"City Streets," or Gang Man Style

The 1931 film "City Streets" is blessed visually in several ways. One is by the smooth, innovative direction of Rouben Mamoulian, who in this film introduces one storytelling technique that today's movies are still using. Another is the atmospheric photography by Lee Garmes, who also shot "Scarface," "Gone with the Wind" and "Nightmare Alley." And then there's the presence of a tall, handsome drink of water named Gary Cooper.

Cooper plays a character called simply "the Kid" -- a straight shooter who also happens to be a crack shot. At this point, Cooper was also a legendary ladies man, with a line of conquests that included Clara Bow and Lupe Velez, and it's easy to see why -- aside from his physical attractiveness, he radiates strength and confidence.

Born Frank Cooper in Montana, our hero took up horseback riding as a kind of physical therapy to recuperate from a hip injury he suffered in a car accident. This made him a natural for western roles, such as in "The Virginian" and "The Man From Wyoming," but his cowboy's nonchalance wasn't restricted to the range -- for instance, as a Foreign Legionnaire taken by Marlene Dietrich in "Morocco," he might as well be wearing chaps.

"City Streets" begins with the Kid working at a carnival, where he runs the shooting gallery and amazes the spectators with his trick gun work. His best girl is Nan (Sylvia Sidney). She's a good kid with just one fault -- she's loyal to her nogoodnik stepfather (Guy Kibbee), who works as a "bodyguard" for bootlegger Big Fella (Paul Lukas).

Big Fella's catchphrase is "no hard feelings," which is gangster-speak for "very hard feelings indeed, and you will be riddled with bullets as soon as I can step out of the way." We first get a look at Big Fella as he's collecting protection money from a reluctant client:




I think we all know the moral to this story: never get your hat personalized.

Nan and the Kid want to get married, but they can't on his gallery salary. She tries to talk him into joining Big Fella's gang, but he's reluctant. Then when Big Fella's main rival is killed with stepfather's gun, Nan's loyalty is put to the test. She's found guilty of withholding evidence and is sent to prison. While there, she sours on the mob and is grateful that the Kid isn't mixed up in it. But he is. He tells her the news during a prison visit, and later that night it's still rattling around in her head:


(The voiceover in Nan's head is making its first movie appearance. Nicely done, Mamoulian.)

Once Nan is released from stir, she wants to pry the Kid loose from Big Fella's clutches. But Big Fella is more interested in getting his clutches around Nan. The Kid and Big Fella have a showdown over Nan, and Big Fella decides its time to rub out the Kid. But Nan pretends to be interested in Big Fella in order to save the Kid's life. Then one of Big Fella's old girlfriends (Wynne Gibson) shoots him and frames Nan. Everybody wants to nab Nan, but the Kid takes control of the mob in this skillfully edited scene:


"City Streets" is based on a Dashiell Hammett story and adapted by Max Marcin, the man behind the "Crime Doctor" radio and film series of the 1930s and '40s. It has the narrative drive you'd expect from a Warner Bros. gangster movie with the European visual flair of a Paramount film. That style flows all the way through to the final scene -- the Kid and Nan have escaped from the mob and crank up Wagner on the car radio as the camera pans up to birds circling in the sky.

Here are full cast and credits for "City Streets."

"If I Had a Million," or A Taste of Money

In the 1932 film "If I Had a Million," a cantankerous millionaire (Richard Bennett, the real-life father of actresses Constance and Joan Bennett) decides to stiff his greedy relatives and leave a million dollars to eight people picked at random from the city directory.

It was a big year for "all-star" films. MGM released three -- "Grand Hotel," "Dinner at Eight" and "Night Flight." And Paramount's entry into the sweepstakes included a cast of studio contract players ranging from W.C. Fields to a young Gary Cooper.

The episodes range from comedy to tragedy. There's melodrama in the segment with Gene Raymond as a convict on death row who gets to endorse the check just before he gets the hot seat. There's irony in the segment with George Raft as a check forger who slowly goes crazy because he can't get anyone to believe that his check is legitimate. There's a bit of sadness in the segment with Wynne Gibson as a prostitute who uses her money to finally rent a hotel room and sleep by herself. And there's poignancy in the segment with May Robson, who uses her money to change the bleak old folks' home where she's trapped into an exclusive club for older women.

