BEN-HUR (1925)

Not the award-winning Charlton Heston movie, but the silent film on which the 1959 remake was based. It's been a long time since I've seen the later film so I can't really do much direct comparison except to say that both cost a lot of money to make and both were big box-office hits. It's subtitled "A Tale of the Christ," and is indeed bookended by the Nativity and the Crucifixion, but it's really the tale of Judah Ben-Hur, the latest in a long line of Jewish princes. With Roman tyranny worsening, the Hur family riches are spirited away by the loyal slave Simonides. Judah (Ramon Novarro) meets up with boyhood pal Messala (Francis X. Bushman); at first, their reunion is friendly, but it becomes clear that Messala has become a ruthless Roman through and through, and when a stone falls from the Hur balcony and injures the new Roman governor, Messala has Judah, his mother, and his sister arrested. The women languish forgotten in prison, becoming lepers, and Judah becomes a galley slave on a Roman ship. His bravery during a pirate raid leads his "boss" to adopt him and he becomes renowned as a great athlete, but is still a tortured soul as he searches for not only his family but also his missing fortune. Along the way, he rides in a chariot race against Messala, finds his family, falls in love with Esther (May McAvoy), daughter of Simonides, and becomes a follower of Jesus Christ. The first half of the movie is fast-moving and mostly great fun; the last half is slower going, and the ending, after the Crucifixion, is rather anti-climactic. Most of the acting is a little less stagy than the usual silent acting type, though Novarro and the women who play his family members do have their overboard moments. It helps that Novarro is handsome and that the sets are spectacular. The big setpieces--the sea battle and the chariot race--are impressive, as are the Technicolor scenes inserted periodically, and the opening Nativity scene is also nicely done, looking like a procession of animated religious postcards. It's a little odd that we never actually see Christ, just his hand or his feet or his glow. Good Easter season viewing, and a great opportunity to see a famous silent star at the peak of his powers and popularity. [TCM]

CLIVE OF INDIA (1935)

Almost everything wrong with this undernourished historical epic can be summoned up by imagining LAWRENCE OF ARABIA remade as a 90-minute TV movie with Tom Selleck in the title role. Selleck is fine when he sticks to his strengths (light adventure and romantic comedy), but he would be quite at sea as Lawrence; similarly, Ronald Colman, excellent as a man of quiet authority in movies like LOST HORIZON and THE LATE GEORGE APLEY, has no business playing the real-life Baron Robert Clive, an impetuous, eccentric empire builder. At the start, we see him as a common clerk with the East India Company in 1748, and, over the following decades, he rises in the company by joining its militia and helping to bring about major victories against the French (and, I assume, the natives) in colonizing India for the British Empire. After one particularly important victory, he installs a "puppet" ruler (Cesar Romero, playing the kind of ruler that George Bush would undoubtedly like to have in Iraq); in gratitude, Romero gives Colman a small fortune and this leads to a scandal back home in which Parliament votes to censure him, casting a shadow over his twilight years. Colman never comes across realistically as the kind of feisty oddball that Clive is written to be. Loretta Young does fine as his long-suffering wife, who seems a bit happy with his disgrace, since it means he'll be retiring and not journeying off to India whenever he feels adventurous. Mischa Auer, Colin Clive and Leo G. Carroll play supporting roles. Aside from Colman's miscasting, the other big problem is the production, or lack thereof. Though there are a couple of interesting set pieces, including a brief look at the infamous "Black Hole of Calcutta" incident, most of the action is kept offscreen. There are long scenes of dialogue in which characters explain things to us and each other, then, over a montage of indistinct action scenes, we get title cards which tell us about the exciting events we don't actually get to see. The climactic battle of Plessey comes off looking like a tableau of Washington crossing the Delaware. Potentially exciting material that never comes fully to life. [FMC]

MARRIED BACHELOR (1941)

Silly romantic comedy made bearable mostly by its amiable cast. Robert Young is a charming young man who has gotten by for years on small-potatoes schemes and scams; his wife Ruth Hussey is ready for some stability. Young promises Hussey he'll go respectable, but he winds up in a partnership with a small-time bookie (Sam Levene). When Young takes a long-shot bet on a horse race from thuggish Sheldon Leonard, the horse wins and they owe Leonard $17,000, which is about $16,000 more than they have. In an attempt to get some money owed to them, Young and Levene go to penniless professor Felix Bressart, who gives them a manuscript on modern marriage; if they get it published, they might be able to pay Leonard. Young finagles his way into the office of publisher Lee Bowman, presenting the book as a bachelor's jaded view of married life; Bowman takes the book and when it's promoted into a bestseller, Young has to appear in public as a bachelor, which understandably irritates his wife, who gets back at him by posing as an unmarried woman and flirting with Bowman. Of course, a happy ending is never in doubt. The screenplay, by future MGM studio head Dore Schary, has a screwballish feel and some good ideas, but the movie is never able to transcend its B-movie feel. The actors are all fine, with Leonard especially funny (though not at all threatening) as a slang-talking hoodlum who has to have all his conversations translated for Bressart by Young. Connie Gilchrist has an amusing moment at the very end. [TCM]


