The Elliott Nugent Film Festival: "Wise Girls" and "The Last Flight"

Of all the actors and actresses who appeared in 1930s movies, Elliott Nugent (1896-1980) was certainly one of them.

Actually, if Nugent's known at all today, it's probably more for his abilities as a director and writer than as an actor. He collaborated with longtime friend James Thurber (they were both from Ohio and attended OSU together) on "The Male Animal," a Broadway hit in 1940 that was turned into a 1942 film with Henry Fonda and Olivia de Havilland. (On Broadway, Nugent also starred, opposite a young Gene Tierney, and he directed the film version.)

Nugent also directed several above-average pre-code pictures, including "The Mouthpiece," "Life Begins" and "Three-Cornered Moon." And later in the 1930s and into the '40s he directed comedies with Harold Lloyd, Danny Kaye, Bing Crosby and Bob Hope.

As an actor, Nugent was mostly at MGM. He played Marion Davies's fiancee in 1930's "Not So Dumb" and he played straight man opposite Lon Chaney and a gorilla in Chaney's only talkie, "The Unholy Three."

But Nugent's best performances onscreen tended to be in dryly comic roles, and the 1929 film "Wise Girls" offers a nice example. This is pretty much an all-Nugent show -- it's based on a play by Nugent and his father, actor J.C. Nugent, and it stars both of them. The staging is also attributed to them -- like a lot of early talkies it takes place largely on one set, with a static camera and lots of entrances and exits. Screen direction is by one E. Mason Hopper, who brings things to a deadly halt more than a few times.

"Wise Girls" starts with this title card:

  
In other words, this is low-key humor in the style of The New Yorker, designed to elicit smiles more than belly laughs.

"Wise Girls" is a domestic comedy set in the Bence household. Dad Bence (J.C. Nugent) is irascibly, Fred Mertzian, comic. He's driven to distraction by the escapades of his grown daughters, particularly the highly strung Kate (Norma Lee), who's determined to be an artiste in the worst way, and is succeeding.  

Kate's dalliances with the muse have included a book called "Angie's Temptation," and based on her pretentious manner we can easily imagine how good it is. Nevertheless, a local attorney named Duke (Roland Young) loves Kate so much that he has published the book for her, but she doesn't know he's involved -- she thinks it was bought solely on its own merit. The book was less than a best seller -- in fact, a bunch of copies were dumped at the local YMCA, where one resident, Kempy (Elliott Nugent), read the book and fell in love with the author.

In the course of about ten minutes, Duke and Kate have a falling out over her ambitions and Kempy, a plumber, shows up at the Bence house to fix a leaky pipe. Younger sister Ruth (Marion Shilling) discovers Kempy's love for the book and all parties involved, and she makes sure to introduce Kempy and Kate. Kate is still smarting from Duke's rejection, so she's more than ready for a new admirer:

The sudden marriage of Kempy and Ruth gives dad lots of reasons to sputter, and the elder Nugent has the character type down to a T. He's put out that his daughter isn't marrying the wealthy Duke, and he's convinced that Kempy is out for his money:

It takes, frankly, much more time than it should to establish that Kate and Duke belong together and that sister Ruth loves Kempy, and vice versa. "Wise Girls" is one of those early talkies that can be a real slog, but every so often you stumble across a scene with some bright dialogue. Here's another nice example, between Kempy and Ruth, who, admittedly, says her lines as if she learned them phonetically:

All's well that ends well in "Wise Girls," but 1931's "The Last Flight" is decidedly more downbeat. It was one of Nugent's last acting assignments for a while, and truthfully he's a bit shoved off to the side, fourth-billed under Richard Barthelmess, David Manners and Johnny Mack Brown. The four of them are shell-shocked pilots trying to drink away their trauma in post-World War I Paris.

"The Last Flight" is written by John Monk Saunders, who knew this territory -- he also wrote "Wings" and "The Dawn Patrol." In real life he was a flight instructor, although during the war he never got out of Florida. "The Last Flight" is a slightly weird but interesting mix of "The Dawn Patrol" and ersatz Hemingway. The four fliers speak in somewhat self-conscious declarative sentences in between cocktails. But this a pre-code movie through and through, unapologetic about its viewpoint -- you can't even imagine a studio remaking something like this until the 1950s.

We first meet the men after Cary (Barthelmess) and Shep (Manners) have survived a serious plane crash. Cary's hands have been badly burned and Shep has a nervous tic in his eye that requires the wearing of really cool-looking smoked glasses.

The war is over, and they're being released from the hospital. Cary can't hold anything, but hey, no problem -- the doctor just tucks Cary's discharge papers into his armpit.

Then he watches philosophically as they walk away.

Doctor: Now they're out to face life -- and their whole training was in preparation for death. It's like dropping a fine Swiss watch on the pavement. ... They're spent bullets -- like projectiles, shaped for war and aimed at the enemy. Now they've fallen back to earth spent, cooled off, useless. ... What good are they?

OK, doc, I think we get it.

Brown and Nugent round out the quartet as, respectively, Bill, an ex-football star whose laces have loosened a bit and Francis, a skilled marksman with narcolepsy. The plot thickens when the men meet Nikki (Helen Chandler) in a Paris bar. She wasn't in the war, but she can still match them quirk for quirk -- she keeps turtles in her bathtub and often says her lines while staring into space.

When Nikki sees Cary having to use both hands to hold his martini she thoughtlessly laughs, and then just as thoughtlessly pities Cary. Shep and Bill have to set her straight:

  
Nikki straddles the line between being vulnerable and annoying, but the men take her under their collective wing. She's especially attracted to Cary. Oh -- and there's a tag along, a creepy American reporter named Frink (Walter Byron) whose designs on Nikki are less than honorable.

Anyway, the group continues its bar hopping and committing assorted hi-jinks -- like when big Bill tackles a horse to prove he was an All-American. Again, Nugent doesn't get much meat in this movie. But there is one brief, good example, set in (where else?) a bar:

Following a sweet scene in which Cary and Nikki visit Pere Lachaise and the graves of Abelard and Heloise (Nikki ends up naming her turtles after them), we're off to Lisbon. Once there, much drinking ensues, along with visits to the bull fights and then a shooting gallery. What can go wrong?