But for my money, the best segments are the comedies, directed by Ernst Lubitsch and Norman Z. McLeod.

"Plhphluuuuuuuuuuu."

Lubitsch's segment, with Charles Laughton as a clerk who quits his job by giving the big boss a well-earned raspberry, is short and sweet.

Then there's the segment with Charlie Ruggles as the put-upon clerk in a china shop. He's been reluctantly promoted from the accounting department, and he keeps breaking the merchandise, which is subtracted from his salary. At home he is henpecked by wife Mary Boland, at her Mary Boland-iest. This leads to nightmares:

                

Once Ruggles gets his million, he gleefully destroys the store. And the film's other outstanding segment also features generous destruction. W.C. Fields and Alison Skipworth play a couple who use their million to finance a crusade against road hogs (bonus -- lots of cool footage of the Southern California landscape circa 1932):

  

Finally, there's a good look at a young Gary Cooper in the segment where he, Jack Oakie and Roscoe Karns play roughneck Marines who think the check is a joke:

  


Here's a complete cast listing for "If I Had a Million."

"Platinum Blonde" and the Birth of "Cinderella Man"

Give Frank Capra credit -- once the guy found a formula, he stuck with it. Specifically -- an honorable man, pure at heart, up against powerful and/or wealthy forces out to destroy or at least ostracize him. You can apply it to almost any Capra film, from "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" to "Meet John Doe" to "It's a Wonderful Life" to "A Hole in the Head."

And this isn't meant as a criticism -- if the idea was a little familiar, Capra knew enough to work with writers who infused his scripts with lively, humorous dialogue. And Capra put the words in the mouths of some of Hollywood's best actors -- Gary Cooper, Barbara Stanwyck, James Stewart, Thomas Mitchell, Jean Arthur. And his own background as a gagman and director of comedies for folks like Harry Langdon didn't hurt, either.

Still, it is interesting to see the idea of the "Cinderella Man" and the phrase itself being introduced in Capra's 1931 film "Platinum Blonde."  Clearly it captured the public's imagination -- columnist Damon Runyon applied it to boxer James Braddock in 1935 (director Ron Howard used it as the title of his 2005 film about Braddock), and it pops up again in Capra's "Mr. Deeds Goes to Town" in 1936.

Anyway, back to "Platinum Blonde." The titular heroine of the 1931 film is Jean Harlow, who singleheadedly made the haircolor famous. She's Ann Schuyler of THE Schuylers, a high-society family whose blood is as blue as their noses. When the Schuyler son gets mixed up in a scandal with a chorus girl, Ann's path crosses that of reporter Stew Smith (Robert Williams). She takes a fancy to him and tries to sweet talk him into caving on the story. He doesn't do that -- he might be a goofoff and a drinker, but he's a dedicated newspaperman. But once the story is published, he does help her out:



A romance develops between Ann and Stew, and they get married. She almost immediately begins to try and change him, though he resists. All of this happens to the dismay of Stew's best "buddy" on the newspaper, Gallagher, played by an 18-year-old Loretta Young, already demonstrating her acting chops:



And speaking of acting chops, "Platinum Blonde" is a real showcase -- tragically, one of the only ones -- for Robert Williams. He'd done a fair amount of stage work before coming to Hollywood, including a long run in the Broadway hit "Abie's Irish Rose," but in this role he's a movie natural -- and sadly, he died of peritonitis just after this film was released. With his pipe, easy-going manner and hooded eyes, he's an early Bing Crosby. His rapport with Harlow is so obvious that they can get away with scenes like this, when she tries to make him wear garters:



Young is luminous as the girl who gets left behind, at least temporarily. And the cast includes old pros like Walter Catlett and Halliwell Hobbes. There aren't many other 1931 films that move with the style and assurance of "Platinum Blonde," made when Capra was hungry and still making a name for himself as a real-life Cinderella Man.

Here are the first few minutes of the movie: