathleen Howard) obejcts strongly to Marsh's background, especially her somewhat disreputable and occasionally drunken father. Fields hopes that the sale of his tire to a tire company will impress Crabbe's mother and facilitate the marriage, but the demonstration goes awry. On the train home, Fields thinks about suicide, but then mistakenly believes that a female passenger (Adrienne Ames) is about to take poison and so he "saves" her. Fields actually *acts* here, fleshing out his character in a way that he usually didn't bother with in his later movies. It turns out that Ames is a princess touring America ; charmed by Field's chivalry, she visits him at home (leading to rumors of an affair) and winds up boosting his reputation and helping him sell his invention. The plot stops dead in the last 10 minutes as Fields does his famous slapstick gold routine (culled from an earlier short film); I found the bit to be rather tedious but it doesn't really hurt the movie. Other reviewers have commented that we see a "kinder & gentler" Fields in this film, which is mostly true, but it still ranks with his best. The opening, where he comes home drunk, is one of his best routines ever.

STAR! (1968)

I avoided watching this notorious flop musical, one of a string of big disasters from the late 60's that killed off the musical genre for decades, until I could see it letterboxed. It turns out that it's not a bad movie at all; it's quite watchable with good if not overly imaginative production numbers and some fine performances, though Julie Andrews never fully inhabits the role of Gertrude Lawrence, a British star of stage and screen. The film had the misfortune to be released in the same season as Barbra Streisand's FUNNY GIRL, about American Fanny Brice; both are long movies about past stars of the musical stage and both are constructed as long-view stories of the rise of their careers and the highs and lows of their love lives. Unlike the Streisand film, STAR! confines its songs to the stage and uses mostly period music (some of it by Noel Coward, a real-life friend of Lawrence's, and played by Daniel Massey in the film). However, few of the songs are memorable--in fact, the only one I can recall a few days after watching the movie is George Gershwin's "Someone to Watch Over Me."

The movie begins a bit like CITIZEN KANE, as we watch a newsreel version of the life of Gertrude Lawrence. It turns out that Lawrence herself (Andrews) is watching the film and she stops at several points to comment on the truth behind the footage. We see her get her start in a music hall, in a mediocre act with her parents which provides an amusing opening number. She manages to forge ahead largely through sheer force of will; her life-long friendship with Noel Coward helps her career and we see her become a genuine star even as she keeps messing up her romantic relationships with a variety of men including John Collin as a helpful stage manager who becomes her first husband, Michael Craig as a titled diplomat, Robert Reed as an American actor, and Richard Crenna as a financier and would-be theatrical producer. Jenny Agutter plays her daughter is who around for a few minutes just so we can see that she is loved but neglected by her mother. In addition to guilt over her failed relationship with Agutter, we also see Andrews weather a breakdown (mostly physical, it seems) and near-bankruptcy before she triumphs for good at the end. There is a particularly amusing moment when we see Andrews and Massey act out a racy scene from Coward's play "Private Lives" for the Lord Chamberlain (the official state censor), but the happy and sad times aren't always effectively presented. Anthony Eisley has about one minute of screen time as a quickly forgotten beau, and Jock Livingston plays the critic Alexander Woolcott, who calls Lawrence "Goddess." Robert Reed, whom I mostly know as Mike Brady, is surprisingly good here and it seems a shame that TV robbed him of a broader career in movies. Not a movie you have to seek out, but not nearly as bad as its reputation would suggest.

EVER IN MY HEART (1933)

An interesting melodrama with mixed messages about love, loyalty, and prejudice. Set during WWI, the story centers on Barbara Stanwyck, a New England blueblood; when we first see her, she is anxiously awaiting the arrival of her beau, Ralph Bellamy, from overseas. But when Bellamy arrives, he has a German pal, Otto Kruger, in tow and Stanwyck winds up smitten with Kruger, to the consternation of her family (including brother Frank Albertson and grandmother Laura Hope Crews). Bellamy steps aside and Stanwyck marries Kruger, who becomes a U. S. citizen and is slowly accepted by her family. However, the sinking of the Lusitania triggers a wave an anti-German sentiment; despite Kruger's best attempts to show how American he has become, the townspeople shut him out and he loses his teaching position at the local college. After their young son dies (of the flu, I think), Kruger goes back to Germany; Stanwyck divorces him and goes to Europe as a volunteer nurse. She meets up by accident with Kruger and realizes he is spying on American troops. Torn between her remaining feelings for Kruger and loyalty for her country (especially since her brother is at the front), she spends one last night with Kruger and then takes drastic measures to solve her problem (a solution that would not have been possible under the Hayes code a year later).

The movie's handling of the issue of wartime prejudices must have seemed particularly apt just a few years later as Hitler began his European invasions. Even now, after the events of September 11, 2001, the message is applicable (and given human nature, may never go out of date). Kruger is presented initally as a good man; it is the overwhelming nature of the town's prejuidce against him that drives him to his acts of betrayal. I had a problem with the "love at first sight" aspect of Stanwyck's first meeting with Kruger--he just isn't portrayed as all that charming or dashing (poor Ralph Bellamy never seems to have much luck with the leading ladies!). Ruth Donnelly is underused as the family maid; Clara Blandick and Elizabeth Patterson are also in the cast. A quote from the film might be seen as its message:--"Folks can't get away from what's bred in their blood and bones"--but the film ultimately takes a view that is more complicated and interesting than that.

POSSESSED (1931)

Joan Crawford made two movies with this title, the second one was released in 1947. Plotwise, they have nothing to do with each other. This one is an interesting pre-Code melodrama, written by Lenore Coffee, which centers on the idea of woman as economic commodity. Crawford is a factory worker who yearns for a better life. Nice guy Wallace Ford wants to marry her, but she's not ready to settle down so she heads for the big city. In record time, on a train to the city, she meets a rich man (Skeets Gallagher) who she thinks will be her sugar daddy, but when she shows up at this apartment, he sends her away. Her disappointment is short lived, however, as rich lawyer Clark Gable (much younger and handsomer than Gallagher) is around to step in. For years, she is his mistress, kept in luxury, but he refuses to marry her for reasons involving a previous marriage (and divorce) and the potential for scandal when he decides to run for political office. Once he's in place to run for governor, his advisors suggest that he dump Crawford. As it happens, old flame Ford comes back into the picture around this time and misunderstandings and betrayals engulf all three, leaving Crawford to have to make a decision about doing the right thing (and what that right thing might be). The moral complexities here are nicely presented, in several shades of gray. Crawford wants things for herself, is ambitious, and doesn't mind getting ahead however she can, but old double standards get in her way. A well acted film with interesting social commentary that would not have been possible under the Hayes Code.

