Surprise! Another gratuitous pic spam!

Kate Gabriel at Silents and Talkies came up with this meme. Who are your most swoon worthy actors? Who will you watch in anything, just to see them? Though I've probably pummeled you with this information subliminally for the last 18 months, I thought I'd spell it out, just in case someone wasn't paying attention. But really this is just a great excuse for me to spend hours trolling through my hard drive to find favorite pictures that I haven't posted yet.



Cary Grant: Duh, my obsession with him is so long standing I've been known at work as the Cary Grant Girl for years. Favorite Film: Bringing Up Baby. Movie that made me an obsessed fanatic, versus a casual admirer: weirdly, it was Monkey Business, which was the only Cary video tape I owned in college. It was a desert island thing. You had to be there.




Gary Cooper: At first I kept my Cooper obsession to myself. Would my Cary Grant fandom friends understand that there was room in my heart for "GC" as well as "CG?" Turns out there were a whole bunch of us crowded into that particular closet. Favorite film: Ball of Fire, also the movie that made me lurve him. I must have watched half a dozen Cooper films before this movie changed my mind forever.


Laurence Olivier: Only classic actor obsession that predates Cary Grant. I taped speeches from Wuthering Heights when I was 15 and played them on my walkman. I love Olivier's Matinee idol period, and mostly avoid movies from the 60s and 70s were he tended to work for anyone with the greenback dollars. Still I've watched enough of those. Favorite Film: Wuthering Heights, and That Hamilton Woman. Honarable mention: Divorce of Lady X.


Michael Redgrave: If I had an Essentials list, I'd have to include The Lady Vanishes and The Importance of Being Earnest. I probably said all I had to say about how swoony he is in my Thunder Rock post.


Gregory Peck: First actor obsession to come out of this blog. The movie was Spellbound. I'd probably seen it more than ten times before I got all goopy about Greg. Weird, huh? Favorite Film: Roman Holiday


Herbert Marshall: so there I was watching Riptide and I just couldn't believe that anyone even cared anything about Norma Shearer when she was playing opposite this totally awesome Brit who was understated and had such a dry, detached delivery made every line seem as if it were a gem descended from the gods or at least Noel Coward. He was elevating the shit out of his material, yo. Favorite film: The Good Fairy.


Robert Donat: Goodbye Mr. Chips? Goodbye my heart, more like. This guy is so awesome and he only made 20 movies. So why, why can't I see all of them right now. Favorite film: The Thirty Nine Steps. After that, I honestly can't decide: it's a five way tie between Mr. Chips, The Ghost Goes West, The Count of Monte Cristo, The Winslow Boy, and Knight without Armor.


Jeremy Northam: See the best actor you've never heard of. Swoon. Favorite Film: Emma.

Brian Aherne: The first time I saw him in a film, Sylvia Scarlett, I made a note to myself to watch more of his movies. And then it occurred to me while putting together youtube playlists for myself, that years had gone by and the opportunity to see more Brian Aherne movies just never came up. What the? So I went on a mission. I scanned my sources carefully, and managed to collect a tiny handful of his films. I bought his autobiography and read it. I've been collecting photos and putting together an online gallery. Favorite Film: Merrily we Live.


David Manners: David Manners got me to watch horror movies in earnest for the first time in my life. He helped get me over a life-long fear of ventriloquist dummies with his character in The Miracle Woman. And in the above picture he proves that one can wear jodhpurs and not look like a silent film director. He really is quite an actor. Favorite Film: Man Wanted.


Colin Firth: I've been holding forth on Firth a lot lately. It's my campaign to bring him Oscar buzz. Oh yeah, he's a cinch now. Favorite Film: Pride and Prejudice.



Warren William: The funny thing about Warren William is that I don't usually like cads or men with mustaches and William has both cadishness and mustaches in spades in most of his screen roles. (Above pic is from one of his rare clean shaven roles, Cleopatra (1934). Favorite film: The Dark Horse and Golddiggers of 1933.



Liam Neeson: I may have been the only person ever to sit through a preview of Schindler's List and say aloud in the theater, "hey, it's the guy from Satisfaction!" I look for this actor so frequently in programming searches on my Tivo, that the machine knows what I'm looking for after typing the letters, "L" and "I". As proof that I'll watch any thing with him in it, here's a sampling from Tivo in the last year: Suspect (Neeson has 5 minutes as a homeless murder suspect in this Cher, Dennis Quaid drama), Next of Kin (Neeson has 10 minutes as a hillbilly murder suspect in this awful Patrick Swayze movie), Gangs of New York (Neeson wanders through this violent mess of a movie for about 10 minutes). The above still is from one of my favorite Tivo finds of the last few years, Seraphim Falls which not only features Liam Neeson in a fur coat, it co-stars Pierce Brosnan, another of my 1980s obsessions. Favorite film: Michael Collins.

Some who didn't quite make the cut: George Sanders, Joel McCrea, Ronald Colman, Ricardo Cortez, Paul Henreid and Rossano Brazzi. All these actors I either haven't seen enough of their films to quite qualify them or I'm mainly interested in certain periods of their work, such as Pre-Code Joel McCrea for example.

Ten Favorite Pre-Code Love Scenes

Well it's the end of a decade folks so all the movie blogs are bound to have a lot of lists. Since I have barely watched ten movies from this decade (if I didn't exaggerate, I would die) I will focus on stuff I'm actually watching. You know: old movies. So here's my Ten Favorite Pre-Code Love Scenes to keep you heated up on this cold winter's day.