BEGIN SPOILER ALERT

A lot can go wrong, actually, including a final showdown between Frink and the boys. It happens at the shooting gallery, and, for the first time in the picture, it gives Nugent's character something to do:

END SPOILER ALERT

With that exit into the darkness, Nugent also disappeared from in front of the cameras for a while. But his directoral trail leads from pre-codes to 1939's "The Cat and the Canary," the first of several pictures with Bob Hope, also including "Never Say Die" and "My Favorite Brunette." Nugent also directed Harold Lloyd in "Professor Beware," Danny Kaye in "Up in Arms" and Bing Crosby and Barry Fitzgerald in "Welcome, Stranger." And he directed the charming 1948 sleeper "My Girl Tisa" and the 1949 version of "The Great Gatsby" with Alan Ladd. He also returned to acting now and then -- he starred onstage opposite Katharine Hepburn in "Without Love" in the role that went to Spencer Tracy in the 1945 film.

(One last point about "The Last Flight" -- just after the movie came out, Saunders turned the story into a Broadway musical, "Nikki," with his wife, Fay Wray, in the title role. It ran about a month. Playing Cary Lockwood was a young actor named Archie Leach who appropriated the character's name when he went to Hollywood shortly thereafter. But people told him Lockwood was too long a last name, so he chose Grant instead.)

Oh -- and since Nugent's "My Favorite Brunette" is in the public domain, here it is:

The Helen Vinson Film Festival: "Two Against the World" and "Grand Slam"

"How veddy good of you to cahm!"

Of all the actors and actresses who appeared in 1930s movies, Helen Vinson (1907-99) was certainly one of them.

Born Helen Rulfs in Beaumont, Texas, Vinson was the daughter of an oil company executive and grew up on a country estate. She attended the University of Texas, where she performed in shows, and ended up doing little theatre in Houston. This led to Broadway, a name change, and then Hollywood, where in 1932 Vinson went to work at Warner Bros.

Given her upper-class upbringing, playing the high society type came easily to Vinson. She was the opposite of streetwise Warner leading ladies like Glenda Farrell or Joan Blondell -- she was attractive in a demure way and spoke in an achingly proper manner.

One of Vinson's first films at Warner's is the majestic "I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang." Vinson plays Helen, who meets James Allen (Paul Muni) after his first escape from the chain gang. He has changed his identity and built himself a successful engineering career in Chicago, but he is unhappily married to the blackmailing Marie (Glenda Farrell). For once, Vinson is the attractive alternative, but when Allen tries to leave his wife, Marie turns him in to the authorities. This leads to Allen escaping from the gang yet again and returning for a brief visit with Helen in the film's powerful final scene.

"I Am a Fugitive" shows us a warmer, more attractive side of Vinson -- she actually gets to act like a human being as opposed to someone being rude to servants at a cocktail party.

But from then on, Vinson's Hollywood career largely came down to playing one of two types -- the wealthy heroine's best friend or the wealthy heroine's worst friend, the one who was always trying to steal her husband/lover.

For an example, consider 1932's "Two Against the World," set in a world of thoughtless rich people, the Hamilton clan. Here Vinson is Corinne Hamilton Walton, a sociopathic socialite who's preoccupied with important things like gahden pahties. She's married to a rich stiff named George (Alan Mowbray at his stuffiest). But Corinne is not hap-peh; she's been having an aff-aih until her lover breaks up with her because he loves her sister Adell (Constance Bennett).

Adell Hamilton, on the other hand, has set her cap for dashing young man-of-the-people attorney David Norton (Neil Hamilton), and they bond over a lunch of baked beans at Norton's favorite greasy spoon.

Things take a dramatic turn when Adell and Corinne's brother finds a compact on the lover's bed that just happens to have the old Hamilton family crest on it. The brother thinks it belongs to Adell, but he is mistaken, and this leads to an outbreak of frantic eye contact between the two sisters.

The lover ends up getting seriously killed by Corinne and Adell's brother and, in order to save the reputation of her unfaithful sister and her guilty brother, Corinne takes the fall. But the prosecuting attorney is -- David Norton, Mr. Baked Bean of 1932!

This is most of Helen Vinson's performance in
"Two Against the World."

Considering that it's her infidelity that drives the plot, there isn't much of Vinson in "Two Against the World" -- she doesn't even get the satisfaction of shooting her ex-lover! Instead the movie centers around the love story between Adell and Norton (Hamilton was also Bennett's romantic interest in "What Price Hollywood?"). Vinson might as well wear a shirt saying, "I had an affair but all I ended up with is Alan Mowbray." It's not even clear which "two" the title is referring to -- Adell and Norton? The two sisters? The Warner brothers?

How you feel about the 1933 film "Grand Slam" will depend on how funny you find jokes about playing bridge. The film is a product of a time when the card game was the national craze.

Paul Lukas plays Peter, a mild-mannered man of Russian heritage who, everyone tells us, is a genius. He lives happily and simply as a waiter in a Russian restaurant, but one night his fiancee Marcia (Loretta Young) drags him to a bridge game. He masters the moves immediately, because he's a genius, remember? Then he ends up working at Park Avenue party, where a ritzy group including Lola (Vinson) needs a fourth for bridge. Peter steps in and his expertise makes him the life of the pah-ty:

Lola's attention leads to the breakup of Peter and Marcia, and the climax of the movie comes in a bridge match between Peter and the stuffy, self-appointed bridge expert Van Dorn (Ferdinand Gottschalk). Worldwide interest is so intense that once they start playing, time stands still!

"Grand Slam" is a stew -- a tasty one, with bits sprinkled in by Roscoe Karns (also in "Two Against the World") as a wisecracking radio announcer and our old friend Joseph Cawthorn doing his patented grouchy ethnic schtick, but still a stew.

To Vinson, who stood five feet seven inches tall, Hollywood was "an absolute sea of short men," she later told one interviewer. "Robinson, Muni, James Cagney and George Raft all had to stand on boxes when they acted with me."