THE BLUE GARDENIA (1953)

This Fritz Lang thriller has many trappings of film noir (although with a female lead) but despite a strong opening, it's not as moody or intense as it should be, turning into more ordinary melodrama along the way. Anne Baxter gets dumped, via mail, by her boyfriend in Korea. Depressed, she gets a phone call from artist Raymond Burr, who thinks he's talking to her roommate (Ann Sothern). Baxter meets Burr for a date, gets quite drunk, and winds up at his place. He gets too forceful with her, she defends herself with a poker, then passes out. The next morning, Burr is dead and Baxter assumes she killed him. Slowly, a web of circumstantial evidence closes in around her (with George Reeves as a cop putting the clues together) and she decides to trust Richard Conte, a reporter who promises to clear her name. The paranoid atmosphere is well done, with lots of scenes of phones and evesdropping (Baxter & Sothern are telephone operators). It's perhaps a little too clear to us that Baxter is innocent, though there is some nice misdirection involving Sothern's character. Ultimately, the identity of the killer (a minor, left-field character) is unimportant; the relationship between Baxter and Conte is the center of the last half of the film. Jeff Donnell is the third roommate and Nat King Cole has a cameo singing the title song at the title cafe (which is otherwise not terribly important to the plot). Baxter is good, as is Sothern, who looks much younger than her years. OK, but not terribly compelling.

THE GHOST COMES HOME (1940)

A trifle, occasionally irritating but worth watching for a few of my favorite supporting actors. I have to imagine that even in 1940, this plot was a bit far-fetched for people's tastes. Frank Morgan plays a mild-mannered pet store owner in a small town; his family loves him, but his wife (Billie Burke) wishes he were a bit more ambitious. Through a needlessly complicated plot machination involving a plan to visit a rich school pal who now lives in Australia, Morgan heads off for New York City but never makes it to the liner for Australia, winding up instead in jail for 30 days on a "drunk and disorderly" charge. Meanwhile, the liner sinks and Morgan is presumed dead. The family gets a good chunk of insurance money and sells the pet store; though they genuinely miss Morgan, they are in much better financial shape than ever. Morgan eventually returns, scaring the Dickens out of everyone, and soon they all realize that, in order to avoid a fraud charge, Morgan must remain "dead," relegated to living in the attic. Tiring of this plan fairly quickly, Morgan lets a tyrannical streak show, terrorizing the family with his demands and soon everyone is looking for a way out. And that's only about two-thirds of the plot! Ann Rutherford is the daughter, who falls for John Shelton, a snobbish NYC bandleader who disses everyone when he's in town for a gig, but who redeems himself by helping Morgan out while he's in the Big Apple. Reginald Owen, playing against type, is a band member who plays a crucial role in a real estate scam the family runs against shiftless Donald Meek. Frank Albertson and Nat Pendleton are also in the cast. Amusing in spots; I like Morgan but he's awfully hammy here. Despite a few plot loopholes, the scam is nicely pulled off and provides a satisfying ending.

BERLIN EXPRESS (1948)

I agree with a couple of IMDb reviewers who think that this is actually a more interesting movie that the similarly themed THE THIRD MAN. Both are somewhat moody stories of post-war intrigue; the Carol Reed movie may have more depth, but this is much more fun to watch, and almost as effective. On a train from Paris to Frankfurt, a German who is supposed to be an important figure in the reconstruction of post-war Germany is assassinated, only it turns out that the killers got the decoy. The real diplomat (Paul Lukas) is temporarily safe, but later he is kidnapped and his secretary (Merle Oberon) gets a multinational group of passengers to help her and the Army search for him. The group includes Robert Ryan as the resourceful American, Robert Coote as the Brit, and Roman Toporov as the Russian (the one who is the most conflicted about joining in). Location shooting in Berlin and the ruins of Frankfurt add to the film's atmosphere. The opening section of the movie has too much spoken narration as exposition, but this gets better as the movie goes on. The scenes on the train are well shot; the main characters are all introduced as we see them enter their compartments through the windows. The group comes off a bit like a bunch of Hardy Boys, which is meant as a compliment here. There are good action scenes throughout, especially toward the end. There are also some nice Hitchcockian moments, one with a mind reader and a clown in a sinister nightclub, and one near the end as we see a character being strangled through a reflection in a train window as Ryan and Oberon, blithely unaware, continue chatting. Ultimately, Lukas's mission is successful, although we are left with some pessimism about the possibility of lasting peace. Jacques Tourneur directs with his usual understated flair. Highly recommended.

THE GREAT WHITE HOPE (1970)

I must admit that the main reason I watched this was because it has Chester Morris in a small role (and his last role--he died, an apparent suicide, just before the film was released), but the real reason to appreciate this movie is that it is proof that James Earl Jones once had a full-blooded acting career; it seems that Hollywood couldn't quite figure out how to best use him until they discovered his voice-over talent. Based on a Pulitzer Prize-winning play, this is a fictionalized version of the life of boxer Jack Johnson (here named Jack Jefferson), the first black heavyweight champion. A brash, confident person who is uncomfortable being held up as a token figure standing in for his entire race, he takes a devil-may-care attitude toward living his life to its fullest in the public spotlight. When he flaunts his white girlfriend (Jane Alexander), the powers that be, in both the sport and the law, have a reason to try to take him down. He is arrested (because miscegenation laws prohibit him from taking Alexander across state lines) but escapes the country before he can be imprisoned. He keeps his boxing career going for a time, but eventually things start to fall apart. He drives Alexander away--I think he believes he does it for her own good, but it's still a startlingly cruel act--and she kills herself, which takes much of his spark away from him, leading to a sad but somewhat hopeful ending. For a boxing movie, there are very few scenes of boxing until the final bout in Havana. Knowing Jones mostly as the voice of Darth Vader, or in small roles in movies like FIELD OF DREAMS, I was stunned at how good he is here. He makes his complex character fierce but thoughtful and we are sympathetic with him throughout. Alexander is almost as good in her first movie role--both of them were rightfully nominated for Oscars. Chester Morris is a big-shot, old-time boxing promoter who actually seems a bit torn about his own role in Jones' downfall; other cast members include Hal Holbrook, Beah Richards, and Robert Webber, but this is largely a two-person show.

