KANSAS CITY PRINCESS (1934)

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

THE MAYOR OF HELL (1933)

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

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

THE LADY TAKES A SAILOR (1949)

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

SUN VALLEY SERENADE (1941)

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

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

MONEY AND THE WOMAN (1940)

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

THE MAJESTIC (2001)

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

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

STELLA DALLAS (1937)

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

HELL'S HIGHWAY (1932)

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

SYMPHONY OF SIX MILLION (1932)

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

TOWER OF FEAR (1938)

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

JUNE BRIDE (1948)

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

THE SECRET SIX (1931)

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

ALEXANDER'S RAGTIME BAND (1938)

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

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

UNDERCURRENT (1946)

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

PHANTOM SHIP (1935)

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

BIG CITY BLUES (1932)

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

THE FALLEN SPARROW (1943)

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

THE KENNEL MURDER CASE (1933)

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

JOE SMITH, AMERICAN (1942)

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

DANCING LADY (1933)

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

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