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The Big Knife (1955)
Overheated
Robert Aldrich rarely kept his actors' emotions in check-I mean, look at "What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?" He lets them run wild here, in a not-very-cinematic adaptation of a Clifford Odets play. Odets' famous penchant for overwriting is much in evidence, and the lines are given ripe readings by Jack Palance, as a movie star with a terrible secret, and Ida Lupino, as his loving but highly skeptical wife. A short scene or two aside, it's a one-set affair, Palance's Bel Air mansion, where Hollywood types keep dropping in, frequently unannounced: hostile movie mogul Rod Steiger, unscrupulous PR whiz Wendell Corey, predatory neighbor Jean Hagen, dumb starlet Shelley Winters. It's meant to be a scathing look at lack of morals in the Tinseltown community, but it doesn't entirely persuade. Palance, hardworking as he is, just doesn't seem the swashbuckling matinee idol type, and Lupino, an actor I admire tremendously, overacts. The most attractive personalities, in fact, are Wesley Addy, as a friend of Palance's who covets his wife, and Nick Cravat, Burt Lancaster's old acrobatic buddy, as Palance's masseur/general fixer. Steiger's hideous overacting is amusing, and Corey, having to underplay for most of the length, finally gets to vent some emotion as the plot careens toward (unconvincing) tragedy. Well photographed, well scored by Frank De Vol, and worth one look, but I won't be revisiting it.
House of Women (1962)
Sorta "Caged," sorta "Women's Prison," lotsa fun
As a fan of this genre, I'm predisposed to like "House of Women" anyway. But I was surprised by the amount of professionalism and thoughtfulness that went into what's clearly an early-'60s Warners B, riffing on the then-12-year-old "Caged" and adding some trendy contemporary refs, like inmates arguing over the relative merits of Troy Donahue. Shirley Knight, always wonderful, is the naive young thing who took a five-year rap for assisting her boyfriend in a robbery, and is entering the Big House with a baby on the way. She quickly allies with the brassy Barbara Nichols and the hard-as-nails Constance Ford (she's excellent), and snags a relatively comfy job in the home of warden Andrew Duggan, who goes from rat to sympathetic to rat again. (Also in his domestic employ: Virginia Capers, who won a Tony some years later for "Raisin.") There's the usual we're-taking-over-this-joint roistering and unsympathetic parole board, and a somewhat not-credible climax where the prisoners get everything they want. But it's pretty well directed, and certainly well acted.
Is My Face Red? (1932)
Cortez marking time
I like Ricardo Cortez--he tried on a number of identities in a long career, from Latin lover (he was actually Jake Krantz from the Lower East Side) to cocky leading man to dignified elder-statesman character actor, and succeeded at most of them. He was handsome--in some shots, he looks alarmingly like Gene Kelly--and he even did a bit of directing. In this quick RKO programmer, a mild spoof of the Walter Winchell sort of gossip columnist popular at the time (Winchell gets a mention, and so does Ed Sullivan), he's lively and busy, but somewhat overselling the charm. He's also playing a rotter, and unable to charm his way out of that. While devoted to girlfriend Helen Twelvetrees, top-billed but without a lot to do, he's also carrying on with socialite Jill Esmond, cheating fellow reporter Robert Armstrong out of scoops, and laughing over the witnessing of a murder, by Italian (!) mafioso Sidney Toler. Some nice moments with harried switchboard operator ZaSu Pitts and bootlegger Clarence Muse, and Esmond and Twelvetrees were always worth watching, even stuck in uninteresting parts as they are here. But the tone is off--is it a comedy? An expose? A satire?--and, much as I generally like Cortez, this role's a much more natural fit for a Lee Tracy.
Athena (1954)
Smug
MGM's "musical with young ideas," as the ad copy had it, actually has some pretty old, musty ideas disguised as social satire in this rather smug spoof of a then-burgeoning health craze. The Martin-Blane score is far from their best, and, as if to show Metro's anxiety, the movie opens with Vic Damone singing a pronoun-altered "The Boy Next Door," borrowed from "Meet Me in St. Louis." He's a TV heartthrob who enlists the services of Army buddy Edmund Purdom, who's nursing a political career, and for reasons not worth going into they end up involved with a family of health nuts, led by pater Louis Calhern and Evelyn Varden, and most prominently featuring daughters Jane Powell and Debbie Reynolds. It feels like the screenwriters are straining to be fair to everybody, but they do indulge in cheap shots at health foods, health regimens, and Buddhist-inspired health reveries. It ends up at a bodybuilding competition, featuring young Steve Reeves (billed as "Mr. Universe 1950"), but even there there's an air of, look at these unconventional zealots. Some of the musical staging is lively, Damone certainly had a lovely voice, and Powell, this being a Joe Pasternak production, also gets to raise her voice in a bit of "Daughter of the Regiment." But with the never-interesting Richard Thorpe helming it, it's a sluggish ride, and the witless swipes at vegetarianism and weightlifting and such haven't dated well.
The Model and the Marriage Broker (1951)
Viva Thelma, of course, but the writing is slack
Who doesn't love Thelma Ritter? She was maybe the best character actress we ever had, able to both knock back a comic line with flawless timing and make us care. I'd been looking forward to seeing this, her only genuine starring role (though she's third-billed), which also benefits from George Cukor direction and some tasty early-'50s location New York filming. But it's a rather mild affair, and we blame the Charles Brackett screenplay, which doesn't go much of anywhere. Jeanne Crain is the model and Thelma the marriage broker, a disappointed-in-love matron who makes matches among her not particularly attractive clientele and gets involved in one unusual pairing, of Crain and radiologist Scott Brady (in his handsome-leading-man days, which didn't last that long). Thelma has an interesting array of clients, including Nancy Kulp, Zero Mostel, and Frank Fontaine, and also a conniving sister-in-law, Helen Ford, who was a major star in 1920s Broadway musicals, especially those by Rodgers and Hart. She also has a pleasant but dull suitor, Jay C. Flippen, and a simpatico card-playing buddy, Michael O'Shea, who'd been starred by Fox back in the '40s but by now was relegated to supporting roles. It goes by easily and pleasantly, and Thelma, not unexpectedly, makes us both laugh and care. It just added up to less than what I'd expected.
The Long Voyage Home (1940)
Solid O'Neill, solid Ford, even solid John Wayne
Dudley Nichols neatly cobbled four short Eugene O'Neill playlets into this atmospheric adaptation, detailing the lonely, dangerous, difficult life at sea. It's moody and blustery, with a crew full of actors I don't like much doing better than usual. Barry Fitzgerald's forced Irish adorableness is kept in check, and John Wayne, as a Swedish rube trying to get back to farm and family, though top-billed, is just a part of an ensemble, and manages to steer through the O'Neill without embarrassing himself. There's also excellent work from Thomas Mitchell, Ian Hunter (as the most interesting character, a depressed alcoholic with a past nobody knows about), and young Mildred Natwick, as a shady lady conspiring against Wayne during a seaside sojourn. The Gregg Toland photography's absolutely excellent, with a really frightening storm at sea and a scary attack from the air, and John Ford strays a bit off his usual subject matter and proves thoroughly capable. Hollywood ruined a lot of O'Neill but occasionally got it right, and here's an instance of that. It's brawny and convincing. It's a movie with hair on its chest.
A Majority of One (1961)
Accept the now-cringey miscasting, and enjoy
A late-'50s Broadway hit gets a dutiful and more than competent filming in this Warners opus from 1961, employing many veterans who reunited there the following year for "Gypsy." There's screenwriter Leonard Spiegelgass, adapting his own stage success; Mervyn LeRoy, directing with good late-career acumen; and Rosalind Russell, eye-opening casting as a Brooklyn Jewish mom transported to Japan when her son-in-law is appointed to the diplomatic corps, but I think she pulls it off splendidly. Gertrude Berg had played it onstage, and Sir Cedric Hardwicke had been the Japanese tycoon who meets and is delighted by her, non-PC casting that doesn't get any better here: It's Alec Guinness. He doesn't look remotely Japanese and does predictable things with his R's, but it's still a dignified performance, if you can overlook how innately wrong the casting is by today's standards. There's also Mae Questel, spelled Questal in the credits for some reason, as Roz's bigoted downstairs neighbor who somehow turns tolerant between the first and last scene. What I like about it is, it's unforced and warm, a study of how two people who are predisposed to loathe each other learn to look past their prejudices and see their feelings blossom into respect, affection, and possibly beyond that. And I haven't seen anyone praising Ray Danton, as Roz's son-in-law, or Madelyn Rhue, as her loving but edgy daughter; they're both excellent, and both nice to look at. Max Steiner's score is less obtrusive than usual, and less wedded to repeated themes. Yes, the thing is horribly dated, but it probably made quite the point in its day about overcoming innate prejudices. At two and a half hours it's leisurely, but that's about how long it would have been onstage, and I salute it for being well-produced, well-directed, and unexpectedly touching.