PRIMROSE PATH (1940)

An odd little melodrama that might have been more interesting had it been done in the pre-Code years and with a different lead actress. Set, I think, in Florida, or at any rate, near a beach community, Ginger Rogers plays a young girl from the wrong side of the tracks. Her mother (Marjorie Rambeau, nominated for a supporting actress Oscar) is married to a broken-down, alcoholic scholar without a job (Miles Mander), but she apparently worked in the past (and perhaps in the present) as a prostitute, as did Rogers' grandmother (Queenie Vassar). Rambeau must feel that whoring is in the blood, because we get hints that she is thinking of pimping for her own daughter--though being a film made under the Production Code, this is all rather oblique. Rogers, fresh-faced and a bit tomboyish, meets up with handsome Joel McCrea who works in a beachfront diner and the two hit it off. They get married, which allows Rogers to think she'll be able to escape her tawdry family situation. She gets a job at the diner (Henry Travers is the good-hearted boss) and there is a nice scene of Rogers and McCrea trading "Cheers"-like quips with the clientale. But soon, McCrea finds out about her background and, thinking he's been played for a fool, leaves her. After a few melodramatic plot developments, they wind up together at the end. Joan Carroll, the middle daughter in MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS, is Rogers' kid sister; Charles Lane is a rich friend/client of Rambeau's. The mean grandmother is the most interesting character and Vassar is good in the role; she should have had more screen time, and should also have had a stronger comeuppance for all her mischief, since she is the one who deliberately lies to McCrea and causes him to leave Rogers. The beach and sea settings are nicely detailed and realistic. Rogers, who was almost 30, is stuck playing a part way too young for her, which defuses the situation a bit--it would have been much more effective for an actress in her early 20's to play the part.

GANGWAY FOR TOMORROW (1943)

There was much potential here for an interesting movie, but the B-level budget and overriding propaganda concerns sort of sink the material. The film's frame is a car-pool ride by six people to their war manufacturing job. The co-workers have never really gotten to know each other very well, and the mild-mannered driver admits to the rest that, in conversations with his wife, he has made up backgrounds for all the other five. As the driver tells each person what he imagines about him or her, we get a fleshed-out interior monologue about how each one came to doing war work. The first and best story has Margo as a French nightclub singer and resistance fighter whose small cell is betrayed; her handsome lover (Bruce Edwards) and the rest are executed, but she gets away and makes it to America. The others: Robert Ryan is a race car driver who can't join the Air Corps with his buddies because of injuries he sustained in a crash; John Carradine is a hobo who is moved by a patriotic speech (by judge Harry Davenport) to find gainful employment; Amelita Ward is a former beauty queen whose show biz dreams amount to nothing; James Bell is a prison wardern who has to execute his own brother. Most of the individual stories are interesting but suffer from underdevelopment (especially Bell's with its noirish look and its unexplored psychological content). One of the best scenes is a direct steal from CASABLANCA: Margo manages to break into a radio speech by Hitler to lead her fellow citizens in a sing-along of the Marsellaise.

LURED (1947)

Interesting mystery directed by Douglas Sirk, better known for his glossy soap-opera melodramas of the 50's. Despite some occasional film noir tone, this is a fairly traditional detective story set in the present, but with an Edwardian feel. Someone is kidnapping and apparently killing young women in London, women he's met through the personals ads, then sending poems (which quote from Baudelaire) to Scotland Yard. The latest woman to vanish is a friend of dance hall girl Lucille Ball, an American stranded in England when her show flops, and she volunteers to help the police catch the killer by answering suspicious ads. There are any number of suspects: Boris Karloff as a nutty dress designer; George Sanders as a playboy nightclub owner who romances Ball; Cedric Hardwicke as Sanders' staid business partner; and Joseph Calleia as the head of a white slavery ring. A strong supporting cast includes Charles Coburn, Alan Napier, and Alan Mowbray. Most notable is George Zucco as a Scotland Yard man who acts as bodyguard to Ball. Uusally Zucco plays a creep or a villian, but here he is downright heroic and quite charming. Ball is serviceable throughout, but her supporting cast outshines her. There is nice work with shadows and, though it displays little of the visual flair of Sirk's later films (like ALL THAT HEAVEN ALLOWS), the sets are impressive. Quite a good thriller, highly recommended.

MORE MIDSUMMER CATCH-UP

THE DARK MIRROR (1946)--This would seem to be an early entry in the psychological thriller genre that thrived after WWII; it also has a film noir atmosphere, though not many other trappings of that kind of movie. A man is murdered and a woman is seen leaving the scene. The problem is that the suspect who matches the description of the woman is Olivia De Havilland, who plays identical twins: Ruth, who seems sweet and mild, and Terry, a little on the bitchy and edgy side. De Havilland does a nice job distinguishing subtly between the two, so much so that I had some trouble keeping track of which twin was which (an intentional problem, I imagine). It develops that one of the sisters is trying to "gaslight" the other, which throws a monkey wrench into the whole situation. Thomas Mitchell is the investigating cop and Lew Ayres is a psychiatrist who does some investigating of his own and winds up falling for Ruth. The picture is drably shot, but the twin effects are good, and the story builds to an exciting climax.