10)Gary Cooper and Cary Grant in Uniform. And if that's not enough...submarines! Gary Cooper has many great pre-code love scenes: The scene at the end of One Sunday Afternoon where he in a matter of a few minutes saves his marriage and wins the audience's grudging affection. Not to mention scenes in Farewell to Arms where he makes you forget momentarily that the script has left Hemingway behind pages ago. But none of these scenes are really all that different from Gary Cooper love scenes after the code. A big exception is to be found in the oddball melodrama Devil and the Deep co-starring Tellulah Bankhead, Charles Laughton and a little known (at the time) actor named Cary Grant. Cooper picks Bankhead up, literally, he saves her from keeling over in the midst of a festival, and spends the night with her in an oasis. The scene lasts ten or eleven minutes following the couple as they move through crowded streets, back-alley bazaars and eventually the moonlit dessert. At one point she's trying to get rid of him and she shakes his hand to say goodbye, he keeps it and continues talking to her in a low monotone of hypnotic seduction while stroking the inside of her wrist with his forefinger. It's a completely cheeky thing which would get a mere mortal slapped, if he didn't look like Gary Cooper. Bankhead plays into it beautifully, protesting half-heartedly until it's too late. The rest of the film is campy good fun that ends in a submarine crash in which everyone gets wet (except Cary Grant, who sadly left the movie before this point, D'oh!)

9) Cheap and Vulgar. Warren William and Joan Blondell in The Goldiggers of 1933. Joan Blondell calls herself "Cheap and vulgar Carol" and Warren William replies "I love you, whatever your name is." It's really pretty awesome. See it here. More on Golddigers here.

8)Put em round me. Norma Shearer and Clark Gable in a Free Soul. This whole scene is the essence of pre-code from the costumes (Norma Shearer's loose, low cut dressing gown worn without underwear would never be permitted a few years later) to the context (the scene takes place as the couple are spending the night in Ace's hideaway.) Gable and Shearer argue. He wants to marry and she doesn't. She ends the dialog and the argument with a direct command for some lovin. "Come on. Put 'em round me." A contemporary review of the film found this couple preposterous, but now they are almost cliche--the gangster bad boy and the wild, society girl. The whole scene is linked here, and starts at about the three minute mark. More on A Free Soul can be found here.

7)The pussyfooting. Barbara Stanwyck and James Rennie discuss the ups and downs of shacking up together in Illicit. "I can't stand all this pussy-footing around," he declares to which she replies, "Don't say you don't like the pussy-footing." Stanwyck is adorable and hilarious and Rennie has stuck with me, even though this is the only movie I've ever seen him in. The combination of romance, comedy and a head-strong heroine mixed in this scene would be repeated frequently in Stanwyck's best pictures. Highlights are linked here and begins around the 55 second mark. More about Illicit can be found here.

6) Jungle love. Four Frightened People. Herbert Marshall and Claudette Colbert lose their clothes and, eventually, their inhibitions as they lose their way in the jungle. After epic quantities of flirtation, he touches her shoulder. She tells him that it feels so good when he touches her and he replies "everything I've touched for weeks now has seemed to be you." Squeeeeee! Later in the film the lovers, exchange wedding vows while tied back to back to a piece of bamboo. Marshall's character has a wife back home which adds an extra level of pre-code angst to the proceedings. More about Four Frightened People here.

5) I'm gonna let you watch me shave. In Bed of Roses (1933), Joel McCrea plays a gritty ship's captain who falls for a prostitute (Constance Bennet). The whole thing is a bit of Red Dust rip off in that respect, but it's a fun movie, with well-written dialogue and enormous chemistry between the leads in their third pairing on film. In one scene McCrea's character shaves in front of Bennett and things get pretty steamy. I happened upon this movie in the last five minutes and I was completely mesmerized by McCrea and Bennett, so much so that I made a point to seek out the whole film and others with these two actors. McCrea is ridiculously handsome in this movie. I'd been used to seeing his films from the early Forties, where he was pretty, but wow. OK, just... wow. Fan of Palm Beach Story? Watch one of his pre-code comedies with Bennett and prepare to have your mind blown.

4) They are still talking about typewriters, right? Leave it to Lubitsch to make even an old typewriter sexy. In Design for Living Frederich March and Glinda admit there feelings for one another and then move on to more important matters--talking about Tommy's old typewriter. Him: "Ya didn't keep it oiled! The keys are rusty." Her, "It still rings." He moves really close to her and she whispers, "it still rings." See the whole scene here starting at around minute 54.

3)Garbo and the furniture In Queen Christina Garbo and her real-life lover John Gilbert act out the doomed love affair between a queen dressed as a man and her Spanish lover, Antononio. They spend three days together snow bound in an inn. In one memorable scene Garbo moves around the room touching the furniture and draperies with a sensual delight. She explains to Anotonio "in the future in my memory I shall live a great deal in this room." See the whole scene here.

2) What about breakfast? In The Smiling Lieutenant, Claudette Colbert and Maurice Chevalier discuss when they will next see each other. She suggests dinner, but he says no that's too long to wait he is hungry now. Then she suggests tea and he says, knowingly, what about breakfast? As she's leaving, they kiss and the screen fades to black. In the next scene she is happily cooking him breakfast. And that, ladies and gentleman is why they call it the Lubitsch touch! See the whole thing here, from the five minute mark.

1)UNF. If you don't know what UNF is try looking it up and you might just find a scene from Red Dust there as an explanation. The rather crude acronym has come to mean"paradigm of sexiness" and that about says it all really. It's hard to pick just one scene from Red Dust. One might do a list of at least five just from that film. My favorite is the first meeting of the couple in which they mostly debate the merits of different kinds of cheese. It's almost as if the writers were trying to come up with the least sexy dialog possible, but Gable and Harlow somehow set it on fire anyway. See it here.