THE KID FROM TEXAS (1939)

Dennis O'Keefe plays a Texas cowboy who has somehow developed a taste for polo out on the range. Members of a rich Eastern family come out to O'Keefe's ranch to buy polo horses; when they decide to take Lone Star, O'Keefe's favorite horse, he heads back with them to help train the horse. Of course, he's also fallen in love with the daughter (Florence Rice) and we know it's just a matter of time before she figures out that she's in love with him, despite his crude galumphing ways. Rice's brother (Anthony Allan) and fiance (Robert Wilcox) allow O'Keefe to join them on their ritzy polo field, but his hot-dogging ways cause him to be thrown off the team, so he joins up with a Wild West show and develops a hit novelty act with a "cowboys vs. Indians" polo team. O'Keefe and Rice try to forget each other, but things are righted by the end. This lightweight second feature has some bright moments and a decent supporting cast including Buddy Ebsen as O'Keefe's sidekick, Jessie Ralph as Rice's wise old Aunt Minnie, and Jack Carson as a reporter who becomes O'Keefe's PR man. O'Keefe makes a handsome and charming lead, though Rice is a bit colorless. As comedies about cowboys and polo go, this is near the top of the heap. [TCM]

SCARFACE (1932)

This is a historically important pre-Code movie: in its day, it was considered extremely violent and for that reason, and because it supposedly glorified the gangster lifestyle, it was a frequently censored film. It also helped to establish the gangster movie genre as we know it today--even THE GODFATHER, which is often thought of as the, well, "godfather" of the modern gangster movie, owes much to SCARFACE. Nevertheless, the movie is rather slow going for much of its running time. Paul Muni plays Tony, a two-bit hood who acts on his aspirations to be rich and powerful; he gets in good with crime boss Johnny Lovo (Osgood Perkins), killing off betrayers and rivals, but he eventually goes too far for Lovo's comfort so Tony kills Lovo and anyone else who stands in his way. Contrasted with his rise in power is his messy private life; he is interested in Poppy (Karen Morley), Lovo's girl, but she plays hard to get. Clearly, his real feelings lie with his sister Cesca (Ann Dvorak); he's overly protective of her (perhaps with some reason, since she seems headed into a rather "loose" lifestyle), but his protection seems to spring mostly from his own unacknowledged physical lust for her. Tony's trusted right-hand man Rinaldo (George Raft) falls for Cesca and while Tony is gone in hiding for a while, Rinaldo marries Cesca. When Tony returns, he finds the two living together and, not realizing they are husband and wife, kills Rinaldo. The climax has a horde of cops closing in on Tony; Cesca wants to kill him, but can't bring herself to do so, so she winds up helping him to fend off the cops. They both end up dead.

Relationships between characters are not always clear, and some of the acting is weak. Muni and Dvorak are very good, as is Raft (he seems fresh here, but he got stuck in an acting rut for most of the rest of his career). Morley is a weak link--she seems totally disengaged from her character, though I can't help but think that this is partly a fault of the direction (by Howard Hawks). Osgood Perkins (the father of Anthony Perkins) is not a commanding enough presence to be a believable crime boss--he seems like he should be a whiny underling. Some of the cinematography is quite good, especially the long tracking shots that start the movie, when we see Muni make his first hit after an all-night party. Critics have noticed the preponderance of "X" shapes, mostly in shadows and usually related to the foreshadowing of death scenes. This is the second time I've seen the movie and I think it's more worth seeing as a historical example than has a fully-engrossing movie. The 1983 remake with Al Pacino isn't a particularly good movie, but it does highlight the undercurrent of incest which is only hinted at in the original, and it also has a hell of an ending, closely modeled after the 1932 ending but again much more explicit. [TCM]

GOVERNMENT GIRL (1943)