BACKGROUND TO DANGER (1943)--A bland attempt to produce another CASABLANCA without Bogart. George Raft, who had once been in the running for the part of Rick Blaine, plays an American on a train to Turkey during WWII. He gets involved with a shady woman (Osa Massen) who is trying to pass secret plans along to someone; she is killed and Raft winds up with the plans, a German forgery that claims that Russia is about to invade neutral Turkey. The Nazis, led by Sidney Greenstreet, want to leak the plans to the press to force Turkey to take up with the Germans. Peter Lorre and Brenda Marshall are also trying to get their hands on the documents, but Raft can't tell what their intentions are. Turhan Bey has a thankless role as a protector of Raft's who winds up dead. Raft himself is deadly dull, but he does get to do his somewhat famous coin-flipping routine. Lorre has a buzz cut which suits him and makes him less slimy than usual. For me, the high point of all these tedious proceedings was watching Greenstreet get to do one of his trademarked belly laughs.

THE SMILING LIEUTENANT (1931)--A Lubitsch operetta, fluffy but of little consequence. Maurice Chevalier plays a soldier who has the hots for violinist Claudette Colbert, but while he's flirting with her one day, a visiting princess (Miriam Hopkins) assumes his winks are meant for her. To save face and avoid a diplomatic scandal, he woos and marries the princess. She's rather plain and inexperienced in the ways of love, so Colbert ends up teaching her how to sex up her relationship. Though Colbert is more likeable, conventional morality wins out; Chevalier and Hopkins wind up happy together, and Colbert gracefully bows out. There are some nice Lubitsch touches, but overall not a terribly memorable film (bear in mind that I'm not a Chevalier fan, though I do usually like Lubitsch and Colbert). There is a very funny breakfast song with a line about invading the marmalade. The song where Colbert gives advice to Hopkins, "Spice Up Your Lingerie," is also fun. Charles Ruggles is in the cast, in a too-small role.

THE BIG BROADCAST OF 1938 (1938)

The last of my recent Bob Hope viewings is also the least of them. This is a particularly dippy musical variety movie; the genre seemed to be dying out at the time and this film is evidence of why. The threadbare plot centers around the race of two ocean liners from America to Europe. One of the ships has an experimental supplementary power source known as "radio power," an invention of hunky Leif Erickson. W. C. Fields plays the nutty twin brother of the head of one of the ocean liner companies; because he is such a klutz, he is sent to travel on the rival ship (arriving from the air in a bizarre winged scooter) in hopes that he will hinder its voyage, but he mistakenly winds up on his own company's liner. The only other narrative thread involves Bob Hope as a radio MC who is running from a gaggle of ex-wives who want him to pay up on his alimony. His current suitor, Dorothy Lamour, winds up attracted to Erickson, and one of Hope's exes, Shirley Ross, falls back in love with him, largely via their rendition of Hope's signature song, "Thanks for the Memory." Martha Raye is along for the ride, shattering mirrors just by looking at them--it actually is one of the funnier gags in the film. The rest of the cast consists of mostly forgettable musical specialty acts. The last number is a long history of the waltz that is suitably spectacular in looks but does drag on. There is a silly cartoon sequence set to music by Shep Fields and his Rippling Rhythm Orchestra, and W. C. Fields (I assume no relation to Shep) gets off a few good lines like this one: Fields: "I feel like a June bride!" Straight man: "How does a June bride feel?" Fields: "I wonder, I wonder..." The movie is not especially memorable--if you want a more consistenly funny variety film, check out STAR SPANGLED RHYTHM--but "Thanks for the Memory" really is, with Hope even seeming to get in an improvised chuckle or two.

ROAD TO ZANZIBAR (1941) / ROAD TO UTOPIA (1946)

Over the next couple days, I'll catch up with the rest of the Bob Hope movies I've seen recently. ZANZIBAR was the second "Road" picture, after ROAD TO SINGAPORE (which I haven't seen), just before they really hit their speed with their much acclaimed third movie ROAD TO MOROCCO. Hope and Bing Crosby are, as usual, partners on the run--this time, they're carnival performers in Africa, with Hope getting shot out of a cannon. On the trail of a diamond mine, they meet up with Dorothy Lamour and Una Merkel while avoiding thugs and the law. Eric Blore has a lamentably small part in the proceedings here, which haven't yet taken on the wild, anything-goes tone that would make the later movies so much fun. After a break during the war years, the duo return with UTOPIA, which is almost as good as MOROCCO. The plot doesn't matter nearly as much as the one-liners, the self-referential remarks, and the prickly chemistry between Hope and Crosby. In the opening, an aged Hope and Lamour open their door to an aged Crosby whom they left for dead in Alaska many years ago. The rest of the movie is a flashback to their Gold Rush adventures. Hope and Crosby are a struggling pair of vaudevillians; in Alaska on the trail of a gold mine, they meet up with Dorothy Lamour while avoiding thugs and the law (sound familiar?). The best bits are the frequent moments where they "break the fourth wall" and talk to the audience, as when Hope, seeing Crosby, says, "And I thought this was going to be an A-picture." At one point, a lovely snowy mountaintop turns into the Paramount logo. There's a talking fish, and later a talking bear complaining that the fish got two lines but he didn't get any. Robert Benchley pops in periodically with humorous asides, telling us that the studio hired him to help out becuase the movie made no sense. The ending gag is priceless. Overall, this one is probably funnier than MOROCCO, but both MOROCCO has a more interesting atmosphere; both of the movies stand the test of time nicely.

THE CAT AND THE CANARY (1939)

First Katharine Hepburn, now Bob Hope. The great icons of classic movies have pretty much all left us. Aside from the Christmas-themed THE LEMON DROP KID, I'm not really a fan of Hope's later movies, but I have recently discovered the pleasures of his early comedies, and not just the ROAD films. I've already reviewed his "revues" COLLEGE SWING and STAR SPANGLED RHYTHM, and one of the best of the ROAD films, ROAD TO MOROCCO. Thanks to an e-mail friend, I was finally able to see THE CAT AND THE CANARY, a remake of the silent film that was in all likelihood the model (along with Mary Roberts Rinehart's THE BAT) for all those thrillers set in old dark houses with secret passages and suspicious guests, right up to and including the Scooby Doo TV show of the 70's. In this one, a group of relatives gather at the aforementioned house (on the edge of the Bayou) for the reading of the will of a man who has been dead for ten years. His faithful housekeeper (Gale Sondergaard) still lives in the house. There are some simmering jealousies and resentments among the group which includes Bob Hope as a radio comic, Elizabeth Patterson and Nydia Westman as ditzy aunts, two young men (Douglass Montgomery and John Beal) with ill feelings for each other, and Paulette Goddard as the lovely daughter, who winds up the sole beneficiary of the old man's estate. However, if she dies or goes insane, someone else, whose identity is secret, will be made heir. Naturally, it develops that Goddard is in danger and Hope comes stumbling to the rescue. Hope and Goddard essentially did an uncredited remake of this in THE GHOST BREAKERS, which is a more atmospheric movie, but this one is fun and has some chilling moments. The escape of a mental patient called The Cat feels like a red herring, but it's not. George Zucco is very good in the role of the lawyer, who seems like the chief suspect until he winds up dead... or is he? For some reason, Universal has not issued this on DVD as they have with most of Hope's other Paramount comedies of the time, but it's worth a viewing if you run across it.

SOME MIDSUMMER CATCH-UP
Three totally unrelated films:

LARCENY INC. (1942)--A humorous take on the gangster film with Edward G. Robinson as a con man just out of jail who decides to pull one last big heist before fulfilling a promise he made to his niece (Jane Wyman) to go straight. He buys a luggage store because he and his pals can dig through the cellar to the bank next door; they keep the store open as a front, but it becomes a money maker even as the dig stretches out in time due to various slapsticky delays. Woody Allen basically stole the idea and even specific situations for the first half of SMALL TIME CROOKS (except he replaces the luggage with donuts), most noticeably the scene where the crooks dig into the water pipes. Robinson is good as always and he gets strong support from Broderick Crawford, Edward Brophy, Harry Davenport, John Qualen, and a young Jackie Gleason. Jack Carson is Wyman's boyfriend and Anthony Quinn is the *bad* bad guy. The funniest scenes (aside from the spraying water) involve watching the gang adjust to retail success. There's also a nice Christmas Eve ending.

CAPTAIN BLOOD (1935)--This launched Errol Flynn as a swashbuckling superstar, and he is fine in the title role (literally, as his name is Peter Blood), but the movie is surprisingly slow and bland. With PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN such a big summer hit, it's interesting to note that this is probably the movie that is the archetype for all movies about "good" pirates. Flynn is a doctor in England who is thrown in prison for tending to the wounds of a rebel. He eventually winds up in Jamaica, sold in slavery to Olivia De Havilland, and put to work on her father's plantation. Eventually, of course, love springs up between De Havilland and Flynn, much to the disapproval of her father (Lionel Atwill). As the slaves plan to rebel, the Spanish attack Jamaica; in the confusion, Flynn and his pals escape and become pirates (indeed, of the Caribbean...). Basil Rathbone is a "bad" rival pirate, Guy Kibbee is one of the good pirates. All those who should, get their comeuppances. Parts of this are OK, but much of it comes off as lackluster, perhaps in unfair comparison to later films like ROBIN HOOD or THE BLACK SWAN.

THE MAN THEY COULD NOT HANG (1939)--Boris Karloff plays the first of his "mad scientist" roles as Dr. Saavard who has created an artificial heart system that can revive the dead heart of a human being. He tries to test it on a willing subject but is stopped by the police; because the subject dies, Karloff is charged with murder. After his hanging, he is revived by his assistant using the artificial heart and decides to get revenge on the judge and jury that convicted him. Some interesting philosophical ideas about the concept of life after death are brought up but don't go anywhere. Charles Trowbridge is the judge and Lorna Gray (who later changed her name to Adrian Booth and appeared in lots of B-westerns) is Karloff's daughter. Aside from Karloff's usual good performance, this is a standard grade-B thriller with nothing special plotwise or stylewise.

THE KEYS OF THE KINGDOM (1944)

Most critics don't care for this film's length or leisurely pace, but I'm a sucker for this kind of Hollywood product: the story of a person's life, from youth to old age, with an episodic structure and an attempt at "epic" reach. As far as I'm concerned, GONE WITH THE WIND and DOCTOR ZHIVAGO are the epitomes of the genre (if it really *is* a genre), and this one is certainly not on a par with those, but it holds your attention and has an interesting cast. Gregory Peck, in one of his first starring roles, plays a Scottish priest who spends most of his life as a missionary in China. He arrives to find a mission building in ruins and a handful of fickle followers called "rice Catholics" who stay with the church only in order to get food. Peck rejects them and rebuilds the mission practically from scratch with some material aid from an important Mandarin (Leonard Strong), a boyhood pal who happens to be an atheist but still a good guy (Thomas Mitchell), and a sincere Chinese Catholic who has renamed himself Joseph (Benson Fong). Most of the story is told as a flashback after Peck has retired from missionary work and has been recalled to Scotland; a monsignor (Cedric Hardwicke) reads over the aged priest's journal in deciding whether or not to plead Peck's case to be allowed to remain in active duty in his home parish--apparently, among other things, Peck's claim to his congregation that an atheist can be an OK guy rubs some people the wrong way.

Other members of the large cast include Roddy McDowell (the priest as a young lad), Peggy Ann Garner (the young version of Peck's only romantic interest, who comes to no good as an adult), and Vincent Price (as a stuffy bishop). Rosa Stradner, an Austrian actress, plays the Mother Superior at Peck's mission; at first, she's rather harshly inclined toward the somewhat unorthodox Peck, but eventually their relationship becomes respectful and even warm. A few very good character actors are thrown in for color but largely wasted because their parts are so small. Edmund Gwenn has what amounts to one scene as a early mentor of Peck's. More frustratingly, James Gleason and Anne Revere, both wonderful and underrated supporting players, have interesting roles as "competing" Methodist missionaries who set up shop in China after Peck has finally established his church, but they also have only one scene, which is a shame since their characters have so much potential. The sets and art direction are excellent; there are many tableaux of destruction during civil war which are quite beautiful, especially a scene in a ruined church in the moonlight. Peck ages well, and even gets to have an "action hero" scene where he acts as a spy against a marauding warlord. Stradner left acting after this (which was her only major Hollywood role) and married Joseph Mankiewicz, who co-wrote this script, from A. J. Cronin's novel. This won't be everyone's cup of tea, but I enjoyed it quite a bit.

HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN (1952)

I have to admit up front that I am not a Danny Kaye fan. He doesn't offend or irritate me, he just doesn't charm or interest me very much. This Kaye musical, although it was very popular in its day, dates rather badly. Kaye plays an almost totally fictionalized version of the famous Danish writer of fairy tales. The total make-believe aspect of the story doesn't bother me; I read a biography of the man a few years ago and his actual sad and frustrating life story does not suggest musicalization. Here, he is presented almost like a character in one of his stories, a shoemaker who loves spending his free time spinning tales to entertain the children of his village. The kids get so wrapped up in his stories that they are regularly late for school so the schoolmaster has him thrown out of town. Kaye and his young apprentice (Joey Walsh) head to the big city of Copenhagen where he winds up captivating more children, and falling in love with a ballerina (Zizi Jeanmaire). The trouble is 1) she's married to her dance director (Farley Granger) and 2) Andersen is socially inept except with children. He witnesses Granger being stern with Jeanmaire and assumes she is stuck in a loveless and violent marriage, so he writes her a story for a ballet, "The Little Mermaid." It turns out that the ballerina and her husband are quite happy (the dynamics of an adult relationship are presented as quite beyond the ken of the childlike Andersen) but the ballet company performs the tale, bringing great fame to the author. There are a couple of songs that became fairly popular, including "Inchworm" and "Thumbelina," and a song called "Wonderful Copenhagen" is quite catchy and is staged in a way that brings to mind "Who Will Buy" in OLIVER! fifteen years later. The "Mermaid" ballet, shown in its entirety, is a bit too long for me but visually has some nice Caligarish touches; it also seems to have been inspired a bit by THE RED SHOES. Overall, the whole thing needs more whimsey--it's too leaden to be successful at what it sets out to do: to tell a fairy tale *about* a writer of fairy tales. Moss Hart had a hand in the screenplay, and the choreographer Roland Petit dances with Jeanmaire in the ballet.

THINK FAST, MR. MOTO (1937)

I have a soft spot in my moviefan heart for the Charlie Chan films of the 30's and 40's; they are hardly high art but the ones I've seen are satisfying B-level mysteries, and it's always fun to see Chan go about his business in an unruffled, un-Western manner. I was looking forward to the Fox Movie Channel's presentation of the Chan movies, which had been recently restored, but their festival got derailed by a few complaints about the ethnic stereotypes involved. Actually, aside from the fact that Chan was always played by a non-Chinese actor, the films are remarkably free of the kinds of behavior that cause cringing in audiences today--the worst stereotyping I've seen in Chan films involves the shuffling and mumbling black characters, played by actors like Stepin Fetchit and Clarence Muse. At any rate, I was pleased to see this film, the first in the Mr. Moto series. Based on the evidence of this and MR. MOTO'S LAST WARNING, the Moto series is a little more subtle and less formulaic than the Chan movies.

Peter Lorre plays Moto, a Japanese cop/spy/detective (I was never quite sure how "official" his job was). Aside from seeing that he has ties with an international police force, we get very little establishing information about him in this first film, which helps to keep him a little on the mysterious side. The opening scene, in San Francisco, has Moto facing off against a man who has just killed someone and stuffed him in a wicker crate. Eventually, we discover this is tied in with the activities of a gang of jewel and drug smugglers who are using the ships of the Hitchings line to complete their nefarious deeds. On one of those ships heading for Singapore, Moto befriends Thomas Beck, son of the shipping line president. He is being tracked (and perhaps tricked) by lovely Virginia Field. A porter of Beck's is a bad guy and meets his end when Moto throws him through a porthole into the sea to his death--an oddly violent incident for this typically mild-mannered sleuth, though in general, Moto is a more physically active detective than Chan. It turns out that a highly placed shipping line associate is the ringleader for the gang. Sets are good, a notch above the typical B movie of the time. One funny line: as a drunken Beck is being put to bed by Lorre, he slurringly says, "You're the Japanese sandman" (quoting a popular tune of the era), to which Moto rolls his eyes and says, "Strange people, these Americans." The climax, with some disguises and double crosses, is pulled off very nicely. The mystery was fairly easy to follow, always a plus in my book. Lorre's "Orientalness" is fairly subtle, and never overdone; in fact, he really comes off more like a typical Lorre character than a typical Asian character.

ROXIE HART (1942)

The big Oscar winning musical CHICAGO was based on a 20's play which was filmed twice before, once as a silent (which I haven't seen) and once as this film. The 2002 film is more entertaining, but this version, though not a musical, is fun and clearly influenced the makers of CHICAGO. Ginger Rogers is Roxie, a rather tarty dame married to a schlub (George Chandler); she is anxious to break out of her humdrum married life and into show biz (think Lucy Ricardo), perhaps with some help from talent agent Nigel Bruce. One night, a man (Bruce's partner) is killed in her apartment and Chandler confesses, saying he shot a robber, but when his wife's connection to the dead man is made clear, he recants and Roxie is arrested. She insists she is innocent, but people keep telling her that she has a good chance at getting off (Chicago goes easy on its well-publicized female killers) and Bruce even thinks the charges could jumpstart her career. She hires expensive laywer Billy Flynn (Adolphe Menjou), older, more rumpled, and less self-assured than Richard Gere in the 2002 film. Roxie soon realizes it's all about publicity and illusion, and that even real life is show biz; there's a very nice bit in the prison holding room where she tap dances down the stairs in front of the waiting reporters and soon the scene is a full fledged musical number, with the reporters joining in on the merriment. This cynical theme is, surprisingly for the time, almost as central to the movie as it is to the musical.