The Great Lillian Hall (2024)
Not a fun watch. But strong!
A lot of folk who have been around theater collaborate to provide a convincing look at putting on a show, and how difficult it is when your leading lady, "the first lady of the American theater," is in the early stages of dementia. Supposedly it's based on the latter-day career of Marian Seldes, and Jessica Lange is, as others have said, rather magnificent in suggesting a Broadway star's pride, neglect of loved ones, and denial of her medical crisis. The theatrical details are by and large convincing, though that's clearly no Broadway house (the movie appears to have been made largely in Marietta, Georgia), and, much as we'd like it to be true, opening-night audiences these days don't dress in formal wear. Good acting all around, especially from Kathy Bates as Lillian's no-nonsense caretaker and Lily Rabe as her justifiably resentful daughter; Pierce Brosnan is also around, as an aging-roue next-door neighbor who provides acid commentary and sympathy where it's really needed. Michael Cristofer, an award-winning playwright from way back, directs capably, and if the ending feels a bit unrealistic, it's still a compelling, if often hard-to-watch, journey to it.
Callaway Went Thataway (1951)
Callaway didn't go much of anywhere
Pleasant enough spoof of early TV and the westerns that populated it, this Panama-Frank comedy gives a nice opportunity to Howard Keel, whom MGM was building up, and who should have been a bigger star than he was. In a dual role, of a has-been cowboy movie star and the likable lookalike who's hired by a couple of advertising sharpies to impersonate him, he gets to sing a bit and also create two distinct personalities, and even have a fistfight with himself, thanks to some clever doubling. Those two ad sharpies, though, are played by Fred MacMurray and Dorothy McGuire, and they're tiresome. He's an opportunist, and she's a bore. There are some wild credibility gaps, and the supporting cast isn't up to much, though Natalie Schaefer has a nice cameo as a wealthy socialite charmed, and why shouldn't she be, by Keel's howdy-ma'am personability. Clark Gable, Elizabeth Taylor, and Ava Gardner stop by for cameos, and the background music pleasantly includes a couple of tunes, "Too Late Now" and "You Wonderful You," that Metro was flogging at the time. It's well-produced, and Panama and Frank knew their way around writing for kids, a number of whom have small speaking roles. It's short on real wit, though, and MacMurray makes his ad-man-sharpie even less appealing than he'd be on paper.
Wings for the Eagle (1942)
Limp propaganda, but the stars did have something
Mostly a documentary-style salute to the tireless workers at Lockheed and how quickly they're turning out aircraft for the war (which we're not in until the end of the movie), this Warners assembly line effort is unremarkable in pretty much every way. It stars Dennis Morgan and Jack Carson, who were teamed in several other movies, usually more felicitously, as sort of a Warners Hope and Crosby. They're old school buddies, and when Morgan makes it out to California to work, he bunks in with Carson and almost immediately is flirting with his wife, Ann Sheridan. The three yell at each other an awful lot, and you may notice, neither of the guys is a really good guy: Morgan's a lazy cynic and Carson a quick-tempered idiot. Both are eventually redeemed, of course. The comedy's limp and the romance unsatisfying, and the one really good performance comes out of George Tobias, of all people, who's the immigrant supervisor who makes wry remarks and eventually encounters tragedy. The patriotism is thick even by the standards of the day, and the musical score intrusive, and don't expect any surprises. But what he heck, I enjoy Morgan and Carson, and Sheridan did have oomph. A period piece, indifferently directed by Lloyd Bacon, but not too bad as a time waster.