The sea of short men started drying up in the late 1930s. In 1938 Vinson was in the headlines for divorcing husband Fred Perry, a British tennis champion who'd begun an affair with Marlene Dietrich. Shortly afterward she married socialite-businessman Donald Hardenbrook. Her last film role was in 1944's "The Thin Man Goes Home" and she returned to the East Coast with her husband, where she studied interior design and preferred not to look back at her film career.

The Maude Eburne Film Festival: "The Vampire Bat" and "Lonely Wives"

"I beg your pardon, young man?"

Of all the actors and actresses who appeared in 1930s movies, Maude Eburne (1875-1960) was certainly one of them.

She was born in Ontario, Canada, and appeared in plays there before making her Broadway debut in 1913. The next year she made a name for herself as "Coddles" in a hit farce called "A Pair of Sixes," and appeared in plays until at least 1930.

Eburne appeared in over 100 movies, including the 1918 film version of "A Pair of Sixes." But her Hollywood career really didn't begin in earnest until 1930, when she appeared in "The Bat Whispers."

Her movie roles were usually as busybodies, kind as well as malicious. One nice little change of pace was her brief but vivid appearance in the 1933 pre-code prison film "Ladies They Talk About," wherein Barbara Stanwyck causes a stir while in stir. In this cheerfully cynical film, Eburne plays "Aunt Maggie," a former madame whose seniority in the jug is symbolized by the fact that she has a reserved rocking chair in the prison lounge. Stanwyck is introduced to her by Lillian Roth, as another inmate:

The 1933 film "The Vampire Bat" is a Grade-Z horror movie with a surprisingly big-name cast -- Lionel Atwill, Fay Wray and Melvyn Douglas. Eburne is fourth-billed, as Wray's Aunt Gussie. Her main job is to provide comic relief while everyone else runs around the village of Kleinschloss trying to figure out who's killing villagers by the dozen. All of them have puncture wounds in the neck and have been emptied of blood, sucked out through what one doctor calls the "jew-gu-lahr" vein.

Atwill is a doctor who might or might not be behind the murders; Wray is his devoted assistant and Douglas is the local flatfoot. Eburne's job is to spout medical malapropisms and scream at opportune moments -- she also faints at least twice, once when she meets demented villager Herman (Dwight Frye, who else?), who carries a bat in his pocket a la Lennie in "Of Mice and Men":



Eburne shows up again at the end. The murders have been solved, but the joke's on Gussie -- Dr. Atwill has given her a dose of Epsom salts for that get up and go feeling:




"The End"! Ha! Ha!

The 1931 film "Lonely Wives," on the other hand, is no laughing matter, even though it's supposed to be a comedy. The leading man, alas, is Edward Everett Horton -- in a dual role, yet.

Now don't get me wrong -- like cilantro, Horton is perfect in smaller doses, adding spice to everything from Lubitsch films to "Fractured Fairy Tales" on "The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle." But in a lead role, much less a romantic lead, that's just simply too much Edward.

Horton plays Richard Smith, a well-known attorney and ladies' man. As his butler says, "Any pretty woman can twist him around her little finger -- and the prettier they are, the more twisted he gets."

Eburne is Richard's mother-in-law, who looks askance at his slinky new secretary (Patsy Ruth Miller):  



Having mother-in-law around makes it hard for Richard to slip out for his assignations, but help comes in the form of The Great Zero (also Horton), a Vaudeville impersonator who disguises himself as Richard. All goes well until mother-in-law surprises Richard (really Zero) with his wife, who has returned early from a trip. And she's feeling very amorous. (The wife, not Eburne.)

"Lonely Wives" starts with an agreeable amount of wit and spice, but after Richard comes home and he and Zero get mistaken for each other about 75 times, things get tiresome.

As for Eburne, she chugged on through the 1930s and into the 1940s. She had the honor of playing Frank McHugh's mother in "Here Comes the Navy" and she played a supporting role in "Ruggles of Red Gap." In the late 1930s she played Mrs. Hastings the housekeeper in a series of "Dr. Christian" movies, with Jean Hersholt in his well-known radio role. (Most of them are available, in full, on YouTube.) Her final film credit was 1951's "Belle Le Grand," a western made at Republic Studios with Vera Hruba Ralston. By then Eburne was in her mid-70s.

The Dorothy Burgess Film Festival: "Playgirl" and "From Headquarters"

Of all the actors and actresses who appeared in 1930s films, Dorothy Burgess (1907-61) was certainly one of them.


Here she is in the 1932 film "Play-Girl," opposite Winnie Lightner.











And who could forget her in "Hold Your Man," with Clark Gable and Jean Harlow?

Or "From Headquarters," with Kenneth Thomson?

And "Ladies They Talk About," with Barbara Stanwyck.

"Put up your dukes! I mean your duchesses!"

So, as you can see, the traditional Burgess role was the woman who was always picking herself up off the floor.

She was the troublemaker, the spiteful gossip, the jealous other woman. If you happen to be watching an old movie where one of the characters is always standing around with her hands on her hips, giving the stinkeye to the heroine, it's probably Burgess.

The niece of actress Fay Bainter, Burgess was born into a well-to-do Los Angeles family (dad was the first president of Western Airlines) and after a stint in a tony boarding school she made her Broadway debut while still a teenager in a play that starred Aunt Fay.

Like Myrna Loy, Burgess found fame in fiery temptress roles -- she played a gypsy girl in "The Squall" (a role Loy played in the film version) and an African-American woman in "Lulu Belle." She played a Mexican girl in her film debut, 1928's "In Old Arizona."

In late 1931, Burgess signed a contract with Warner Bros.-First National and began playing a string of mean girls.