George Montgomery, who narrates the story from 15 years later, is a young reporter who falls for Roxie; Spring Byington is columnist Mary Sunshine who takes up Roxie's cause in the press; Phil Silvers, a little less obnoxious than usual, is the chief photographer. Sara Allgood is the matron; her part is not nearly as important as Queen Latifah's in the recent film, but she does have a nice scene where she stops a fight between Roxie and another prisoner (complete with snarling cats on the soundtrack). The film is dedicated to all the women "who shot their men full of holes out of pique." There's a clever pun on the word "madam," unusual for a Code movie. Even the judge is not exempt from criticism as he makes sure he is prominent in all the photos shot of Roxie in his courtroom. Words like "audience" and "performance" are used frequently to refer to the judicial proceedings, and we see Menjou silently mouthing along with Rogers' testimony. Unlike in the original and the musical, Roxie is actually innocent (the burden of the Code, I assume) and justice is served in the end (and Montgomery gets his gal). In a film with many clever touches, one of the best is William Frawley playing a bartender who is listening with much interest to Montgomery's story in the present--it turns out he was the foreman of Roxie's jury. George Chandler, who I know mostly from very small roles, is quite good here, and Rogers is at her best. Very enjoyable and highly recommended.

THE CROWD ROARS (1932)

An early non-gangster role for James Cagney. He plays a well known car racer who goes home for a visit and ends up taking his adoring younger brother (Eric Linden) under his wing, training him to follow in his footsteps. There are female troubles for both: because of some misunderstandings, Ann Dvorak, Cagney's live-in girlfriend, gets kicked out, and Dvorak's friend, Joan Blondell, falls for Linden. Neither woman, in Cagney's eyes, is good enough for either one of them. Eventually, Cagney gets overly cocky, drives drunk in a race, and causes the death of his sidekick pal, Frank McHugh. This sends Cagney spiraling downward while his brother's career is on the rise. In the end, Cagney is redeemed, and in a comic finale, he and his brother race each other to the hospital in ambulances. The race scenes use real racing footage and they're fairly well done; otherwise, it's bland formulaic fare, despite a strong cast (also including Guy Kibbee). Some real-life racing drivers of the era have cameos. Warners remade this in 1939 as INDIANAPOLIS SPEEDWAY, with Pat O'Brien, John Payne, and Ann Sheridan, but I haven't been able to talk myself into watching it yet.

THE MAGIC CHRISTIAN (1969)

This is best approached as an artifact of its time. It doesn't hold up all that well, but I stuck with it and am glad to say that I've seen it. You'll be happier with it if you can get past any expectation of a coherent, linear plot, even though the movie does have the trappings of a fairly traditional narrative. Peter Sellers is Sir Guy Grand, a British millionaire who adopts a homeless hippie (Ringo Starr), making him heir to the Grand fortune. Starr's name, Youngman, helps give a Candide-like quality to the character who trips along passively with Sellers on adventure after adventure as they use money to tempt people to do stupid things. By about halfway through, the pre-Monty Python vaudeville mood does become infectious. The rest of the cast members mostly have cameos as they appear for their skits then vanish. Leonard Frey is a character named Lawrence Faggot; Laurence Harvey plays himself, doing a strip-teasing Hamlet on stage; John Cleese is an auction agent in one of the movie's funniest scenes. The next-to-last, and quite surreal, section of the film takes place on a cruise ship called the Magic Christian; Christopher Lee (as a vampire), Raquel Welch (as Priestess of the Whip), and Roman Polanski show up here. The finale has Sellers tempting dozens of quite respectable citizens into a huge vat of shit and piss into which he has thrown thousands of dollars (or pounds, I suppose). Also with Yul Brynner, Spike Milligan, and Graham Chapman. Starr winds up doing very little, even though he's on screen almost constantly. Overall, it's very hit-and-miss, and it certainly isn't everyone's cup of tea, but it does reflect the wild, "anything goes" attitude that infected popular culture for a few years.

IN OLD CHICAGO (1937)

An early "disaster" film from Fox about the infamous O'Leary family whose cow supposedly started the great Chicago fire. I doubt that much, if any, of the movie is based on truth, but that never bothers Hollywood (or its audiences). The film opens with the family traveling across the plains to Chicago; the father dies after being dragged by his runaway horses during a playful race, leaving Mrs. O'Leary (Alice Brady) to raise her three sons. One becomes Tyrone Power, a handsome scoundrel; though he has plenty of surface charm, he winds up becoming an 1870's version of a gangster who runs activities in the Patch, an old and rickety part of the city, known for its saloons and gambling dens. Another son is Don Ameche, not quite as charming or slick as Power; he works hard to become a lawyer who eventually becomes mayor (partly due to some shady deals done by Power, unknown to Ameche). The third son is Tom Brown, a bland fellow with a wife and kids who is shunted off to the background most of the time. Alice Faye is Belle, a singer who is courted by both Power and Ameche, but who succumbs to Power even though she knows about his rougish ways. In Power's meanest deed, he marries Faye only to stop her from testifying against him in a court of law.

Various melodramatic plot threads come together in the last third of the movie when Mrs. O'Leary's cow finally kicks over the lantern in the barn, which starts the huge fire, this event being rather clumsily foreshadowed early on. The effects during the 20 minute fire sequence are pretty good for their time. In a rather predictable ending, one brother dies and one brother learns a tough lesson; no one really cares what happens to the third brother! Faye seems uncomfortable all the way through, though she is lovely. Power's character is the most interesting; even when he's being thoroughly nasty and seems fully irredeemable, he manages to be mostly charming (and quite the looker!). This is certainly one of his best performances. Ameche is fine, as usual. Madame Sul-Te-Wan plays Faye's maid and manages to come off in a much less subservient way than most black maids of 30's Hollywood. Also with Andy Devine & Brian Donleavy. Rondo Hatton has a small role as a bodyguard, and he's called Rondo at least once in the movie. Most tediously repeated line: "We O'Leary's are a strange tribe." Worth watching.