It's true that I'm not the world's biggest Olivia de Havilland fan but I have grown to like her over the years; however, it seems she did her weakest work in 1943, with PRINCESS O'ROURKE (horribly bad) and this movie (not horrible but not all that good). The narrative is set in the same context as George Stevens's classic THE MORE THE MERRIER (which came out several months before this movie), with events playing out against the background of a crowded wartime Washington filled with love-starved females. Sonny Tufts is an auto executive who patriotically comes to D.C. to do his wartime duty by setting up plane manufacturing plants. Olivia de Havilland is a pool secretary who meets Tufts in a hotel lobby and takes an instant dislike to him; of course, she winds up assigned to work for him. She has two other admirers, but one (Paul Stewart) isn't true-love material--if this had been made in the 80's, his character would be gay--and the other (Jess Barker) is an opportunistic fink, so eventually she and Tufts fall in love. The climax is a weakly-done Capraesque courtroom scene in which she comes to the rescue of Tufts, who is about to be drummed out of government service for shaking up the bureaucracy too much. The tone of the movie is that of screwball comedy, with lots of frantic motion and some slapstick moments, but the writing generally isn't as witty as it needs to be. I liked Tufts in SO PROUDLY WE HAIL, but he's not very successful here as he seems to be going for a Gary Cooper vibe and not hitting the mark. De Havilland tries, working full steam at her physical comedy scenes, but she can't carry the movie alone. A couple of supporting players are good (in addition to Stewart, who played Kane's butler in CITIZEN KANE, Agnes Moorehead and Una O'Connor are fine in small roles) but all the franticness gets tiring after a while. It was interesting seeing James Dunn, whom I know mostly from his very serious Oscar-winning role in A TREE GROWS IN BROOKLYN, doing some light comedy as a newly-married soldier who is cheated out of his honeymoon by the housing shortage in the nation's capital. Not a total waste of time, but not top-drawer comedy. [TCM]

THE FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE (1964)

Based on the criticism I've read of this movie, I need to present two disclaimers. First, the 2000 sword-and-sandals epic GLADIATOR apparently covers the same ground and has some of the same characters as this movie, though I haven't seen the later movie so I can't compare them. Second, this movie has been accused of playing quite fast and loose with historical fact; here again, I cannot be a judge since most of what I know about ancient history comes from the movies in the first place. What I can tell you is that this film has some wonderfully shot scenes, gorgeous landscapes, and spectacular sets and costumes, but falls down woefully in the acting department. GLADIATOR may have stolen from this film, but this film's set-up is right out of THE TEN COMMANDMENTS. Alec Guinness plays Marcus Aurelius, the dying Roman emperor who must name a successor (just as Sethi had to in the DeMille film); his son, Commodus (Christopher Plummer) should be heir, but, like Yul Brynner in TEN COMMANDMENTS, he is not considered worthy; Stephen Boyd plays Livius, the Moses figure who wants to free many of the Roman slaves (particularly the noble but primitive Barbarians) and is in love with the emperor's daughter (Sophia Loren). After Guinness's death, a power struggle ensues between close friends Plummer and Boyd, leading to war and decadence and disloyalty, and supposedly the fall of the Empire, though the somewhat mistitled movie ends before that occurs. The spectacular look of the movie is all the more impressive when you consider that the crowds of extras, the elaborate sets, and the lovely natural scenery (especially an early scene set at dawn and later scenes in the snow) are all real, not the work of digital effects technicians. Guinness and Plummer are very good, and a handful of supporting players manage to make their marks (James Mason, Anthony Quayle, Omar Sharif), but Boyd and Loren are quite weak and have zero chemistry--I was desperate for some Anne Baxter-like writhing ("Oh, Livius, Livius, Livius, you stubborn, splendid, adorable fool!!") to liven up the proceedings, but to no avail. I haven't seen much of either actor, and this movie makes me think that I'm not missing much. At over three hours, it's much too long, but if you decide to watch it for its impressive production and cinematography, be sure to see it letterboxed. [TCM]

SING AND LIKE IT (1934)

As TCM host Robert Osborne has pointed out, this little-known second-feature comedy may have been an influence on Woody Allen's BULLETS OVER BROADWAY. Nat Pendleton, usually a supporting actor, gets a chance to star as a rich but dumb gangster who heads up a kidnapping and safecracking ring. While robbing a bank office, he overhears a little theater troupe rehearsing a musical revue and is overcome by awe and sentiment when he hears Zasu Pitts singing a sappy ode to mothers. Thinking that Pitts is a great singing talent (we know she's not), Pendleton strongarms Broadway producer Edward Everett Horton into hiring her to star in his latest show. The gangster and his gang ride roughshod over the production, eventually rewriting (badly) much of it, but on opening night, thanks to some handgun persuasion, the town's chief critic seems to love the show, and since all the rest of the critics (and much of the audience) take their cues from him, the show is a hit. The movie is quite fun in its first half-hour as we get to know the characters; the last half is a little too plot-heavy and shoddily constructed. A couple of the supporting players outshine the stars: Pert Kelton, who, 30 years later, played Ron Howard's mother in THE MUSIC MAN, is quite funny as Pendleton's moll, who has been angling for some time to be a musical star herself. John Qualen has a few nice moments as Pitts' milquetoast boyfriend. But best of all is deadpan Ned Sparks as Pendleton's sidekick who has to translate any multi-syllable vocabulary down to its earthiest essence for the gangster. It's a pre-Code movie so there are a few nicely risque zingers, but some of my favorite lines, thanks to their delivery, are throwaways, like when Pendleton first hears Pitts singing and claims he hears an angel; Sparks' dry reply: "Somebody must be plucking the feathers out of her wings." I also like hearing Pendleton call the tough and sleazy Kelton "Snugglepups." A scene where Pendleton gives Kelton two black eyes is potentially offensive, but earlier in the movie, we see that she is generally capable of holding her own with the big lug. Not a classic, but consistently amusing. Biggest flaw: we have to sit through Pitts' complete rendition of the "Mother" song three times. [TCM]