In the 1932 film "Play-Girl," for instance, she is Edna, the bitter, negative counterpart to our heroine Buster, played by Loretta Young. Buster and Edna are sales clerks at the Mayfield Department Store, along with Buster's bosom buddy, Georgine (Winnie Lightner). Edna is a mean girl, always snidely criticizing the others:



Buster is swept off her feet by the brash Wallie, played by the hardly-ever-charming Norman Foster. They get married, and Buster thinks Wallie is a successful businessman who's always closing on big deals. Then he makes a confession -- the "deals" he's out making involve playing cards and poker chips! Then Buster makes a confession -- she's pregnant! They argue, and Wallie takes a powder. Buster is forced to return to the department store, and Edna is waiting to pounce:



In the 1933 films "Hold Your Man" and "Ladies They Talk About," Burgess crossed paths with Jean Harlow and Barbara Stanwyck, respectively. In "Hold Your Man" Burgess plays Gypsy, the old flame of Eddie (Clark Gable), who's now hooked up with Ruby (Harlow). In "Ladies They Talk About," Burgess is Susie, a religious fanatic and bonafide nutcase who has eyes for political reformer Dave Slade (Preston Foster). Unfortunately, Slade is all about Nan (Barbara Stanwyck), a convict in the same cell block as Susie, which leads to Burgess picking herself up off the floor.

In the 1933 crime drama "From Headquarters," Burgess is Dolly, the drug-addicted former girlfriend of a millionaire who's been murdered. At first she is a suspect, but under questioning her mental foundation shows signs of cracking like dried oatmeal:



By late 1933, Burgess's career began to sputter. She was in the headlines due to her involvement in an auto accident where a young woman was killed, and in July she was injured while filming -- of course -- a fight scene at Universal Studios. She appeared in only a handful of films after that, concluding with 1943's "The West Side Kid."

Here is a complete filmography.
  

The Purnell Pratt Film Festival: "Road to Paradise" and "Paid"

Purnell Pratt, Pickle Puss

Of all the actors and actresses who appeared in 1930s films, Purnell Pratt (It sounds like dancing!) was certainly one of them.

Pratt (1885-1941) began on Broadway around the turn of the century, and appeared in two George M. Cohan plays -- "Seven Keys to Baldpate" and "Get-Rich-Quick Wallingford" -- before going west in the late 1920s.

He was a character actor, a fellow with thinning hair, a tight mouth, a tiny mustache, a sharp voice and a no-nonsense manner, which meant he played a lot of (corrupt and otherwise) authority figures -- attorneys, judges, politicians, cops, physicians. He played James Cagney's father in "The Public Enemy" and the newspaper publisher who urges action against gangsters in "Scarface." He played District Attorney Markham in several Philo Vance movies, and in his best-known role, he ... well, OK, so he didn't have a best-known role.

In the 1931 film "The Public Defender" he is John Kirk, a corrupt bigshot who has framed a hapless bank treasurer. Unluckily for him, the bank treasurer's daughter (song title: "She Was Only the Treasurer's Daughter, But She Had Impressive Assets") is the main squeeze of Pike Winslow, aka the Public Defender, aka Richard Dix, aka Ernst Carlton Brimmer! The movie's big confrontation comes when Winslow and the cops visit Kirk's home, and everything explodes in Kirk's face:

In the 1930 film "Road to Paradise," Pratt is a cop, Inspector Updike by name, who has been called to a New York City mansion after a robbery attempt. A woman lies wounded -- she is nice rich girl Margaret Waring, played by Loretta Young. Another woman sits anxiously at her bedside -- she is nice poor girl Mary Brennan, also played by Young.

So "Road to Paradise" is like a blending of "To Catch a Thief" and "The Parent Trap." Margaret and Mary are long-separated sisters, and their backgrounds are very different. Margaret adores a minuet, the Ballet Russe and Crepes Suzette, while Mary loves to rock and roll, a hot dog makes her lose control, what a wild duet!

Mary has only just found out about her lookalike -- it happened at a Chinese restaurant, through the miracle of rear projection.











When two of Mary's shady friends learn of the resemblance, they decide to rob the Waring mansion, with Mary as a reluctant participant.

Mary enters the mansion first, and gets caught by the butler, who assumes that Mary is Margaret:



Mary is a bit unsteady, but through some quick thinking she is able to fool the butler, a suspicious cop on the beat, Margaret's French-speaking maid and Margaret's beau, George (Jack Mulhall), who nonetheless is convinced that there's something about Mary.

George leaves, and the real Margaret enters, catching the gang in the act. She is shot (only a flesh wound) and Mary is too guilt-stricken to leave. So she stays, continuing to pose as Margaret while the real Margaret lies unconscious.

Enter Pratt, as Inspector Updike. He's sure that the resemblance of the two women is more than just a coincidence:



Updike tries to back Mary into a corner, psychologically speaking, but she manages to keep wiggling out. Oh, and there's one other wrinkle to the story -- Mary can read minds by holding the subject's hand and holding onto a medallion she's had her whole life that reads, "Each to each/is spirit mate/when in danger/trust to fate." Mary uses this skill to read her sister's mind and find the answers to Updike's probing questions. But that doesn't stop Updike:



"Road to Paradise" ends with the sisters reconciled, with the real crooks captured, and with Margaret willingly giving George to Mary, because she really never loved him anyway.

In "Paid," also released in 1930, Pratt is a much meaner character. He's arrogant department store owner Edward Gilder, who is in court as former clerk Mary Turner (Joan Crawford) is sentenced for theft. Mary is innocent -- the stuff was planted on her -- and she gives a very dramatic Joan Crawford-ish statement in court, but Gilder gives not a hoot:



Mary is sent to the big house, where she lives in squalor and even has to take showers with negroes. After three years she returns to honest society, but honest society doesn't seem all that happy to see her, so she teams up with old cellmate Aggie (Marie Prevost) and her gang, including Joe (Robert Armstrong).

Mary has spent her time in stir boning up on the law, so she and her gang start a racket that raises money through (technically) legal means. One of their plans includes the quaint old phrase "heart balm," a relic from the days when rich men wrote letters of love to poor women, who used them in court to get restitution for their broken hearts. In one of the movie's best scenes, Aggie gets involved, with Mary's guidance, in a heart balm case:



But as successful as she is, Mary has bigger fish to fry -- she sets her sights on Bob Gilder (Kent Douglass), the son of the department store owner who sent her to prison.