Eye Candy of the Day: Found Footage

Last night I had the good fortune to attend the Fourth Annual Found Footage Festival at the Heights Theater in Minneapolis. A good friend of mine put the DVD of last year's festival in our hands and we found it greatly amusing. Seeing it live with the film's creators commenting Mystery Science Theater style is a whole other level of funny. I laughed so hard I cramped up my jaw.

As we were leaving the theater I kept remarking to my friends, that I had to get a hold of one of the videos in the festival. I couldn't put my finger on it at the time, but there was something about it. And then it hit me: I think I found Warren William's modern day doppleganger, appearing in a 80s Eurotrash new wave band called "Something Big" in what is billed as the "World's First Nude Pop Video." To paraphrase the best thing about the video, it's elaborately crafted disclaimer, "Please don't watch this video programme, if nudity offends you." What it should really say is "Please don't watch this video programme if Warren William lookalikes and blurry photos of topless (and sometimes headless) women offend you."

Enjoy!


Something Big

Found Footage Festival | MySpace Video

The stuff dreams are made of: maltese Falcon Boxed set

What's better than a boxed set of the Maltese Falcon (1941) with extras, a commentary and a documentary? That same boxed set with all three film versions of Dashiell Hammet's novel included. While I mostly blame Tonto for the recent influx of expensive DVDs into my house, I can't deny I do love the extras. This is a rare case in which the extras might be something I actually watch as much if not more than the 1941 version of the film.

The documentary is average, although I did learn that I've pronouncing "Dashiell" wrong all these years. (It should be "da sheel" not "Dash-el") For some reason Henry Rollins is a commentator in it. That guy must have made a deal with devil or something. Never before has a little talent in the arena of punk rock and spoken word been a qualification to comment as to whether Humphrey Bogart's portrayal of Sam Spade was the first anti-hero put on film. (He wasn't by the way. See the first two film versions of this story, if you don't believe me.) The commentary too is mind-numbingly pedestrian. Bogart biographer Eric Lax talks in a monotone throughout giving dry facts about the actors on screen. He adds a few nice pieces of trivia, that I wouldn't have known about otherwise such as a poster for an obscure Bogart movie that's in the background when Miles is shot, but otherwise I had to force myself to get through it.

Having been raised on the '41 film, the Maltese Falcon (1931) was really a surprise and a pleasant one at that. With its focus on Sam Spade's sex life, it's naughty and funny as well as gritty. I can't picture Bogart ever being as breezy or as flippant as Ricardo Cortez is as he tidies his office after an afternoon rendezvous with a client, flirts with his secretary, takes a call from one of his girlfriends who happens to be married to his partner and makes goo goo eyes at Ruth Wonderly (Bebe Daniels) all before lunch. Daniels is a more street-wise, earthy femme fatale than Mary Astor. I've always respected Astor's acting, but Daniels is the kind of woman that seems like she could lead two or three guys to their doom and still make it to her lunch date without having to retouch her lipstick. Mary Astor projects a far more polished and high-class image, and when she says "I haven't lived a good life; I've been bad" you wonder if it isn't something to do with not matching her china pattern to the table cloth.

At the very least the sleeping arrangement make a lot more sense in the pre-code version. The famous detective wastes no time in shacking up with his client which gives him ample opportunity to search through her stuff to find the falcon as well as protecting her from Gutman's thug, Wilmer. In the '41 version we are expected to believe that Spade's faithful and sharp as a tack assistant, has a blind spot for Miss Wonderly and offers to put her up at her place as a favor to her boss. It's interesting to me that the adultery in all three of the film versions is toned down from the novel. The 31 version makes Iva Archer out to be tremendously unappealing and Sam is clearly regretful of his involvement with her. When Wonderly realizes that the negligee she found in her new lover's apartment belonged to the wife of the man she just murdered, she tears it off and takes a bath, scrubbing herself vigorously with a stiff brush. The film's producers made sure we understood that Ms. Wonderley had a conscience after all, and of course who were they to miss an opportunity to titillate the audience . In Satan Met a Lady, the affair happened before the Archers were married and in the '41 version Bogart breaks things off completely with Iva as soon as Miles is killed. In the novel, Spade is revolted by the his involvement but it is strongly implied that he will go back to her at the end. That was a conclusion that was too brutal even for the Pre-code era. The '31 film ends with Spade visiting Wonderly in jail, asking the prison matron to go easy on her and to send the bill for any little expenses she might incur to him at the DA's office. There is no famous line "the stuff that dreams are made of" and Sam Spade gets made assistant DA!

Satan Met a Lady (1936) is best known to film fans as the movie that precipitated Bette Davis breaking her contract with Warner Brothers. The film's reviews were colored by the chivalric feeling that critics had for Davis who they felt was above the material at hand. And perhaps she was, but that didn't stop me from enjoying the heck out of this quirky comedy. I am probably too big of a fan of screwball comedy, if such a thing is possible. I may be the only person who thinks a screwball bowlderization of The Maltese Falcon is a good idea. Critics, audiences and most of the people involved thought it was a disaster, but I couldn't help but admire the fact that this even got made. On top of that, it's actually quite funny.