BLACK SHEEP (1935)

Average shipboard melodrama with a fairly light touch. On the S.S. Olympus, we follow four characters whose lives get entangled. Edmund Lowe is a professional card sharp who fleeces passengers; Claire Trevor is apparently a "fallen" woman, constantly trying to light a cigarette with an empty lighter as a way to cozy up to men; Adrienne Ames is a rich woman who steals for kicks--she has stolen some jewels and needs to find a way to smuggle them past customs; Tom Brown is a naive young man who has lost a lot of money gambling--Ames loans him the cash to pay off his debts, but then blackmails him into carrying the jewels for her. Lowe and Trevor circle each other warily at first, sneaking onto the first class deck and flirting a bit, and soon find common ground when they see Brown getting taken at cards by practical joker Eugene Pallette. When Brown sets out to kill himself by jumping off the ship, Trevor and Lowe befriend him and Lowe soon finds out that Brown is actually his son, from a failed marriage, whom he has never seen. The rest of the movie consists of watching Lowe and Trevor stick it to both Ames and Pallette. Trevor's quite attractive and does a nice job with a role that is a little different from the cynical rough-edged dames she would become famous for. Lowe is a bit too old and tired for the part of the dashing anti-hero--William Powell could have done better in his sleep. Brown is fine, and Ames is quite good as the scheming bitch with no redeeming qualities. Overall, nothing special, but there is some fun watching it all work out in the last 10 minutes. [FMC]

DAMN YANKEES (1958)

Despite the presence of two Broadway legends (Gwen Verdon and Bob Fosse), this film version of the hit musical never really takes off. One problem is the plot, which manages to be both too thin and too convoluted: a middle-aged baseball fan (Robert Shafer), frustrated because his team, the Washington Senators, is behind again, sells his soul to the devil (Ray Walston) to help the team get to the World Series. The catch: Walston transforms Shafer into a young athlete (Tab Hunter) with a powerhouse hitting talent. Shafer leaves his wife (with no explanation), joins the team (as Hunter), and provides the spark for a winning season. Hunter has an "escape clause" with Walston, which must be activated on the day before the pennant will be clinched. Naturally, there are complications. The devil conjures up the sexy but demonic Lola (Verdon) with which to tempt Hunter into forgetting about his escape clause, and Hunter/Shafer struggles to remain true to his wife, and to keep his escape route open while still making sure that the Senators win the championship.

That sounds rather complicated in the telling, but somehow, all those plot strands never really take off to keep the narrative compelling. The acting is bland--poor Hunter is usually criticized for his cardboard line readings, but no one else around him is especially good, either. At least Hunter looks the part: handsome looks and an athletic build. Walston is just OK, not really having the devilish spark needed for the part, and Verdon's character is underwritten. The supporting cast, mostly from the original show, is singularly unexciting, except for Jean Stapleton who provides a couple of fun moments. But the production numbers do redeem the experience somewhat. The best numbers are the ones with the most participants, such as "Shoeless Joe" (performed by the baseball team and assorted hangers-on) and "Two Lost Souls," with Verdon, Hunter, and the denizens of a crowded nightspot. Bob Fosse, who did the choreography, also dances a mambo onscreen with Verdon in "Who's Got the Pain," and they're good but not really sizzling hot. "Good but not sizzling" is an apt phrase for the movie as a whole. If you've only seen this in a pan & scan TV print, you should see it again letterboxed. [DVD]

DESTINATION GOBI (1953)

Routine wartime thriller made vaguely interesting by its situation: Instead of soldiers in combat or families on the homefront, this focuses on a group of Navy weathermen stationed in Inner Mongolia on a secret mission to collect meteorological data to help the troops in the Pacific. Richard Widmark, the only real combat sailor in the group, is the reluctant leader of, or as he sees it, "wet nurse" to, the men after their commanding officer is killed in a Japanese air raid. Alone in the desert with no orders to follow and no relief in sight, the men bond with a group of traveling Mongols. Their trust in each other ebbs and flows until Widmark requisitions dozens of saddles for the Mongols to use on their horses in exchange for their help. However, the fragile trust is broken when, after a rift between two of the Mongol leaders, the Mongols leave, apparently reluctant to risk battling the Japanese. Widmark and his men, with supplies running low, make an agonizing trek across the desert, heading for the sea, and before it's all over, they discover the Mongols are mostly still faithful friends, even getting dubbed the First Mongolian Cavalry. Among the Navy men are Don Taylor, Darryl Hickman, Martin Milner, and Ross Bagdasarian, later better known as the voice of Alvin & the Chipmunks. The beginning of the film, with its unusual premise, shows great promise, but by the middle, it becomes a by-the-numbers story of desperate flight across a barren terrain. The color is nice, especially the blue of the desert night scenes. There are cute references to Tarzan and Harpo Marx, and the frequent shirtlessness of the men is a bonus. Supposedly based on an actual wartime incident. [FMC]