Cry 'Havoc' (1943)
Tough broads!
Nurses, trained and un-, provide first aid and feminine comfort in a ravaged section of the Bataan front in MGM's 1943 filming of a 1942 stage flop. It's effectively adapted by Paul Osborn, and directed a bit stodgily by Richard Thorpe, who was one of Metro's longest-lasting and least-interesting contractees. It's stagy, limited mainly to the no-frills living quarters of the nurses, and, despite some snazzy quips coming from Ann Sothern and Joan Blondell and the comic-relief ditherings of Diana Lewis (who later married William Powell), a ditzy Southern blonde, pretty bleak. Margaret Sullavan is the no-nonsense workaholic, under commander Fay Bainter, and among several other worthy actresses, there's the always-worth-seeing Marsha Hunt, plus Heather Angel and Ella Raines. It's not subtle, and the main conflict, with Ann getting flirty with Maggie's man, feels a little inconsequential amid all the dying soldiers and bombs. But it's certainly effective propaganda, and the ending, a downbeat one, is a surprise.
Random Harvest (1942)
Sorry, not buying it
The third and least of Hollywood adaptations of James Hilton (preceded by "Lost Horizon" and "Goodbye, Mr. Chips"), this ungainly romance has Ronald Colman, twice the age of the character he's playing, suffering from wartime amnesia and wandering out of the asylum he's in, to be rescued by too-nice-to-be-believed Greer Garson, a music hall performer. She falls in love with him; it's not clear why. They settle into a happy domestic existence and he becomes a successful writer; they have a son, who dies, a plot point that could have been excised entirely; off to Liverpool for a job interview, he's hit by a car and forgets the previous three years of his existence but recalls everything that preceded it. It seems he comes from a rich family and is expected to take over the family business, which he does with great acumen, while he's ardently pursued by Susan Peters, a friend (and relative? It's not clear) who has loved him since childhood. They're engaged, which is a little creepy given their respective ages. All the while we're wondering what happened to Greer, and it turns out she's become his secretary. The Peters-Colman union doesn't happen and he and Greer enter a marriage of convenience, and I kept screaming at the screen, WHY DON'T YOU JUST TELL HIM WHO YOU ARE, but she won't. We know where this is headed, but it takes its time getting there, and Mervyn LeRoy is in no hurry. Well-engineered, with moody lighting and a suitably slurpy Herbert Stothart score, it has too many credibility gaps. I love old Hollywood romances, and this was a huge hit, but I'm not buying it.
Shane (1953)
Sorry, not seeing what the fuss is about
Acclaimed as one of the greatest westerns ever, maybe THE greatest, and what I see is a pretty good western with a standard story, nice photography, and some OK acting. The plot's very familiar: stranger comes in from nowhere and tries to stay out of the virtuous homesteaders fighting the greedy, evil ranchers, but he gets pushed into it. That's Alan Ladd, effectively underplaying, but with his marcelled hairdo and 5'6" frame, it's hard to buy him as a burly fighter and ace shootist. He befriends homesteader Van Heflin, who's excellent, and Jean Arthur, whom we always love, but here she mostly spouts concerned-mom dialogue and hasn't a lot to do. Their son, Brandon de Wilde, was terrific in other things. But here, director George Stevens forces his line readings and lingers too long on the kid's reactions. It's prettily shot, and some appealing supporting players turn up: Elisha Cook Jr., Ellen Corby, Edgar Buchanan, even Nancy Kulp in a couple of bits. But the central conflict, who gets to own the land and further the American dream, is conveyed in dozens of other movies just as effectively, and the man's-gotta-do-what-a-man's-gotta-do dialogue gets tiresome, and de Wilde's worshipfulness of Shane becomes just a bit creepy.