The original New York Times review of Satan Met a Lady said that actors behave as if they expect the men in white coats to burst any moment and lock them up for attempting such a travesty. And really is that so different than the subtext of any screwball comedy? Is My Man Godfrey to be faulted for having the brass neck to put the homeless over the rich at a time when the country was nearly at war with itself? So what if a great book is made to look silly and liberties are taken with the plot? It is all in the service of comedy, which is not a noble sacrifice if you ask me. The question is then, is Satan Met a Lady any good as a comedy? I think it is. Warren William plays the Sam Spade stand-in Ted Shayne, the Satan of the title. He is far less tortured than the famous detective and inexplicably eccentric and even bizarre at times. He behaves like a person in a screwball comedy. Perhaps it is this knowing consciousness that they are in a comedy which put audiences off. I suppose the best comedies are those in which people play things straight in screwball situations. That holds to a point. Sooner or later things just get weird. Men in negligees stomp on dowagers' feet. It's bound to happen. Just as its bound to happen that a hard boiled detective will suddenly jump in the air grab onto the door frame and imitate King Kong.

Eye Candy of the Day: The Mind Reader (1933)

Warren William and a bevy of beauties in The Mind Reader (1933). I haven't seen this movie but something tells me that Johnny Carson had to have based his "Great Carnack" character on this guy. Just click on the photo and look at the expression on Wiiam's face--that's pure "Carnack," baby. All he needs is Ed McMahon in the background repeating everything he says and chuckling heartily.

It anyone knows where I can get a copy of The Mind Reader I'd be grateful to know. It looks awesome, doesn't it?

Arizona (1940)

Guess what I needed to snap me out of my fevered Herbert Marshall blogathon is frenzied Warren William blogathon. Watching Gold Diggers the other day started it off. Next up: Arizona, a western starring Jean Arthur, William Holden and Warren William. Jean Arthur plays Phoebe Titus, a pie-making, stage coach-driving, fast-shooting, other-wise hyphenated lady in leather pants, and the only American woman in Arizona territory. After selling a pie to drifter Peter Mucie (Holden) she determines that he's the man for her, but he has other ideas, namely running off and sitting under a shade tree in California. Meanwhile the Civil War happens and Jefferson Carteret (William) arrives in his dude's beaver top hat to carpet bag the whole territory into his control, while using an unscrupulous local thug as a front for his dirty dealings. By the time Muncie returns to claim his woman, she is already head of her own freighting company and owner of a ranch so big it takes two days to ride across. With the help of government contracts the couple save enough money to buy the largest herd of cattle that's been seen in the territory, but the night before Muncie is to set off for Nebraska to buy the cows, Carteret hires some local hooligans to rob Phoebe's house. Then he loans her own money back to her at 6% interest and plans to foreclose on her as soon as Muncie is sufficiently far afield. In the word's of Carteret, "that's how it's did, puddin' head."

Jean Arthur is always fun and her spunkiness lends itself well to the script that requires a woman of almost supernatural energy to sell the audience on the somewhat far-fetched tale. William Holden doesn't really seem like William Holden. I kept checking IMDB during the movie to make sure, yes, this was William Holden. Maybe he's just younger than I'm used to seeing him. Warren William makes a colorful scoundrel who stops just short of tying the heroine to the railroad tracks (I guess there were no trains in Arizona yet) in his quest to get the better of her. As the most interesting guy in the movie, I was nonetheless rooting for a romance between the two, at least until he started shooting people in the back. It was nice to see such a strong female character and even though she gets married off at the end, there's little indication that she's going to retire to a life entirely devoted to pie making. As she and her husband leave for their honeymoon, one of the town folk notes that she's made of iron from head to toe.

Arizona is a bit overlong, at two hours and ten minutes, but it is nicely filmed by Wesley Ruggles and has the benefit of the director's experience with both westerns and romcoms. The action sequences are all very good and the cow herding scenes are really quite spectacular, especially when Muncie decides to stampede the cattle into a band of attacking Indians.

Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933, duh!)

Warren William sets aside his usual wolf character to play an honest, crusty upper crust type who rolls over and begs for show girl Joan Blondell.

One of the most astonishing things about having a blog is that I'm still finding movies all the time that amaze me. Enter, The Gold Diggers of 1933. Wow. What a picture. It's funny, sexy, the songs as catchy as a virus on an airplane and the choreography is something you really have to see to quite believe. To top it off, the closing number, Remember my Forgotten Man is socially relevant and still genuinely moving 76 years after it was recorded.

The reassuringly predictable plot follows the ups and downs of a group of showgirls who've been put out of work by the Great Depression. Joan Blondell, Aline MacMahon, Ruby Keeler and Ginger Rogers get cast in a Ned Spark's musical revue about the Depression"Forgotten Melody" which lacks only a bankroll to get off the ground. Miraculously fresh music, voice talent and a fat wad of cash are be found in a neighboring tenement apartment where "Boston blue blood" is masquerading as a starving composer (Dick Powell). After Powell makes his Broadway debut, the papers leak his identity and his brother (Warrren William) scoots down to Manhattan to cut off his income and try to block his engagement to showgirl, Polly Perkins (Ruby Keeler). He brings along the family lawyer Fanuel "Fanny" Peabody (Guy Kibbee) for moral support. The pair get side-tracked in the man trap that is the Polly's apartment, and after being pelted with lingerie for a few hours, they begin their own daliances with two of the three remaining "gold diggers." Farcical mix-ups, drunken misbehavior and more "fanny" jokes than I can possibly relate in one blog post ensue.