CALL OF THE WILD (1935)

This adventure/romance set during the Klondike Gold Rush has little to do with the famous Jack London dog story it's named after, and it's one of Clark Gable's weaker efforts from the 30's, but it's also the movie during which Gable and Loretta Young consummated their affair, leading to a out-of-wedlock child whom Young later claimed to have adopted in Europe. Gable is Jack Thornton, a Yukon prospector; he and his buddy, Jack Oakie, get on the trail of a map which is alleged to show the location of a rich gold strike. They don't actually have the map, but Oakie has memorized most of it. In the wild, they discover Loretta Young, whose husband has disappeared and is presumed dead; they befriend her and find out that she has the original map, so the three join forces to find the property. Out to snatch it away from them is Reginald Owen, who follows along with his thugs, and Young's husband (Frank Conroy) who was only injured. Oh, yeah, there's a dog here, too, a St. Bernard named Buck, though unlike in the novel, he is not at the center of the story. Gable buys him, even though he's not broken as a sled dog, to keep him out of the clutches of the abusive Owen. Gable and the dog form a bond which is tested a couple of times, most famously in the scene (which is right out of the book) where Gable bets that Buck can haul 1,000 pounds 100 yards by himself. Unlike the book, there's a happy ending in store for all, and even Buck's reversion to the wild is presented in a Disneyish fashion when we see him with his happy "wife" and "kids." Gable and Young have some chemistry, but neither is at the top of their game. Owen makes for a grandly hissable villain (with a highly twirlable mustache, although I don't think he actually does any such twirling) and Oakie, whom I don't usually like, is pretty good as the comic sidekick. Sidney Toler (the Charlie Chan of the 40's) has a small role as an animal dealer. The last 10 minutes of the movie are oddly anti-climactic. If you have to write a book report on the London story, don't cheat by watching this instead! [FMC]

THE SIGN OF THE CROSS (1932)

The archetypal DeMille concoction of sex and religion, not as fun or as spectacular as his later THE TEN COMMANDMENTS, but much naughtier, filled with flesh and sadism and decadence. Set in 64 A.D., the movie opens with Charles Laughton as Nero, lolling about like a huge baby, fiddling while Rome burns (and, by implication, fiddling around with some young paramours, including at least one scantily clad boy). The rest of the film is concerned with the clash between the powerful pagans (like Laughton and his wife, Claudette Colbert) and the oppressed Christians (like the lovely and pious Elissa Landi). Marcus, the Prefect of Rome (Fredric March) is loyal to the state until he gets hot and bothered by Landi and is persuaded that Christians are people, too. Alas, March cannot stop the feeding of the Christians to the lions, so he winds up throwing in with them and getting sacrificed with Landi in the final arena slaughter. Although there are lots of titillating scenes of almost-naked women and lusty men, the overall mood of the movie is somewhat depressing. The Christians, doomed from the start, seem too passive; the decadent Romans are having fun but none of them except March are sympathetic. This is a movie to see for its parade of set pieces: Colbert flashing a bit of nipple in a bath of cow's milk; a lesbian seduction dance by Joyzelle Joyner (which is interrupted by praying Christians, perhaps an influence on Steven Spielberg in a similar scene in THE COLOR PURPLE); the torture and carnage in the arena. Nat Pendleton has a small role as a man who hunts Christians for money; Ian Keith is one of Nero's troublemakers, spreading rumors that the Christians started Nero's fire; Tommy Conlon has a nice bit as a young Christian who accidentally betrays his fellows. Definitely worth at least one viewing. [TCM]

BORN TO BE BAD (1934)

One of the last of the Hollywood sex melodramas to be released before the Hays Code kicked in during the summer of 1934, this is a nice little gem, almost an archetypal pre-Code movie. Loretta Young is the "bad" woman referred to in the title, an unwed mother who works as a whore for businessmen who want a little entertainment for the night. She's raising her 7-year-old son (Jackie Kelk) to survive by disrespecting authority, being tough, and getting whatever you can by whatever means necessary. Kelk is hit by a milk truck and, although his injuries are slight, Young (in collusion with a crooked doctor and lawyer) sues the milk company and has her son fake serious injuries. She is exposed in court, her son is taken away from her, and the guy who drove the milk truck (Cary Grant) adopts the boy. Of course, Grant isn't just a milkman, he's the president of the company (who just happened to be driving a truck that day!), so Kelk gets used to the soft life, living in a mansion with Grant and his wife (Marion Burns, a rather bland Mary Astor-type). Meantime, Young keeps up her crooked schemes, first trying to get the kid to steal some booty and run away with her, and when that fails, conning her way (via the old fainting trick) into spending a couple of days at the mansion and seducing Grant. Using a hidden phonograph recorder, she tricks Grant into sex and threatens to use the recording to regain custody of her son, but Grant is nobler than she thought: he has already told his wife that he plans to leave her and go off with Young. This forces a crisis: will Young actually break up the home, even though she doesn't really love Grant, or will she do the right thing for the first time in her life?

The movie is just an hour long, so the event-packed narrative doesn't do much with character development, which is a problem when Grant suddenly, with little motivation (except a little friction against the thighs), falls for Young's scheming. Otherwise, the movie is quite fun. Young gives a full-tilt performance as one of the "baddest" of the pre-Code dames. Kelk does a great job as the kid, and it seems strange that he basically gave up movies after this, though he did some TV many years later. Henry Travers plays a kindly old bookstore owner who gave Young a job and a place to live when she was a pregnant 15-year-old collapsed on his doorstep (in a rainstorm, of course) and continues to look after her, even though he is horrified by her philosophy of life. Russell Hopton is Steve, Young's boss/pimp, and Paul Harvey is Young's shyster lawyer--presented as an outrageous anti-Semitic stereotype. Grant isn't terribly impressive, mostly because he's steamrollered by the smoldering and conniving Young. Definitely worth seeing, especially for fans of the pre-Codes. [FMC]

MIDNIGHT ALIBI (1934)

This second feature crime thriller is based on a Damon Runyon story, which helps it stand out a bit from most of the other crime movies of the time; it's not a great movie, but it is a little different. Richard Barthelmess plays a small-time gambler returning to New York from overseas; on the ship, he falls in love with Ann Dvorak, and he offers to go straight for her, but it turns out she is the sister of Robert Barrat, a powerful mobster, and the two men are on the outs. On the run from an underworld hit, Barthelmess ducks into the mansion of "old doll" Helen Lowell, a rich spinster who always leaves her back door unlocked. She tells him the tragic story of her own youthful romance, which was ended when her father (Henry O'Neill) shot and killed her boyfriend when he was trying to get into the house through the door, which was locked; O'Neill didn’t like the boy and took the opportunity to shoot, claiming he thought the boy was an intruder. She has left the door unlocked ever since. Barthelmess tells Lowell about his own romantic troubles and she counsels him to do whatever it takes to win Dvorak. Barthelmess visits Barrat to ask for his sister's hand, but they get into a fight; a henchman of Barthelmess's stumbles in and shoots and kills Barrat, but Barthelmess is arrested for the killing. As anyone can figure out from the title, the stories of the old doll and the gambler converge at the trial when she lies in the courtroom to give Barthelmess an alibi so he can be freed and live happily ever after with Dvorak--but in a final O. Henry twist, it turns out the alibi isn't really a lie after all.

In the old lady's flashback, Helen Chandler is the Lowell character and Barthelmess plays the doomed boyfriend. Barthelmess, toward the end of his career, is fine in the role, as is everyone else except Dvorak, who, to be fair, has little to do. In addition to the "old doll" terminology, other Runyon touches include characters named Angie the Ox and Babe the Butcher, and a passing appearance by a grifter posing as a blind man. At just under an hour, it's painless entertainment, and better than the single-star ratings it receives from some critics. BTW, All Movie Guide and TV Guide get an important plot point wrong (as they frequently do in their summaries of B-movies) when they say that Barthelmess and Barrat are brothers. [TCM]

SHINE ON HARVEST MOON (1944)

Competent show biz musical about the real-life performing and songwriting team of Bayes and Norworth, who wrote the title song. Apparently, as with most movie bios, there is little truth in this one, but the story moves along nicely and the performances are solid. Dennis Morgan is Jack Norworth, a vaudeville performer and songwriter who hits the big time as the composer of "Take Me Out to the Ball Game." He discovers singer Nora Bayes (Ann Sheridan) in a dive singing one of his songs and soon he helps her on to bigger and better things; along the way they alienate a couple of folks: Morgan refuses to do a duo act with singer Irene Manning, and Sheridan makes a fool of club owner Robert Shayne. After Morgan and Sheridan marry, they find themselves blacklisted from vaudeville houses by Shayne; Manning, by now Shayne's mistress, agrees to help Morgan but only without Sheridan. Eventually, the couple part with her career rising as his falls, but a happy ending is in store. Most of the numbers are performed on stages, with "Shine On Harvest Moon" getting the grand Technicolor treatment as the finale (the rest of the film is in black & white) although there is one fun number, "It Looks Like a Big Night Tonight," that breaks out in a police station, with the cops joining in with the singing and dancing. Jack Carson and Marie Wilson provide strong support as buddies to Morgan and Sheridan, and S.Z. Sakall is his usual befuddled self as an agent. Pleasant, with lots of songs and period atmosphere. [TCM]

YOU CAN'T ESCAPE FOREVER (1942)

Breezy, well-paced second feature which is a fairly successful combination of crime thriller, newspaper story, romance, war propaganda, and comic relief. The opening segment is memorable: reporter Brenda Marshall, assigned to an execution, falls asleep and misses the pardon that arrives at the last minute, so she calls in a story saying the execution went on as scheduled. She winds up in hot water, as does her boss (George Brent), who is trying to get the goods on black marketeer Eduardo Ciannelli. Brent winds up demoted to writing the lovelorn column (a job no one wants), but he, Marshall, and sidekick Roscoe Karns get on Ciannelli's trail and discover that a lonely hearts club is a front for smuggling rubber, sugar, and other items which have been rationed in wartime. There are a couple of nice setpieces: the first is a lively brawl in the lonely hearts hall, and the second is a climactic car/truck chase. I've grown to like Marshall in her B movies and she carries this one quite well. Brent and Karnes are both good, and there is some standout support from Gene Lockhart, Erville Alderson, and Dick Elliott (the mayor on the Andy Griffith Show) who gets in a good line complaining about his assignment: "What a world! My wife makes battleships and I write lovelorn columns!" The title is meaningless (unless if refers to the future marriage of Brent and Marshall). [TCM]

PENNIES FROM HEAVEN (1936)

Disappointing Bing Crosby musical from the days before he hit his stride at Paramount in GOING MY WAY and the Road movies with Bob Hope. Crosby is fine; the real problem is the screenplay, a hodge-podge of vaguely interesting ideas that don't get developed very well. We first see Crosby in prison, finishing up a sentence for smuggling and playing the lute (!) from his cell. A man headed for the electric chair asks Crosby to deliver a letter for him when he gets out and Crosby, a restless traveler (otherwise known as a hobo), agrees. The killer tries to make amends to the family of the man he killed by giving them a house he used as a hideaway, and for the family (teenager Edith Fellows and grandpa Donald Meek), the "gift" comes just as a social worker (Madge Evans) is about to send the girl to an orphanage. Fellows gets a crush on Crosby and he feels obliged to stick around to help them get on their feet. The dilapidated house they move into is supposedly haunted, so Crosby manages to get some backing to turn it into the Haunted House Cafe, but those plans go awry, and the rest of the movie consists of Crosby trying to help Meek and Fellows gain a financial foothold so the girl won't become a ward of the state. Of course, an improbable romance develops between Crosby and Evans, and despite a daredevil accident, a hospital stay, and a brush with the law, there's a happy ending for all. If the movie had stuck with the restaurant idea (which may have provided some inspiration for the set-up of the later Crosby classic HOLIDAY INN), it might have worked, but there are just too many disparate plot strands which are rushed through in the last half hour. Fellows is appealing as a tomboyish teen and Louis Armstrong has a small role as a musician who helps out at the ill-fated opening of the cafe. The title song, sung twice, is fine, and the first ten minutes is interestingly moody for what becomes a run-of-the-mill musical romance. The DVD from Columbia is one of their better looking efforts, though it's not as clean-looking as the Crosby Paramount movies from the 40's that Universal has issued. Aside from the title song and the depression setting, this has nothing in common with the much more interesting 1981 Steve Martin musical. [DVD]

GARDEN OF THE MOON (1938)

Busby Berkeley was a great choreographer but rather surprisingly, for all his style and innovation with dance numbers, he was not a great director. His movies tend to be either solid but drab, assembly-line products (FOR ME AND MY GAL, GOLD DIGGERS OF 1937) or hyperactive fantasias which, after their high points, tend to get irritating (THE GANG'S ALL HERE, BABES IN ARMS). The good news here is that GARDEN OF THE MOON, while not a classic, is a well-paced, fun little B-musical. Pat O'Brien is the manager of the fancy title nightclub, located in a Los Angeles hotel. He's a bully who'll stop at nothing to get what he wants; when bluster and threats don't work, fake sentiment does. Margaret Lindsay is his assistant. She doesn't care for his methods and it's unclear why she's stayed with him all this time; there are hints that he feels romantic toward her, but nothing serious ever happens. When Rudy Vallee's band has a bus accident and can't keep their engagement, Lindsay suggests a struggling big band led by John Payne. O'Brien reluctantly agrees to try them out and they become a smash success. Payne and the boys feel this is their shot at the big time, but O'Brien only wants them until Vallee returns, so he actively tries to sabotage their PR attempts. The rest of the movie consists of Payne and O'Brien playing a nasty game of one-upmanship, punctuated by some small-scale but clever and tuneful musical numbers. Payne handles the songs quite nicely and is handsome and charming, though Lindsay is rather colorless. A good supporting cast includes jive-talking Johnnie Davis (who originated "Hooray for Hollywood" in Berkeley's HOLLYWOOD HOTEL), double-talking Jerry Colonna, and befuddled maitre'd Melville Cooper. Real-life gossip columnist Jimmie Fidler plays himself. The best songs are "The Lady on the Two Cent Stamp" and "Girlfriend of the Whirling Dervish" by Harry Warren, Al Dubin, and Johnny Mercer. Light and amusing, one of Berkeley's more satisfying movies as director. [TCM]