Symphony of Six Million (1932)
Well, Ricardo Cortez was born Jake Krantz
So it's not much of a lapse of logic to have him play Felix Klauber, doctor extraordinaire, raised and schooled on the Lower East Side. This melodrama from a Fannie Hurst novel goes in for emotional excess at every turn, but it does provide a rare, compelling look at an urban Jewish community up to and into the Depression, something Hollywood proved extremely reluctant to do. The plot, quite similar to Rodgers and Hammerstein's not-quite-hit "Allegro," has Cortez abandoning his principled work at a Lower East Side clinic, urged by his unscrupulous brother to open a ritzy Upper West Side office and cater to rich hypochondriacs, until he sees The Error of His Ways and returns to the good works he practiced in his old neighborhood. Anna Appel is quite good as his Mrs. Goldberg-esque Yiddishe mama, and Gregory Ratoff, unrecognizable if all you know of him is "All About Eve," is also good as his dad. As the lame schoolteacher who loves him silently and eventually is rewarded for it, Irene Dunne is, as several posters have noted, miles away from Essex Street. Much as I love some of Gregory La Cava's work, it's overheated here, and there's almost nonstop irrelevant Max Steiner sawing through it. Some unusual moments lift it up, notably Cortez operating on his infirm dad and watching him die on the table, and some Lower East Side episodes inserted largely for atmosphere. Good it ain't, but I'm glad I saw it.
Red Dust (1932)
Quintessential Clark and Jean, and thank you, John Mahin
Influential pre-Code drama pours on the atmosphere and the sex in a most un-MGM way, and this is the one that made a star out of Jean Harlow. She'd been decorative but not much good in such notable movies as "Hell's Angels" and "Public Enemy," and somehow Victor Fleming turned her into an ace comedienne who could also make you care. Here she's Vantine, a no-better-than-she-should-be spirit who happens upon Clark Gable's Malaysian rubber plantation, just as he's receiving assistant Gene Raymond and his comely wife, Mary Astor. And the battle of the women is on, as Harlow and Astor vie for Gable's attention. He's all man in a way even he seldom achieved, and we understand his surliness even as we admire his competence and efficiency. There's atmosphere galore, including a lengthy sequence on how rubber is made, and everyone's helped immensely by John Mahin's rude, funny, sexy screenplay, which allots ripe ripostes to Gable and Harlow, who reel them off expertly. Astor's gorgeous and womanly as ever, and we believe her conflicting feelings for Gable and Raymond. (In "A Life on Film," she answers the question many asked her, "What was it like to kiss Clark Gable?": what with Victor Fleming yelling and hot lights pouring on them and technicians running around, not much.) You have to put up with the casual racism of "those lying, cheating coolies" and a comic-relief manservant whose function is to laugh idiotically at everything, but accept that and you have a lively, adult, HOT movie that showed what Harlow could really do, and further developed the masculine characteristics that Gable displayed in many, many movies.
Roberta (1935)
Well, thank heaven for Dorothy Fields
The 1933 Jerome Kern-Otto Harbach musical, adapted from a novel by Alice Duer Miller, wasn't that well reviewed to begin with. But audiences liked the songs, especially "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes," and the gowns, and loved a scene set in a bar with 1,000 actual liquor bottles (Prohibition had just been repealed). Most of Harbach's unwieldy, and rather unfunny, libretto gets preserved in this film adaptation, and while the score is considerably reduced, as usually then happened in Hollywood, some of the missing songs at least survive as underscoring. He wasn't the most dexterous lyricist, either. ("Now laughing friends deride/ Tears I cannot hide." Some friends!) Fortunately, Dorothy Fields was retained to rewrite some Harbach lyrics (she's billed with Jimmy McHugh, but he had nothing to do with it), and contribute one new song, the lovely "Lovely to Look At." That helps the musical presentation; nothing's going to help this slim plot. Irene Dunne, a little over-prim to these eyes, is the dress designer who variously loves and hates an impossibly handsome Randolph Scott, the Indiana bumpkin who's come to Paris to visit his aunt Helen Westley, a renowned couturier. He's traveling with Fred Astaire's band, and Fred hooks up with Ginger Rogers, who's a cabaret star with a fake Polish accent (a tribute to Lyda Roberti, who did the part onstage) but is really, coincidence of coincidences, his old flame, Lizzie Gatz. Sit through this tiresome plot and you'll get rewards, mostly Fred and Ginger dancing, and a brief display of Fred's excellent jazz piano playing, Irene's pretty soprano, and Ginger's way of hoisting a so-so comic line. Also dresses, lots and lots of dresses. Claire Dodd plays her patented shrew, ably, and it's over in under two hours. William Seiter's direction is nothing special, and the screenplay certainly isn't. You'll have a good time anyway.