Warren William and Joan Blondell have some fun scenes that are far more about sex than romance. Even when he's playing a nice guy he comes off a bit as a bit of a wolf, though one that Blondell's Carol the "Cheap and Vulgar" showgirl is gaga over. William's comedy is made all the better by his method of playing everything entirely straight. In one scene he rants that he and Fanny have to stay in New York, because he's "this close" to figuring out what makes this Polly Perkins tick.

Powell and Keeler do the bulk of the singing and dancing but whenever Ginger Rogers is on screen, she is so completely head and shoulders above the other performers, that you wonder why director Mervyn LeRoy bother to feature Keeler to such a great degree. Keeler's singing and dancing aren't bad, but she's no Ginger. Sadly, Ginger's big number, "Sing You a Torch Song" got cut and is put in the film as a fairly weak performance by Powell at the Piano.

Now, I have a confession to make. I'd never actually watched a Busby Berkeley musical all the way through before . I had only seen clips of his human kaleidoscope numbers, which is like judging It Happened One Night from the hitchiking scene that always gets shown on TV. To think that until yesterday, I only thought of Busby Berkley in terms of his signature moves. He is so much more, a mad genius whose numbers move like stream of consciousness through one surreal sight gag to the next. Take Pettin in the Park, for example. The action begins with the principal couple and moves out to see a whole range of diverse couples from the very young to the very old, black, white, rich and poor enjoying love in the great outdoors. One couple have a baby in a baby carriage and as the camera zooms in we see that he is actually little person actor Billy Barty who jumps from the perambulator to wreak havoc on the set. It begins to rain on the couples and the women run behind a backlit scrim to change. Midway through Barty pulls the curtain up exposing them. Their new costume is a metallic body suit that acts as chastity belt much to the disappointment of the male dancers in the number. Luckily Barty provides Dick Powell with a can-opener at the end of the song. And that's just one minute in one song. Oh, to be Busby Berkeley and to be able to realize your every fever dream so completely on screen.

Bonus Eye Candy of the Day: Ginger Rogers in a money bikini!

We're in the Money is probably the best-known sequence from the movie. The film opens with this wonderfully ironic comment on the Great Depression. Just as Busby Berkeley's choreography starts to hit his stride with the surreal weirdness, in this case Ginger Rogers singing in pig latin, while the coin that covers her, um, bikini area rotates in time to the music, the Sheriff bursts in and shuts down the show due to bankruptcy.

There is something a little bit "Springtime for Hitler" about the play within the movie, "Forgotten Melody" and its difficult to tell whether Ned Sparks description of the penultimate number, in which he shouts, "The Wailing! The Wailing" is meant to be funny or serious. It's mindboggling to imagine the narrative structure of a play that could support both "Pettin in the Park" and the expressionistic masterpiece, "Remember my Forgotten Man" which features striking vignettes of women in poverty. One image of a woman holding a baby is eerily similar to Dorothea Lange's famous Migrant Mother taken in 1936. Of course, it's no more wonderful than a movie that's been as breathlessly silly as this one has up to this point that can suddenly switch gears and deliver the tone of dignity that "Remember my Forgotten Man" deserves.

Philo Vance Round-up

William Powell and fog-horned voiced character actor, Eugene Pallette in The Kennel Murder Case.

TCM recently showed a Philo Vance marathon featuring films from the thirties about this fictional detective all made by Warner Bros./Vitaphone. The movies are enjoyable if slight--most of the films clock in at a lean, mean 75-80 minute length. The studio employed a string of actors including William Powell, Basil Rathbone, Warren William, Paul Lukas, Edmund Lowe, Wilfrid Hyde-White and Grant Richards in the 1930s alone. There was another series of Philo Vance films in the 1940s, which I haven’t seen.

The closest thing we have in our times to the Philo Vance phenomenon is the British TV series Doctor Who which continues to survive decades into its run by replacing the leading actor every once in a while. Like Doctor Who, each of the actors I watched in the series brought their own spin to the character.

By far the most enjoyable Philo Vance movie of the three I watched was The Kennel Murder (1934) case, starring William Powell. His fourth and final Vance outing, Powell was on the cusp of major stardom. The next year he played Nick Charles in The Thin Man. Powell has same charm he has in the later more famous detective series all the while hiding a sharp mind with a soft-easy going manner. While he lacks a Myrna Loy with whom to trade witty lines, or indeed witty lines, he does have a cute Scotty Dog, who is perhaps the inspiration for Asta. This movie seemed more lavishly produced than the other two movies I watched. It’s possible that since it was the latest of the three chronologically, the budgets had increased, but it’s equally possible that it was all just Powell’s superior star power rubbing off on the flimsy sets.

Warren William had an enjoyable outing as Vance in The Dragon Murder Case, about an absurd homicide in which the chief suspect is a mythological giant lizard. Like Powell he was more famous for playing a different detective in a later series, The Lone Wolf. If the X-files existed in 1933, The Dragon Murder Case, would definitely be a candidate for a plot scenario. Unfortunately the whole thing unfolds with a rather Scooby Doo obviousness where as The Kennel Murder case was so busy and confusing you were guessing till the last minute because the plot was so byzantine. Maybe I’m being unfair here. Perhaps if I was watching it in 1933, and had not spent my childhood watching Scooby Doo, I would have been delightfully surpised by the denouement of The Dragon Murder Case.