SO PROUDLY WE HAIL! (1943)

By coincidence, here's another Bataan movie, this one from a different point of view. Most WWII movies with female characters front and center are set on the homefront (MRS. MINIVER, SINCE YOU WENT AWAY). There are, however, a handful of films about women in the armed services and this is the best of the small bunch I've seen so far (including CRY HAVOC and KEEP YOUR POWDER DRY). It's based on the real story of eight Army nurses who were among the last to leave Corregidor after the fall of Bataan. We first see them after their evacuation, on a ship headed for San Francisco, and their story is told in flashback. Claudette Colbert is the head of a group of nurses on its way to Pearl Harbor in early December 1941. After the Japanese attack, they are routed to the Philippines and spend several grueling months tending to the wounded and dying soldiers as the Army retreats down the Bataan peninsula to a last stand on the small island of Corregidor. In addition to a surface portrayal of their medical duties, we see them bond as a group and we also get some standard Hollywood-style romance, with Colbert falling for medical technician George Reeves (quite handsome, and doing the best acting of his career, I think) and Paulette Goddard getting involved with soldier Sonny Tufts (who does a nice job with the "Kansas dumb lug" stereotype he's stuck with). Colbert and Goddard are the central characters and both are quite good, especially Goddard who was nominated for an Oscar for this role. Veronica Lake, with her long hair up and out of her eyes, has third billing but a fairly small role as a woman out for revenge against the Japanese because of her sweetheart's death at Pearl Harbor. The climax of her story, halfway through the movie, is effective and satisfying.

Critic James Agee, writing at the time of the film's release, said the movie was a good illustration of "what war looks like through the lenses of a housewives' magazine romance," and though that is somewhat true, especially during the first half, there is still some idea conveyed of what these non-combatants would have gone through during the early and very dark days of the Pacific war. There are several effective scenes, including a sentimental sermon that chaplain Walter Abel gives at Christmas. Reeves gives Colbert a "To His Coy Mistress" seduction speech, suggesting that since they don't know how much time they'll have together, they should make every minute count--it works, leading to Colbert and Reeves spending an unauthorized night together in a foxhole (later, against regulations, they get married, a sure sign that Reeves won't survive the retreat). Though we don't see the men in combat, there are a number of well-staged bombing scenes. Given the presence of the future TV Superman (Reeves), there is an ironic reference to the superhero in a scene in which Goddard tells a Superman story to some Filipino kids who then ask why Superman isn't there to help them. One of the best of the WWII movies made during the conflict, well worth seeking out. [TCM]

BATAAN (1943)

There is no critical consensus on this film; some critics call it the first gritty, realistic portrayal of American action in WWII, while others attack it for its staginess and stereotypes. It's probably fairer to approach it in terms of its cinematic pedigree since it is an unofficial remake of John Ford's classic 30's movie THE LOST PATROL about a small group of soldiers stuck in one location, getting picked off one by one by enemy snipers. In the Ford movie, there are twelve British men facing Arabs in the desert during WWI; here, we have thirteen American men facing Japanese in the jungles of Bataan during WWII. As a remake, it works quite well. The group of soldiers is the usual Hollywood mix of types: a Jew (Thomas Mitchell, who could play almost anything *except* a Jew), a Hispanic (Desi Arnaz), an African-American (Kenneth Spencer, who doesn't get to do much except be quiet and efficient), a naive Midwestern boy who becomes a man (Robert Walker), a grouser with a shady past (Lloyd Nolan), and a commanding officer (Lee Bowman) who gets killed off early so that our hero, handsome, non-ethnic Robert Taylor, can prove himself a leader of men. George Murphy, Barry Nelson and Philip Terry do nice jobs in smaller roles. In fact, except for the rather wooden Taylor and the miscast Mitchell, all of the performances are good, with Arnaz a standout as a jive-talking kid who loves Tommy Dorsey and gets a showy death scene--not once in the movie did I think of Ricky Ricardo. The men's mission is to blow up a bridge to slow the Japanese invaders, then stay behind and keep it secure, which means blowing it up a couple more times, most spectacularly when a mortally wounded Murphy does a kamikaze bit with his plane. Most of their losses are due to snipers, but there is a spectacular scene near the end of hand-to-hand combat, involving swords and bayonets, that is quite graphic for its time. Unlike LOST PATROL, in which the leader survives, here all the men die, with Taylor digging his own grave and firing his machine gun up to his last breath (which we don't see--instead, we get an inspiring message about the big-picture importance of sacrifice, a message which the government probably felt was very important at that low point in the war, but a message which is the polar opposite of the 30's film). The studio look of the jungle and the miniature work involved in some of the bridge scenes are obvious but do not detract from the overall feel of the movie. Recommended, but don't expect "Private Ryan"-type realism. [TCM]