So we get to see Pratt again, as he re-encounters Mary:



"Paid" starts to bog down a little when Joe is talked into a robbery at Gilder's house, which is really a trap to catch Mary and her gang. There's a murder, and nobody knows who did it, but Joe takes the fall, even though it means life imprisonment, to ensure Mary's happiness. This allows Crawford to act all over the place (what I like to think of as The MGM Effect), and she and young Gilder live happily ever after.

As for Pratt, he would go on griping at people in the movies until "Pot of Gold," released in 1941.

 

The Louise Fazenda Film Festival: "Loose Ankles" and "Wide Open"

Of all of the actors and actresses who appeared in 1930s films, Louise Fazenda (1895-1962) was certainly one of them -- and certainly the only one of them who has a tangential connection to "Reservoir Dogs," of all things.

We'll get to that connection in a few paragraphs.

First, here's a little information about Louise Fazenda's early years, in a section I like to call "A Little Information About Louise Fazenda's Early Years."


Born in Lafayette, Indiana, Fazenda moved to Los Angeles with her parents as a child. In 1913 she made her movie debut in short comedies, and by 1915 she was playing opposite the likes of Fatty Arbuckle at Keystone.

In 1919 Fazenda was voted
"Most Likely to Hit Ben Turpin
on the Head with a Chicken"

Louise Fazenda and Fatty Arbuckle in 1916's
"The Unfortunate Flatulence Incident"

Unlike other Keystone actresses such as Marie Prevost and Carole Lombard, Fazenda was never one of the studio's Bathing Beauties. Her specialty was more along the lines of straight-laced spinsters or gawky country girls.

Fazenda left Keystone in a salary dispute with Mack Sennett in the early 1920s and spent a year or so in vaudeville. Then she returned to movie making at Warner Bros., where she stayed until retiring from the screen in the late 1930s.

In 1929, Fazenda was one of about, oh, eight million contract players appearing in Warner's talkie extravaganza, "The Show of Shows." Free of a spinster or hillbilly costume for once, she wears an evening gown and does a comic number with Beatrice Lillie, Frank Fay and Lloyd Hamilton that includes the slicing and dicing of four different poems into one naughty-sounding one. Here it is:



(Click here for the second part of this number, where the quartet lampoons the song "Your Mother and Mine.")  

In two 1930 films, "Loose Ankles" and "Wide Open," Fazenda does something kind of sneaky -- she steals the show, or at least provides some lively moments, with her spinster characterizations.










Like a lot of early talkies, "Loose Ankles" is ten minutes of plot played out over 65 minutes of celluloid. It opens with Loretta Young getting some attentive tootsie time ...



... from her elderly butler? Kinky.

But such is life for Loretta, a carefree example of flaming, or at least smoldering, youth. How carefree? Well, she has just inherited a million dollars, but care? She is free of it. The will stipulates that to get the money she must remain untainted by scandal, but instead Loretta puts an ad in the newspaper specifically seeking taint.

Meanwhile, over at the Gigolo Arms Apartments, fledgling fancy man Douglas Fairbanks Jr. is pressed into service to answer the ad. He meets Young, and they go through flirtatiousness that involves him losing his clothing:



(Seeing Fairbanks in that dressing gown calls to mind Cary Grant in "Bringing Up Baby.")

But enough about plot! You should be able to figure out that Young and Fairbanks get together toot suite and scandal-free. Most of the rest of the movie takes place at a nightclub, where Young's tight, um, fisted aunts (one of them played by Fazenda) have gone to keep track of their niece and end up with two of Fairbanks's gigolo bros. The aunts are served strong drink, and Fazenda starts doing her stuff, with the help of Eddie Nugent:



Next we move to "Wide Open," a film that proves positively that you should never, ever give Edward Everett Horton a romantic lead. In supporting roles with the likes of Fred Astaire, or under the direction of Ernst Lubtisch, Horton could be a delight. But when he's the befuddled hero at the center of the story, well, that's a lot of stammering.


Horton plays Simon, a meek bookkeeper who works at a phonograph company. Fazenda plays Agatha, a fellow employee who loves Simon from afar. At one point, she corners Simon in a recording studio. He accidentally flips the "on" switch, and their conversation is captured on vinyl, only to pop up embarrassingly when the boss is trying to impress a client:



But the real plot of "Wide Open" is that Simon shelters a young woman (Patsy Ruth Miller) who gives him a sob story about being homeless. Somehow word gets around that they've gotten married, and the employees throw a party for the newlyweds at Simon's house. Agatha attends, and sings the blues:



The plot is wrapped up when it is revealed that Simon's young woman visitor is actually the plant owner's daughter, and with Simon's help she uncovers financial foolery at the phonograph factory. The boss rewards Simon, he marries the daughter, and Fazenda does a fast fade.

In real life, Fazenda married producer Hal B. Wallis in 1927, leading to jokes that he was "The Prisoner of Fazenda," haw haw. She made her final film, "The Old Maid," in 1939, and spent the rest of her days collecting art and performing philanthropic acts. As part of her work in a prison outreach program she befriended Edward Bunker, a convicted felon with a long record, and encouraged him to write. Bunker wrote a book, "No Beast So Fierce," and ended up co-adapting it into the 1978 Dustin Hoffman film "Straight Time." Bunker collaborated on a few other screenplays and ended up playing small roles in several movies, including "Reservoir Dogs," in which he was Mr. Blue.

Fazenda wasn't around to witness any of this -- she died in 1962 at age 66.

Here are full credits for "Loose Ankles," and for "Wide Open."

The Henry Kolker Film Festival: "I Like Your Nerve" and "The Crash"

"I wonder what she meant by that?"

Of all the actors and actresses who appeared in 1930s films, Henry Kolker (1870-1947) was certainly one of them.

He had a long stage career and directed several silent films, including a 1921 production of "Disraeli" with George Arliss, who repeated the role in an early sound film. In talkies, Kolker most often played older, pasty white men of power and/or wealth, often with younger wives and/or girlfriends who run rings around them -- the kind of guy who says, "Something wrong, my dear?" a lot because he doesn't know that his significant other is making whoopie with another guy.

In the course of a very prolific career -- including a mind-boggling 28 films in 1934 -- Kolker played judges, doctors and attorneys. He played the president of the bank that Barbara Stanwyck sleeps her way to the top of in "Baby Face," and he was the stodgy father of Katharine Hepburn in the 1938 film "Holiday." He also played the cuckolded husband of Kay Francis not once, but twice -- in the 1933 film "The Keyhole" and in the 1932 film "Jewel Robbery." In this scene from "Jewel Robbery," Kolker is the guy in the straw hat who watches impotently as William Powell slickly robs a jewelry store and enthralls Kay Francis in the process:

In the 1932 film "The Crash," Kolker plays a character who's more in control. He is John Fair, a successful Wall Street trader who kicks off the movie by calling it quits with his selfish mistress, Linda Gault (Ruth Chatterton):



But Linda's husband, Geoffrey (George Brent), is taking a beating on Wall Street. And he knows that Linda and John have had an af-Fair (Get it?) so he tries to blackmail Fair with Linda's letters, which receives a chilly response:

In the odd little 1931 film "I Like Your Nerve," Kolker slicks his hair with what looks like black shoe polish and adds Rudolph Valentino-style sideburns as Areal Pacheco, the minister of fiance in the small Central American country of Sao Pedro. Pacheco has embezzled funds, but to repay the debt he has engineered a marriage between his stepdaughter Diane (Loretta Young) and a piggish, priggish Englishman Clive Latimer (Edmund Breon) who happens to be very rich.

Diane has reconciled herself to the loveless match, but then she meets brash American Larry O'Brien (Douglas Fairbanks Jr.), who sweeps her off her feet by giving her a ride home -- after spreading broken glass across the road where her limousine will travel and causing four punctured tires. Pacheco regards the American coolly:



O'Brien's devotion to Diane includes engineering a kidnapping so that Latimer will pay a ransom, which O'Brien then passes on to Pacheco, thus earning the affection of his future stepfather in law:



Kolker stayed active in movies right up to his death at age 77 -- his last film was 1947's "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty."

Here are complete credits for "I Like Your Nerve," and a trailer:



Here are complete credits for "The Crash," and a trailer:

The Polly Walters Film Festival: "Young Bride" and "American Madness"

Polly Walters and Joan Blondell in "Bleaches"

Of all the actors and actresses who appeared in 1930s movies, Polly Walters (1913-1994) was certainly one of them.

Although she appeared in small roles in only a handful of movies between 1931-32, Walters made an impression with her blonde hair, deadpan style and Betty Boop-ish, singsong voice. She was usually a working-class girl -- a waitress, a hotel maid, a manicurist, a switchboard operator -- with a working-class name like Mabel, Ethel, Daisy or Gladys.

Born Maude Walters in Zanesville, Ohio, our heroine trained as a dancer and made her way to Broadway, appearing in several productions during the late 1920s. Then came a stage stint as Eddie Cantor's straightwoman before Warner Bros. signed her to a contract in 1931.

At Warner's, Walters appeared in three James Cagney films -- "Taxi," "Smart Money" and "Blonde Crazy." In "Blonde Crazy," she plays a hotel maid who warns another maid -- the film's female lead, Joan Blondell -- to stay away from Cagney, as a bellhop who knows all the angles:



Walters also appeared in Warner films with Douglas Fairbanks Jr. ("Union Depot"), Loretta Young ("Play-Girl"), Edward G. Robinson ("Five Star Final") and Warren William ("The Mouthpiece" and "Beauty and the Boss").

For the most part, her Warner roles were bits. It wasn't until she was lent out to other studios that Walters played roles that were actually important to the plot.

In the 1932 RKO film "Young Bride," for instance, she is Daisy, the streetwise best friend of innocent heroine Allie (Helen Twelvetrees). They work together as librarians, and Daisy introduces Allie to nogoodnik Charlie (Eric Linden). Allie ends up marrying Charlie while Daisy ends up with Pete (Cliff "Ukelele Ike" Edwards), and doing lots of heavy partying:



Then in one of her last films, Frank Capra's "American Madness," released by Columbia the same year, Walters's switchboard operator character starts the gossip that threatens to bring down a bank headed by honest Thomas Dickson (Walter Huston):



After appearances in only 17 films, Walters left Hollywood in 1933 and went back to Broadway, appearing in a production called "She Loves Me Not" with Burgess Meredith. After that, there was talk of returning to Hollywood, but nothing materialized. From 1936-37 Walters was on stage in "Red, Hot and Blue" with Jimmy Durante, Ethel Merman and a young Bob Hope. Then came roles in plays that ran only a few performances -- her last work was in a 1942 production called "The Life of Reilly" that closed quickly.

For the next 50-odd years, Walters lived a quiet life in New York City -- she had no other film, play or TV credits. Maybe she found a job as a switchboard operator.  

The Joseph Cawthorn Film Festival: "White Zombie" and "Twenty Million Sweethearts"

"Vot are you looking at?"

Of all the actors and actresses who appeared in 1930s movies, Joseph Cawthorn (1868-1949) was certainly one of them.

To get an idea of the wide range of roles he played, just look at the character names: Dourfuss, Kleber, Selzer, Schlemmer, Krausemeyer, Schmidt, Kruger, Uppmann, Brokman, Speigal, Schneider, Barfuss, Schultz, Schultz and Schultz.

All right, so he's not Daniel Day-Lewis.

Nonetheless, Cawthorn had one particular character type down cold -- the cranky-but-harmless, usually wealthy, Dutch-German businessman who said things like "You vill pay me der seventy dollahs or I vill know der reason vy!"

He vas good at it.

Cawthorn started on the stage as a child, and in a 1908 Broadway show he supposedly created an animal called the whiffenpoof while ad libbing. Some fellows from Yale were in the audience and created a song to go with the name. Thus Cawthorn is only a few degrees separated from Cary Grant, who sang "The Whiffenpoof Song" in the film "Monkey Business"!