Basil Rathbone’s lone Philo Vance picture was The Bishop Murder Case (1930). This series was a detective training ground because like the other two actors mentioned here, Rathbone was about to become a lot more famous by playing another well-known detective, Sherlock Holmes. In between playing Vance and Holmes he was best known for playing the stereotypical English bad guy in Errol Flynn movies. I’ve always enjoyed Rathbone as an actor, but something about him in The Bishop Murder Case just didn’t click for me. The stand-outs in the supporting cast, Roland Young and George F. Marion, perhaps took something away from my enjoyment of the detective. Marion in particular plays an eccentric chess master who lives with his ancient sister and spends his evenings skulking around in dark corners. Rathbone can't compete with this kind of a show-stopping villain. He doesn't have the eccentric flair needed to play a great detective, or even Doctor Who. He moved workmanlike through the plot like perhaps the Second Doctor or the Eighth might have, but without the droll, self-aggrandizing panache of a Fourth or a Tenth Doctor. I apologize for getting off course here and contaminating my post with obscure references to an obscure English television show. I’ve just spent the last week deeply immersed at a science fiction and fantasy convention, which is why I haven’t posted much lately.

I look forward to watching the rest of Philo Vance movies waiting in my tivo queue. It's likely that I will shove the posts into the media room though, unless I'm blown away by one of the remaining pictures.

A Pair of Ladies

Warren William and May Robson in Lady for a Day. Thanks to Cliff at Warren William dot com for the still.

Lady for a Day (1933) is an early example of classic Frank Capra fish out of water comedy. May Robson plays a boozing old apple peddler who poses as a society dame in order to fool her daughter's fiancee and his family. Warren William plays the gambler Dave the Dude with an irrationally strong attachment to Annie's apples as good luck charms. Dave gets completely consumed by the plot, borrowing an apartment, convincing his girlfriend to give the old girl a makeover, pressing his gang into posing as dignitaries and eventually getting himself deep into a kidnapping charge. So deep, that only a last act, Frank Capra style miracle could pull him out. For a pre-code film, this was pretty tame and even Missouri Martin's (Glenda Farrell) "I need a Man" dance number probably would have made it through the censors later in the decade. Why this film got lost, I'll never understand because it would have perfect for revival. I guess the studios had enough current Frank Capra product to deal with in later years.

William and Robson are quite fun together, but he always hangs back and the movie skillfully avoids getting mushy. You know Dave's motivation is more than just needing her luck, that there is also real affection there as well, but he never lets it out of the bag for more than a moment. That's one of the things I appreciate about William as an actor. Dave is an unrepentant scoundrel who may or may not get roped into making an honest woman out of Missouri Martin, but he is still likeable. Annie for her part gives up the sauce and becomes infinitely less fun. Robson is great when she's embarrassing herself with her nails on chalkboard shriek in a posh hotel lobby or when she's penning letters to her daughter while slugging back an entire bottle of gin. She's just perfunctory and proper when she becomes a society lady and she has too few moments where you think she might slip a little. The characters are probably too numerous and those that should have center stage, get the short shrift in the second half of the movie as Capra's jauggernaut plot steams along to its conclusion despite them. I would also like the relationship between Missouri and Dave to be fleshed out a little more, or at all.

Building on the success of its first Lady, Columbia knocked off Lady by Choice, less than a year later with the same star (May Robson) and several of same supporting players including the always-excellent Walter Connolly. This time Robson plays a boozing bag lady who gets adopted by a fan dancer (Carole Lombard) as a Mother's Day publicity stunt. Despite being derivative, this rehash is actually just as entertaining as the first "Lady." Where Capra delights in heaping more characters and complications into his plot, director David Burton hangs back and concentrates on the relationship between Lombard and Robson. Robson actually gets to explore this character and really bring her to life in this second film. Robson and Lombard are very good and they work wonderfully well together, skillfully cranking out comedy and playing just enough sentiment, but not too much. There is a weak love story (we really could have used a Warren William here!) with Roger Pryor and Lombard. Of course, Lombard is luminous and charming as always and manages to carry those parts of the picture despite not being particularly well matched.

Lady for a Day is a busy picture that will probably reward repeat viewing and Lady by Choice may be a pleasant surprise, a knock-off that is every bit as good as the original.

Wives under Suspicion (1938)

I have not seen the original pre-code version of this film "The Kiss Before the Mirror," also directed by James Whale. Presumably it was too racy to be re-released so it was remade, with one of the great actors of the pre-code period, Warren William as its star. Gail Patrick (My Favorite Wife, Stage Door) co-stars as his long-suffering wife. William plays a prosecutor whose work has begun to poison his whole life. He keeps a ghoulish abacus on his desk to keep track of the criminals he's sent to the chair, the beads on which are little skulls. He neglects his wife who spends her time changing clothes and hanging around with her young unmarried cousin and her fiancee. He takes on the case of a University Professor who murders his wife in a crime of passion. As we see the prosecutor's own home life unfold, it becomes clear that there are a number of striking parallels. It all becomes a little too clear, actually. The story telling is heavy handed and any subtlety in William's acting is pointless since the film posits a very unsubtle scene to explain every nuance.

Gail Patrick is an actress I've never liked. In part because the movies I've seen her in she plays unpleasant people, but here, when she's supposed to be sympathetic, she still isn't likeable. I really tried honestly, and maybe I'm blaming her for the weaknesses in the script, but I feel like she doesn't give her character any kind of arc. She is supposedly a long-suffering, adoring wife, who becomes distanced from her husband because of a case he's prosecuting. Her tone in every scene is the same. She seems like she doesn't really love the guy from the beginning. Maybe it's that Patrick and Warren don't seem to have any heat together. He is far more enjoyable playing off Cecil Cunningham (Aunt Lucy from The Awful Truth) as his faithful Gal Friday, Sharpy. After a while I wanted Hollywood to drop it's deeply entrenched age double standard, its production code and abandon the whole belabored point of the film and have him run off with his secretary. Cunningham was only six years older than William, and he just doesn't seem to have any chemistry with the woman almost twenty years his junior who was cast as his wife.