The Pleasure of His Company (1961)
Aptly titled!
Maybe I'm overrating this; it's just a pretty-good adaptation of a pretty-good boulevard comedy that fit snugly into the theatergoing atmosphere of 1958. But viewed from this advanced vantage point, it conjures up a long-lost world that looks incredibly seductive. The Paramount mountain appears, Alfred Newman's lush scoring begins, some gorgeous still photos of 1961 San Francisco grace the credits, and we're off to an appetizing array of sophisticated bon mots, expert comic playing, and the most glamorous sets and costumes this side of "Pillow Talk." Astaire, not just playing Astaire and genuinely acting, oozes charm and regret as the long-neglectful father of Debbie Reynolds (who does overplay a bit), returning to San Francisco to witness her marriage to Tab Hunter, who's surprisingly excellent. Ex-wife Lilli Palmer, now married to gruff Gary Merrill, eyes her ex's intervention with well-justified suspicion, while dad Charlie Ruggles makes caustic remarks and quaffs a lot of bourbon. It's a very white world, and the casual racism thrown at the well-played Japanese servant becomes wearying, but it's such and eyeful and earful, and Astaire's so marvelous, you end up loving it. And when he dances a few steps with Reynolds and Palmer, you think, why on earth didn't they give him a whole number.
Thirteen Women (1932)
Fun pre-Code, but also a bit slipshod
Judging from the TCM print, which runs just an hour, as opposed to the original, 15-minute-longer version, this is a tense little thriller with a few loose threads. First, despite the title of the novel on which it's based, there are not 13 women in it, at least not the 13 alluded to in the title. The ones remaining are all former sorority sisters being tormented and summarily bumped off, mostly through the power of suggestion, by jealous former student Myrna Loy, still in her Eastern-temptress phase, though not for much longer. She's the most interesting thing in it, quite gorgeous and with a cool hauteur that suits Ursula Georgia very well. The most rational and combative sister, Irene Dunne in her noblest mode, is rather a dullard. She's widowed and lives, awfully well, somewhere near Beverly Hills, and has an irritating adorable son whom Loy targets. Other women include Kay Johnson, reduced to supporting parts after such disasters as "Madame Satan," and Jill Esmond, then married to Laurence Olivier, who has a lilting British accent and gives off an intriguing, somewhat Sapphic vibe. Peg Entwistle, about to throw herself off the Hollywood sign, is another, and her footage is too brief to reveal much about her. Ricardo Cortez, always welcome, is the uninteresting detective who pieces the case together, and some of the murders--a nervous trapeze artist, Johnson's--are quite strikingly filmed. It's far-fetched and racist and wildly unlikely, but entertaining, and an excellent look at the pre-Nora Charles Loy.
Nickelodeon (1976)
A disappointment
Saw the black-and-white restoration on TCM; it's lovely, with all that delectable Laszlo Kovacs outdoorsiness, but as a movie it just doesn't work very well, as sincerely as Peter Bogdanovich must have intended it. He loved old movies and knew many silent directors, and in fact dedicated this to Allan Dwan and Raoul Walsh, whose memories partly inspired it. But what we have is a slow-moving retrospective of 1910 to 1915 and movies' move out West, with Ryan O'Neal as an inept lawyer and Burt Reynolds as a promoter who both somehow end up making movies for an almost unrecognizable Brian Keith. It's something of a history of the Patents Company, which monopolized moviemaking, but that's quite secondary to a series of not-very-funny slapstick sequences, involving characters who don't make a lot of sense. There's little emotional resonance to the love triangle involving the two men and Jane Hitchcock, whom I liked and don't find as inexpressive as a bunch of reviewers did. Tatum O'Neal is a know-it-all kid who drives and keeps a rattlesnake, also the subjects of some unpersuasive slapstick, Stella Stevens is a nondescript troupe member, and John Ritter, who, as several reviewers have mentioned, seems to be in a different decade altogether, is the DP. There's a lot of love for D. W. Griffith, whom one character calls "the greatest movie director who ever lived" even in 1910, before Griffith had made much of a mark, and extended sequences of "The Birth of a Nation," minus the now-offensive parts. It's meant to be elegaic and nostalgic and affectionate, but mostly what I see are thin characters doing a lot of unmotivated pratfalls. And hey, I liked "At Long Last Love."