He didn't always play to type -- Cawthorn appeared in the 1929 version of "Taming of the Shrew" with Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks, and he was the doctor who can't understand Jeannette MacDonald's need for male, um, companionship in the 1932 film "Love Me Tonight."

In "White Zombie," released the same year and as far from "Love Me Tonight" as we are from Pluto, Cawthorn plays slightly off type as Dr. Bruner, a missionary. Dr. Bruner has been in the missionary position in Haiti for over 30 years, and boy are his hips tired. He has been called to a plantation to perform a marriage ceremony for two visitors, Neil and Madeline (John Harron and Madge Bellamy). But the evil plantation owner (Robert Frazer) wants Madeline to himself, so he visits witch doctor-zombie master-golf pro "Murder" Legendre (Bela Lugosi) for advice.

"Murder" has two distinguishing characteristics -- he is always followed around by a vulture and he has a bad hairpiece. The evil plantation owner gives the bride some zombie formula, and on her wedding night she puts a serious crimp in the honeymoon by turning cold and stiff, although to some grooms that might be the perfect aphrodisiac.

Neil thinks that Madeline is dead, and he goes to Dr. Bruner for help. Bruner says, "You vill pay me der seventy dollahs" -- no, sorry, wrong movie. Instead, in a very long take, Bruner laboriously explains to Neil that Madeline has become zombified:

   

The grieving groom teams with Dr. Bruner and they set out for the castle of "Murder" and his army of obedient zombies. Cawthorn is third-billed in this movie, and in the big showdown he saves Neil and Madeline by telling the zombies to take a long walk on a short cliff:



"White Zombie" is visually striking, but the script is routine and humorless. There's only one joke in the movie, and Cawthorn gets it -- he's always asking someone for a match to light his pipe. While you collapse with hilarity, we move on to Cawthorn movie #2, in which he plays a more Joseph Cawthorn-ish role.

In the 1934 film "Twenty Million Sweethearts," Cawthorn is Mr. Brokman, the head of the Carlotta Soap Company. The company sponsors a radio show with crooner Buddy Clayton (Dick Powell), who was discovered by fast-talking talent scout Rush Blake (Pat O'Brien). We first see Cawthorn when he's passing on suggestions of songs for Buddy to sing:



Conflict rears its ugly head when Buddy falls in love with radio actress Peggy (Ginger Rogers) and Brokman and the network want to keep the romance a secret so as not to alienate Buddy's female fans. Buddy ends up quitting the show and the network, and Rush orchestrates an event to bring Buddy, Brokman and the network together again:



As for Cawthorn, his last film was "The Postman Didn't Ring," released in 1942.

Here are credits for "White Zombie," and a trailer:




Here are credits for "Twenty Million Sweethearts," and a trailer:

The Noel Francis Film Festival: "Bachelor Apartment" and "Smart Woman"

Of all the actresses who appeared in 1930s movies, Noel Francis (1906-59) was certainly one of them.

Noel Francis Madison

Not to be confused with Noel Madison, who was a guy, Noel Francis was an attractive blonde with a winsome expression. She had been a dancer on Broadway, appearing in the Ziegfeld Follies during the mid-1920s, often with the comedy team of Wheeler and Woolsey. She came to Hollywood in 1929 and ended up being signed to a contract at Warner Bros.

In Hollywood, she made over 40 movies, most of them during the pre-code period, so she usually played mistresses and prostitutes, potential mistresses and prostitutes, or former mistresses and prostitutes.

In the 1931 film ”Blonde Crazy," for example, she's the mistress of Louis Calhern and she helps him bilk the film's star, James Cagney. In "Smart Money," released the same year, she helps bilk Edward G. Robinson. In 1932's "Night Court," she's the mistress of crooked judge Walter Huston.

Her best-known film credit is probably 1932's "I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang." She plays a prostitute who James Allen (Paul Muni) meets after his first escape from the gang. Her appearance is brief, but memorable:

Francis was rarely the female lead; she usually received fifth or sixth billing. In the 1931 film "Bachelor Apartment," for example, she is one of several women who are seduced by the film's hero, Lowell Sherman, who also directed. Sherman plays Wayne Carter, a bachelor whose apartment is just busting with women -- the movie is like a pre-code "Boeing Boeing." When the taxi Francis's character is riding in gets involved in an accident, Sherman -- who has been eyeing her from his limousine -- sweeps in and scoops her up:


Once Sherman gets Francis back to his bachelor apartment, he "accidentally" spills a drink on her dress, forcing her to change into something more comfortable:



Sherman has an impish comic quality and he's always fun to watch -- he also played the dipsomaniac director who discovers Constance Bennett in "What Price Hollywood?" -- and the film's storyline has him leaving girls like Francis behind so he can marry his proper stenographer, played by Irene Dunne.

In "Smart Woman," also released in 1931, Francis has a more substantial part. She's Peggy, the other woman who Mary Astor's husband (Robert Ames) has taken up with while Astor was with her sick mother in Paris. Gracefully directed by Gregory La Cava, "Smart Woman" is more comedy than soaper, thanks largely to the presence of Edward Everett Horton as Astor's husband's business partner. Astor decides to fight fire with fire, and invites the mistress and her mercenary mother to a weekend at the family estate; then she enters, carrying lawn shears:



Astor also tries to make her husband jealous by implying that she's been having an affair of her own with the kind Sir Guy (John Halliday), a British millionaire she met on the cruise back from Paris. But when Peggy learns of Sir Guy's fortune, she sets her cap for him:



It's too easy to blame the decline in Francis's career on the advent of the Production Code in 1935, but it's true that under the Code, parts like the ones Francis played were frowned upon. At any rate, by the mid-1930s, her career had declined to the point that she was appearing in quickie Buck Jones westerns and her final feature was 1937's "Left-Handed Law."

Here are the full credits for "Bachelor Apartment" and "Smart Woman."
 

The David Manners Film Festival: "The Ruling Voice" and "Crooner"

"You can call me Kit, or
you can call me Franklin,
or you can call me Franklyn,
or you can call me Austin ..."

Of all the actors who appeared in 1930s movies, David Manners (1900-98) was certainly one of them.

Today he is best known for playing the straight man in monster movies like "Dracula," "The Mummy" and "The Black Cat." He was discovered by James Whale, who cast Manners in the gritty 1930 film "Journey's End," a World War I drama based on the stage production that Whale directed.

Most of the time, however, Manners played people with good manners -- upper class boyfriends and fiancees with names like Kit, Franklin, Franklyn, Austin and Eden.

The 1931 film "The Ruling Voice" is a good example -- Manners plays Dick Cheney (!), an aristocratic young man who's in love with Gloria Bannister (Loretta Young). Gloria and Dick have fallen in love in Europe and are now heading home to meet Gloria's father, Jack (Walter Huston). Gloria doesn't know it, but dad is a ruthless racketeer, and in his obsessive collection of protection money he will stop at nothing -- he even knocks really cool toy trucks off of miniature highway bridges right into the path of model trains!



Truthfully, Manners doesn't have much to do in "The Ruling Voice" -- the real love story is between father and daughter. Jack is honest with Gloria about what he does for a living and she doesn't want anything to do with him, leading him to give up his shady dealings and sacrifice himself. So Huston and Young get tense, emotional scenes while Manners spends his time at the shuffleboard court in scenes like this:



In 1932's "Crooner," Manners gets a lot more to do and does it pretty well, showing a flair for light comedy. At a time when velvet-voiced groaners like Bing Crosby, Russ Columbo and Rudy Vallee were topping the charts, Manners plays bandleader Teddy Taylor. He and his musical aggravation -- excuse me, aggregation -- aren't going anywhere until Teddy starts singing and Guy Kibbee, as a guy in the crowd, hands him a megaphone:



Teddy soon becomes as well known as Chipso soap flakes (hey, this is 1932), aided by fast-talking agent Ken Murray and loving girlfriend Ann Dvorak (in a sedate performance that's a far cry from her craziness in "Three on a Match," made the same year). "Crooner" has a great deal of fun lampooning all the hype surrounding these early media-created superstars, and making it clear that most of them, Taylor included, have very little talent. That doesn't, however, keep Teddy from getting a swelled head:



Fame makes Teddy even more insufferable -- he adopts a phony British accent, starts hobnobbing with millionaires and, worst of all, ignores Guy Kibbee when he returns to remind Teddy about giving him his first megaphone! Finally, one evening he takes the stage after a few drinks:



Teddy commits PR Hara-Kari by hitting a handicapped veteran, and his career goes down the tubes, leading him back to Dvorak and a happy ending.

In real life, Manners tired of being stereotyped and left Hollywood in 1936. In later years he did some stage work (including a play with a young Marlon Brando) and wrote several books.

Here are the complete credits for "The Ruling Voice" and a trailer:




Here are the complete credits for "Crooner" and a trailer:   

The Mae Clarke Film Festival: "The Good Bad Girl" and "The Final Edition"

"Don't tell anyone, but
my real name is Mary Klotz."

Of all the actresses who appeared in 1930s movies, Mae Clarke (1910-1992) was certainly one of them.

She played a variety of roles, including rather wooden reporter, rather wooden gangster's moll, rather wooden movie star, rather wooden bride carried away by Frankenstein and rather wooden prostitute. And she will go down in film history for this scene:

Clarke's kisser was a pretty one, and deserved -- and got -- better than a grapefruit half in most of her movies. She had the good fortune to appear in several true film classics, including "The Public Enemy," "Frankenstein," the first version of "Waterloo Bridge" and the original version of "The Front Page." She was capable of convincing work, but in average movies headed by average directors she tends to deliver her lines as if she was thinking about something else.

In the 1931 film "The Good Bad Girl" she gets to dip her toe into soap opera -- a territory dominated at the time by the likes of Kay Francis and Norma Shearer. She is Marcia, a reluctant gangster's moll. As the movie opens, she is trying to leave the big lug, but as Neil Sedaka so memorably said, breaking up is hard to do. Or, as the gangster (Robert Ellis) says, "There's only one way for either of us -- feet first," which does not have much of a danceable beat. Then the gangster leaves to settle a score with an old rival, which he does in kind of a memorable way:

The gangster wants Marcia to give him a fake alibi, but she refuses. She has fallen in love with another man (James Hall). The gangster is imprisoned and swears vengeance, and Marcia marries the other man even though he doesn't know about her past. When he and his high-society family find out, she is shunned, even though she's with child. Marcia has the baby, and the gangster escapes from prison, intent on tracking down and killing her. He makes it as far as the baby's nursery, where the police shoot him down like a dog. At the same time, rich husband has come to his senses and sets out to reconcile with Marcia.

"The Good Bad Girl" gives Clarke several opportunities to do some heavy-duty emoting, and she is convincing as the young mother set adrift. As Marcia's boozy pal, silent-film beauty Marie Prevost is aces with comedy relief, and things chug along until the inevitable happy ending:

In 1932's "The Final Edition," Clarke is reporter Ann Woodman, and the first part of her last name describes her performance. When she acts sassy or makes with a wisecrack, it's almost as if she doesn't understand it's a joke. Someone like Glenda Farrell would be knocking these lines out of the park, you get me?

Anyway, Ann wants to be a reporter but boyfriend Bradshaw (Pat O'Brien), who's also the city editor, doesn't think she's up to the job. Ann gets her chance when the new police commissioner is murdered and she jumps in to console the man's wife:

She scoops the competition with details about the murder and then she follows the killer to a resort hotel where he's hiding out. The bad guys catch on and she and Bradshaw end up in hot water, at least temporarily:

The newspaper picture was a stock-in-trade at Warner Bros., where O'Brien was under contract, so he fits right in, talking a mile a minute. For instance, try to decipher what he's saying here:

As for Clarke, her career continued into the 1960s, but with smaller and smaller roles. Her other credits include "Singin' in the Rain" (as a hairdresser), "The Catered Affair" (as a saleswoman) and "Pat and Mike" (as a golfer). 

Here are full credits for "The Good Bad Girl" and "The Final Edition."