SORORITY HOUSE (1939)

1939 is often considered the greatest year in Hollywood history (WIZARD OF OZ, GONE WITH THE WIND, WUTHERING HEIGHTS, etc.), but the year had its share of stinkers, flops, and little-known films as well. This one, probably released as the bottom half of a double feature, is nothing special but is nonetheless a solid B-film for what I assume was a niche market of teenage girls (to whom much of Hollywood's product now seems aimed). Anne Shirley is a small town girl, daughter of a drug store owner (J. M. Kerrigan, who had small roles in 14 movies released in 1939). Dad has scrimped and saved and gotten bank loans to send his girl off to college. At the college boarding house, Shirley bonds with her roommates, one who is friendly but bookish (Barbara Read) and one who is friendly but social-climbing (Pamela Blake). The sororities are rushing and the social climber is sure she is a shoo-in, but she winds up blackballed due mostly to her pushy aunt who visits the house thinking she has influence. James Ellison, a "big man on campus," takes a shine to Shirley and tells people her father is rich so the sororities will be interested in her. The father shows up on bid night with some money that Shirley needs, but she is embarrassed by him and snubs him. In the climax, Blake nearly kills herself when she doesn't get a bid, and Shirley gets a bid but decides to turn it down to stay at the boarding house to start a more democratic social club. It sounds a little silly in the re-telling, but at 64 minutes, it speeds along nicely, and Shirley and Ellison make an appealing couple. Dalton Trumbo, later one of the writers who suffered from the HUAC blacklist, wrote the predictable screenplay, based on a story by Mary Chase who also wrote HARVEY. PS--I had a hard time finding information about this film, and I'm not absolutely certain that the social climber is indeed Pamela Blake; some info I found conflicts with other info. I'm fairly sure that the character was called Merle, and according to All Movie Guide, she is played by Blake.

OUR TOWN (1940)

Thornton Wilder's stage masterpiece is brought to the screen with a couple of major changes but it survives the translation to become, if not a great movie, a respectable and effective version of Wilder's material. On the surface, it seems almost plotless, but there is a clear narrative line: a boy and girl in small town America during the early part of the 20th century fall in love, get married, and begin to raise a family. The play is narrated by a stage manager who quite literally manages the onstage proceedings. This device, which works well in the theatre, is kept in the film in the person of the town druggist (Frank Craven) who seems to be controlling the filming. The gimmick is a little creaky; sometimes, as in the beginning and end, it works well, but sometimes it doesn't, as in a section where Craven seems to invite audience participation. Martha Scott (who just died earlier this year) is Emily, a young girl who lives next to and falls in love with William Holden, a boy who is torn between going to an agricultural college and staying in town and taking over the family farm. The film begins in the New England town of Grover's Corners in 1940, but the events take place in 1901, 1904, and 1913. The adults are a fine group of character actors: Thomas Mitchell wisely underplays the role of the town doctor (Holden's father) and Fay Bainter is his wife; Guy Kibbee and Beulah Bondi are Emily's parents. None of the characters or situations are extraordinary, which is the point of the whole thing. A little bit like IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE, this is supposed to be about the everyday living that average, ordinary Americans go through (white middle-class Americans, that is). Most of the dialogue is made up of banal conversational chat, but the acting goes a long way towards making the film fairly compelling. The camerawork is also interesting, with lots of close-ups and interesting use of shadows, and some lovely backdrop matte paintings. The sets, in direct opposition to the play, are realistic and detailed. In the play, a major character dies which brings about a moving last section set in the town graveyard. In the movie, the character, suspended for a while between life and death, ultimately lives, but the material remains powerful. The dead are consigned to an afterlife in the cemetery; remembering the million little joys of life is too sad, so they learn to forget the past instead. It's a rather depressing idea, the strength of which is not compromised by the fact that in the movie, this section winds up being a dream; in the end, the melancholy mood of the play is kept almost intact. Worth seeing.

THE COLLECTOR (1965)

Terence Stamp plays a swinging 60's British variation of Norman Bates, a socially and emotionally stunted young man who kidnaps Samantha Eggar, a lovely and vivacious art student he has been stalking for years. At heart Stamp isn't a killer or even a rapist (perhaps only because he's so repressed); what he wants is for Eggar to fall in love with him. Though a sense of menace is sustained, there are times when the proceedings almost turn comic. It's essentially a two-character drama, presented very much like a play (a bit like WAIT UNTIL DARK without that movie's taut suspense). Stamp attacks Eggar, chloroforms her, and holds her prisoner in the rather spacious and nicely decked-out cellar of a country home that he was able to buy because he won a lottery--we briefly see Mona Washbourne (the aged nanny in BRIDESHEAD REVISITED) in a flashback as his aunt who comes to the bank where he works to tell him about his winnings. Aside from his boring clerk job, his only other interest seems to be collecting butterflies (symbol alert!!). Stamp thinks he's treating Eggar well, feeding her and stocking her cellar with clothes, books, and art he thinks she'll like, but he also handcuffs her when he takes her up to the house to bathe. One scene of comic suspense involves such an incident where a neighbor visits while she's bathing and Eggar cunningly tries to escape. Inevitably, Eggar bears the brunt of some violence, although she also dishes some out to him, in the movie's most exciting scene.

Even though he's dumb enough to think that his treatment and her isolation will cause her to love him, he's also smart enough to know when she's patronizing him, which she is dumb enough to keep doing, again and again. This is a fault in the movie; for much of its running time, they simply go back and forth in a slippery power dynamic which gets old fast. Distinctions of class, looks, and intellectual ability are brought up in their conversations: he doesn't like modern art, doesn't understand why she loves "The Catcher in the Rye," and resents her upper-middle class ways. More knowledge of the backgrounds of both characters would have been helpful; he doesn't need to be "explained" like Norman Bates is in the last minutes of PSYCHO, but some understanding of how he came to be nervous and repressed would be nice. She is actually even more of a cipher; aside from what Stamp observes about her, we don't get to know her at all. She remains a symbol of a way of life rather than a flesh and blood person. I don't want to use any spoilers here, but after a long and draggy middle, the last 15 minutes or so pick up in speed and action, and the ending is nicely chilling, though it's way too subtle to work in today's brutal milieu of movies about slashers and cannibals. Maurice Jarre's music is terrible, drawing attention to itself and constantly interrupting the otherwise sublte moods developed by the acting and the camerawork. Stamp's intense gaze serves him well and his handsomeness is downplayed here in favor of nerdy creepiness--he wears ill-fitting clothes and never smiles (imagine a Crispin Glover character who bathed and wasn't on speed). At a full two hours, it's too long, especially in the first half, but it's an interesting and worthwhile film.

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.