Three Who Loved (1931)
One who didn't love
Stodgy, inept, illogical melodrama throws a lot of emotions on the screen, but they're not consistent, and they don't pay off. Bank teller Conrad Nagel is studying to be a lawyer, while his best bud, fellow clerk Robert Ames, likes to chase the broads and hit the speakeasies. Nagel's bride, Betty Compson with an uncertain Scandinavian accent, arrives on the boat and first seems besotted with her fiance, but becomes increasingly intrigued by his pal. Ames steals her away from Nagel, though he doesn't love her and doesn't really intend to marry her-so why? Nagel, up till now so studious and ethical that he's dull, makes a bad investment and covers it with bank notes, then is able to pin the crime on Ames, who lands in Sing Sing. Nagel then marries Compson, though she's already said she doesn't love him, and five years later they're raising Dickie Moore. Ames breaks out of prison and heads to the mansion Nagel built for Compson, where he demands she hide him yet confesses he never really cared for her. Nagel decides he has to come clean with Detective Robert Emmett O'Connor, playing what he always played, but a hilariously unlikely ending puts everything right. The emotions don't hang true on this one, and I don't believe any of it, but Nagel is good, and Ames, who died shortly after making it, had the makings of a good slimy villain.
The Big House (1930)
Very un-MGM
Metro all over the place in personnel: stars Robert Montgomery and Wallace Beery, director George Hill, Doug Shearer on sound and Cedric Gibbons on set, and Oscar-winning Frances Marion doing a bang-up screenplay. But the studio that reveled in pretty people doing pretty things went all Warners on this one, unleashing a tough, unglamorous prison epic that created many cliches that the genre reveled in for decades. It also gave an Oscar-nominated Chester Morris probably his best chance, as an unscrupulous yet likable, redeemable convict whose cellmates are Montgomery, as a spoiled pretty boy in on a manslaughter rap, and Beery, the toughest con on the lot. The relationships are interesting, the pace is fast, the climactic prison riot is a doozy. One complaint: Montgomery's family, mainly his sister, Leila Hyams, is portrayed sympathetically, and it's stated that they'll just lose it if he doesn't get parole (but they look like just a jocular, happy upper-class family in their one scene, laughing and enjoying each other's company and not even mentioning Montgomery). Yet the screenplay has to go through some unlikely contortions to link Morris, who's made a jail break, with Hyams, who grows fond of him, and is reunited with him in a happy ending that could never happen (and again, no mention of her brother, whose fate is not a happy one). But hey, it's unusually fluent for an early talkie, and exciting, and rife with quirkier cons than your average prison movie.
Cavalcade (1933)
Oh, give it a break
Widely considered, on the IMDB at least, as one of the least deserving Best Picture winners ever. And I disagree. Yes, there were other great films in 1933: Dinner at Eight, Gold Diggers of 1933, Duck Soup, State Fair, to name a few. This one is, first of all, unusually lavish, in the way Academy voters then tended (and still do, to an extent) to admire. It's from a stage success by a major playwright, and offers spectacle and crowd scenes even the Drury Lane never could have contained. It has a lively, Upstairs Downstairs/Downton Abbey vibe, and the reliable Una O'Connor and Herbert Mundin making the most of the downstairs couple. Clive Brook is a solid patriarch, and if Diana Wynyard tends to play to the second balcony more than she ought, she has some fine quiet moments, too. There are some very well-written scenes (the young couple on the Titanic, Wynyard telling O'Connor off late in the proceedings), some very accurate depictions of what was considered mass entertainment at the time, and some good montages. The constant passage-of-time device of those people and horses parading across the screen does get tired, and one can detect a certain self-congratulatory air in Frank Lloyd's direction; oh, look how capable I am at handling the sheer volume of this. But I'm interested throughout, and can see how it may well have been the most impressive of the Best Picture nominees that year. Give it a break.
Come and Get It (1936)
Edward Arnold? Really?