Warren William does have one really great scene in the movie, that made it worth watching for me. He takes a confession, playing the "good cop" and listens to the professor pour his whole heart out. His reactions are so sympathetic and human and given the parallels to his own marriage, you start to wonder if he's going to cut the guy a break. As soon as the prisoner is taken from his office he cackles with delight that he wormed the confession out of him. The about face is startling and chilling, owing a good-deal to the gloomy, rainy night atmosphere in the office during the confession. If James Whale would have used a script that was more sparse and let his camera tell the story more, this would have been a much better movie. The forced "happy" ending also sucks away any tension or feeling of "noir" that he might have built up.

This movie isn't a complete waste of time, but it's not one I'd recommend either. I don't give stars or anything like that in my reviews but if I did, the gratuitously racist "comic relief" would be enough to subtract a star. I can cringe and bear the occasional "simple" african american stereotype popping up in an old movie. Generally, I hope it ends as quickly as possible. Lillian Yarbo, a talented black actress who was relegated to playing maids in many films, gets an unfortunate amount of screen time as the Stowell's dim-witted maid. One line in particular made me just about fall out of my chair. Gail Patrick says to her guests, "well at least she can cook which is more than you can say for most of them." Yikes.

Of lingerie models and leering boyfriends

Anita Page (right) and Bessie Love pre-pare for a bath in The Broadway Melody (1929).

I watched a trio of Anita Page movies from the early pre-code era recently: The Broadway Melody, Skyscraper Souls and Our Blushing Brides. Anita Page wasn't a great actress but she was a memorable presence on screen. She made her biggest impact in the silent era with Our Dancing Daughters (pre-curser to Our Blushing Brides) and the transition into sound was seemingly easy for her. She is natural and easy-going in her talkies, though sometimes she seems to loose the screen to more forceful actors, like co-star Joan Crawford. In all three of these movies Page plays a woman that men like to look at, whether on a broadway stage, modeling lingerie or standing behind a perfume counter, she is always the eye candy that pays the bills for some man. And there is always a stage-door johnny type ready to load her up with jewelry and furs and empty promises. While her more famous co-star, Joan Crawford, always played the good girl in these situations, Page got to be the girl who lets her foot slip once in a while.

The Broadway Melody (1929) was a very popular movie in its day but it is maddeningly slow and the musical numbers feel distant and uninspiring. I'm willing to forgive this clunkiness as a side effect of its being one of the first full-length talkies. The central relationship in the movie between Queenie (Anita Page) and her sister, Hank (Bessie Love) is just a bit weird. Queenie is in love with Eddie (Charles King) but he is engaged to Hank. For Hank's part she seems more obsessed with her sister than her boyfriend. Queenie has to choose between a producer named Jock Warriner (a thinly disguised Jack Warner) that wants to keep her in high style and low morals and her sister's beau. What's a good girl to do? Apparently the answer is to walk around in her underclothes a lot. Queenie goes so far as to take a bath in her underwear, which has to be one of the most bizarre thing I've seen in a pre-code film.

In Our Blushing Brides (1930) Anita Page plays Connie a department store clerk who is having an affair with the owner's son (Raymond Hackett). Her roommate, Joan Crawford works in the same store but prefers to keep the owner's other son (Robert Montgomery) at arm's length. Things don't turn out well for Anita's character as her boyfriend keeps her on the side while continuing to juggle society dames. Joan Crawford has one flirtatious encounter after another with Montgomery until you wish they would fall in love already. Their romance mostly takes place in his unreal, only-in-the-movies tree house complete with electric lights, telephone and mechanically descending staircase. One of his favorite tricks is to bring women up there and pull up the stairs so they can't leave. Charming. Crawford and Page also model for the department store (naturally) so that is what gives the excuse for them to be changing clothes perpetually. I don't think they invented those changing screens (you know the kind where the woman ducks behind and shortly afterward you see her dress slung over the top of the screen, followed by her stockings) until 1934.

In Skyscraper Souls, Anita Page mixes it up a bit: she plays a lingerie model and a prostitute who turns tricks for extra pocket money and to bail out her friends from financial disaster. (Click here for full review of Skyscraper Souls.) This clever bit of scripting gives Anita double the chances to undress before the camera. In the end she winds up going straight and marrying the only man in the Dwight Building that hasn't been paying her to see her in the altogether.

I really enjoyed all three of these movies, each in their own way and Anita Page is certainly entertaining and of, course, watchable in all of them.

Movie Justice: Skyscraper Souls

All the better to see you with my dear. Warren William plays the big bad wolf to Margaret O'Sullivan's Little Red Riding Hood.

Earlier this week our new President declared that the heads of companies who were going to take government bailout money were going to have a salary cap of $500,000 a year. He said that the level of executive compensation was "shameful." Since these titans of industry had no shame for the wreck they made of our economy, the new head of government was going to teach them a bit of humility. During the Great Depression, the legend has it that shame for their failure drove some Wall Street executives to plunge to their deaths by leaping out of tall buildings. How true that image is, may be open to some debate but it's never left the public imagination because the bloody symbolism of it just feels right somehow. Greed and risky behavior pushed over the first domino and some of those who were responsible at least felt shame.