It's a lusty, strapping, multigenerational American history in Edna Ferber's patented style, a look at the Wisconsin lumber industry from the 1880s to about 1910, with a surprising-for-its-time sidebar on the environmental cost of lumbering. A scrappy, ambitious lumber foreman brawls, barks and blusters his way to the top, in the process falling for Frances Farmer's saloon barmaid-singer. What's implausible is, Edward Arnold is playing him. He's in his mid-40s and not remotely credible, or attractive, as our flawed hero, and you wonder why on earth someone as beautiful and accomplished as Frances Farmer would ever fall for him. He runs off to marry the boss's daughter, leaving Farmer to wed Arnold's best pal Walter Brennan, who at least isn't as Walter Brennan-like as usual, but does have to exclaim "Yumpin' yimminy!" a lot. Flash forward 20 years, and Farmer has died, leaving a lovely daughter played by... Frances Farmer, and Arnold, now a more plausible 50, sees in her a chance to recapture his youth. His son, Joel McCrea, second-billed but not having much to do, also falls for her, and which one she's going to end up with doesn't generate a whole lot of suspense. There is one lovely scene between Arnold and his daughter, Andrea Leeds, and some good actors on the periphery-Mady Christians, Mary Nash, Richard Shields, Cecil Cunningham. It's lavish, with some striking Gregg Toland/Rudolph Mate montages, and capably directed by Howard Hawks and William Wyler, though their styles do clash, with Hawks presiding over the outdoorsy-action stuff and Wyler handling the domestic drama of the third act. Entertaining, and the best chance Frances Farmer ever had, but you'll see why Arnold, a reliable character actor who mainly played tycoons and villains, seldom got top billing again.
Meet Me After the Show (1951)
A bit tiresome
A standard Betty Grable Fox musical, with some swell Jack Cole choreography and a below-par Jule Styne-Leo Robin score, this backstage frolic compromises itself somewhat in the casting and a lot in the plotting, a tortured screenplay by director Richard Sale and Mary Loos. Betty's starring in a hit musical (good opening number) produced by hubby MacDonald Carey. MacDonald Carey? He's hardly an expert at musicals, though he does warble a little at one point, and he's playing a rotter, romancing a wealthy backer who happens to look like Lois Maxwell. Betty's also receiving heavy attention from her leading man, Eddie Albert, who did do musicals, but the casting still seems a little odd. Meantime the central couple gets a separation (but he's paying her alimony, without her divorcing him-how does that work?), and after a minor accident, she develops amnesia, or appears to, sending her down to Miami, where she lives like it's 1944 again and begins a romance with a buff Rory Calhoun. The contrivances pile up on top of one another, and the ending is rushed. Certainly the dances are the best thing, including a production number with Betty and a just-starting-out Gwen Verdon, who does get billing in the program insert. But you have to slog through some dreary story to get to them.
The Grass Is Greener (1960)
This only gets a 6.5, really?
Deborah Kerr can't decide between Cary Grant and Robert Mitchum, and we should all have such problems, while best friend Jean Simmons stands on the sidelines in fabulous 1960 designer outfits and makes catty remarks. What more could we ask from a movie? This elegant drawing room comedy harks back to an earlier era, say the 1930s, when great-looking actors inhabited great-looking interiors and engaged in witty conversation. The screenplay, adapted by Hugh Williams and Margaret Vyner from their West End stage success, is loaded with smart repartee, and Stanley Donen directs this estimable quartet in high style. (There's hardly anybody else in the movie, though Moray Watson does a fine butler turn.) As a married couple of 10 years (they must have wed rather late) with two children, Grant and Kerr have an easy rhythm, and they live in a magnificent Downton-style estate, where part of the upkeep includes hustling tourists through. One such tourist is oil millionaire Mitchum, and when he encounters Kerr, a great flirtation begins. They'd worked together before in "Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison" and "The Sundowners," and they clearly adored co-starring and remained great friends; when Mitchum gazes with droopy-eyed lust on Kerr, the heat's palpable. There's a delightful score of Noel Coward standards, including several choruses of "The Stately Homes of England," a fun title sequence, and intelligent drawing-room conversation throughout. It wasn't that well reviewed at the time and isn't that well liked here, and personally, I can't imagine why.