I've been watching that Great Depression through the warped carnival mirror that was the Hollywood movie during the pre-code era a lot for this blog. That story of shame of those who broke the machine is not the story that is most often told. The most popular story of shame in this era was the Prostitute movie. Its not just the titilation (though there was plenty of that) that attracted producers and audiences alike to the "oldest profession." There was something about the condition of the prostitute, a person forced by economic circumstances to compromise their very souls and sell their bodies that spoke to people in the early thirties. Skyscraper Souls (1932) is perfect example of what I'm talking about. There are many different kinds of prostitution in the film, with the wonderful irony, that the one card carrying whore (Anita Page) goes straight in the end.

Skyscraper Souls is often compared to Grand Hotel because all of the action takes place with in the titular building and the various stories of the inhabitants intertwine and connect in powerful ways. Yet, this film is so specific to the time in which it was filmed that it seems to be warning us from beyond its nearly forgotten pre-code grave. The movie was based on the 1931 novel Skyscraper which came out around the time of the completion of the Empire State Building, which was financed by money raised during the final hours before the Stock Market crash of 1929. This was a time so early in the depression, it was as if the Titanic had just hit the iceberg and the band were still playing. People had no real idea yet what they were in for, which is what makes it such an interesting movie for our own time.

Skyscraper Souls is that Empire State story shrunk down to a more manageable size, even to the point that the building in question is a mere 72 stories high. The chief energy behind the building is David Dwight, (Warren William) a young ruthless financier who wants the building as a lasting legacy to his own ego. He plays at love as thoughtlessly as he plays at business and he keeps a wife (Hedda Hopper), a secretary/mistress (Veree Teasdale) and is currently working on his secretary's protegee (Margaret O'Sullivan). The latter is in love with a poor bank clerk (Norman Foster) who also works in the skyscraper, but she is seduced by her Dwight's wealth and power. Warren William is wonderful as the slippery, charming and completely conscienceless man. Finding himself in trouble with creditors who want to take his building, he fights dirty and causes an artificial stock run which temporarily enriches most of the characters in the film. Dwight bides his time, causes the stock to crash and winds up owning the building outright, as well as impoverishing his romantic competition in one fell swoop. Faced with bankruptcy, disgrace and most importantly shame, one of his business partners commits suicide. Dwight is not impressed. He knows that in times when everyone is falling down, the one can remain standing will wind up with everything left worth having. That is an important lesson from the first Great Depression. Not everyone was wiped out. Many rich men became even richer when their competition went under. A few profited by the suffering of many.

This being a movie, even a pre-code movie, justice must prevail. Dwight's secretary, getting wind of his plans to retire her to a nice house in Schenectady (Dwight is at least a generous John with his ladies) and his preference for her young friend, takes a revolver and kills the man she loves before flinging herself off the building. Movie justice is served.

Since the President's announcement earlier this week, many have pointed out that the money wasted on executive compensation and $2,000 wastebaskets was merely a drop in the bucket and that the salary cap is pure political theater. It's movie justice. Those who were on the receiving end of it should be glad it wasn't worse.

Eye Candy of the Day: Warren William

Warren William with Billie Dove in an as-yet unnamed film.
I first heard about Warren William from one of my regular readers, kda, and then read about him in Mick LaSalle's "Dangerous Men." Those two recommendations alone were enough to sign me up for his fan club, the only trouble was I hadn't actually seen any of the man's films. Well TCM this month has decided to be complete pre-code awesomeness and I finally got my Warren William movie, in the form of The Dark Horse. I was not disappointed.

William plays Hal Blake, a smooth political operator who is called in by a desperate party to get a patsy dark horse candidate, literally named "Hicks," elected governor. William was known as the poor-man's John Barrymore (perhaps, they should have said, Warner's John Barrymore, as it amounted to much the same thing) because of his likeness of profile. I think that's a really shallow assessment though, given what I've seen of Barrymore's acting. I can't see Barrymore touching this deviously cynical character whose chief troubles revolve trying to get his current girlfriend (Bette Davis) to help him with his alimony payments. Not exactly the type of noble character Barrymore would play. Warren also has a zany energy that is nothing like John Barrymore. If anything it recalls Cary Grant in His Girl Friday. In fact, I might go so far as to say that Grant's Walter Burns is almost an homage to the sort of slimy, yet charming characters that William played in his pre-code films.

Paired with smart and capable actresses, Bette Davis , and Vivianne Osborne as his backstabbing ex-wife, Warren William throws ethics both professional and romantic to the wind and the audience is completely prepared to still accept him as a hero. It goes to show that Grant could never have gotten away with playing Walter Burns the way he did if Rosalind Russel had been one bit less his equal. Bette Davis is not quite up to Roz Russell level of gal Friday perfection, but she certainly oozes intelligence and competence though she may be a bit stiff at times. Osborn fairs better as a woman who is every bit as unethical as her ex-husband, but lacking in his redeeming romanticism.

The Dark Horse is a perfect introduction to this actor, as it's timely, smart and funny. Looking beyond William's shellaced hair and pencil thin mustache, concessions to the Barrymore look, I'm sure, William reminds me of Liam Neeson of all people. An early scene in The Dark Horse reminded me so much of Neeson in Michael Collin's rousing the prisoner's to the cause of the Irish Independence that I was distracted for the first ten minutes of the film. Of course, Hal Blake knows nothing about the man he's praising in such grand terms, and is the first, but not the last instance of grand theatrics used to sell politics. This satire feels as fresh as the day it was made. The key points about the electorate needing to feel that the candidate is as stupid as they are certainly hit home in an election season where a Wellesley College graduate drank bourbon and talked NASCAR and a vice presidential candidate's chief qualifications have to do with the ability to shoot something besides her hunting companions.