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:

"From Headquarters" and Even More Warner Regulars

Like "Life Begins" and "Union Depot," the 1933 film "From Headquarters" is another slice-of-life panorama brought to you by Warner Bros. and filled with studio contract players.

The nominal hero of the movie is Warner stalwart George Brent, as a detective investigating the murder of a wealthy, decadent ne'er do well. The suspects include his old flame (Margaret Lindsay). But the real meat of the story lies in all the goings-on at a big city police station. The movie opens with a paddy wagon bringing in some "small fish," including one joker who, in a nicely played little seriocomic moment, ends up realizing that the joke's on him:


The contract players in "From Headquarters" include Hugh "Woo Woo" Herbert as a bail bondsman, Henry O'Neill as a chief inspector, Ken Murray as a wisecracking reporter and Eugene Pallette as a gravel-voiced (What else?) detective.

Then there is Edward Ellis as the murder-loving head of the crime lab. He demonstrates the scientific methods used to catch the culprit and has a few unorthodox moves of his own:




The bad guy is played by one of my favorite Warner contractees, Robert Barrat.

The versatile Barrat was all over the Warner lot in the early 1930s -- within a span of just a few months he played a gruff Communist-turned-capitalist in "Heroes for Sale," Barbara Stanwyck's drunk father in "Baby Face," Jimmy Cagney's editor in "Picture Snatcher" and patrician murder victim Archer Coe in "The Kennel Murder Case."

The only person who can place Barrat at the murder scene is a snitch played by Hobart Cavanaugh, and Barrat takes care of him in a broom closet: 


Wait a minute -- "those fingerprints look familiar"? And they are so familiar that I can reach into this file of thousands of fingerprints and instantly pick who they belong to? Really, "From Headquarters"?

Anyway, Barrat tries to leave the police station after the murder, but the cops are a step ahead of him and they lock the doors. Barrat disposes of his murder weapon, a knife, by dropping it in a spittoon, but a sharp-eyed cop spots him and -- ugh -- digs it out. Case closed, old flame cleared, romance on again, players move on to next assignment.

Here are the full credits, and here's the "From Headquarters" trailer:

"Baby Face," or The Pubic Enemy

Saint Louis woman with her diamond rings 
Pulls that man around by her apron strings.
'Twant for powder and for store-bought hair, 
The man I love would not gone nowhere, nowhere.

The 1933 film "Baby Face" opens to the strains of "St. Louis Blues," and the song keeps popping up on the soundtrack as it chronicles the rise of Lily Powers (Barbara Stanwyck), who leaves a squalid Pennsylvania steel town and uses her womanly charms to seduce and abandon a series of men at the giant bank where she works, moving up the executive ladder with each conquest.

Lily Powers uses sex like Tom Powers (James Cagney) uses violence in "The Public Enemy," and "St. Louis Blues" follows her around the way "I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles" follows Cagney in that film, from his days as the neighborhood bully to his rise as a gangster, until he ends up perched in the family doorway at the end of the movie, murdered by a rival gang and trussed up like a badly-wrapped mummy.

We first see Lily in her hometown, working for her father (Robert Barrat), who runs a speakeasy for the steel workers:



Her father isn't above selling his daughter in exchange for "protection" from the local hoods, but fortunately he meets a suitable end when he's killed in a still explosion. After his funeral, Lily visits one of her few friends, Cragg (Alphonse Ethier), who introduces her to Nietzsche and has a few words of wisdom for her:



Lily decides to follow Cragg's advice to use men to get da tings you vant, and she and her friend Chico (Theresa Harris) hop a freight out of town: 




By the way, the brakeman Lily seduces in that scene is James Murray, the star of King Vidor's legendary "The Crowd." He was playing bit roles at this point in his career, including a role as a blind World War I veteran in "Heroes for Sale."

In New York City, Lily gets a job at the bank, where she has the darndest way of moving up, even though it means she spurns suitors like a young John Wayne:



Lily keeps taking care of business, if you know what I mean and I think you do, until a relationship with one executive (Donald Woods, who played Cagney's brother in "The Public Enemy") ends in a murder-suicide.  To avoid scandal, and to prevent Lily from selling her story to the newspapers, she is transferred by the new bank president (George Brent) to the Paris office. And darned if he doesn't end up in Paris a few months later to visit the bank, and a romance develops. What Lily sees as just another business transaction turns into much more because of that old debbil, love. But her feelings are put to the test when her wealthy man gets into a legal scrape and suddenly needs her financial help. Will she let loose of her ill-gotten gains, or will she look for another ladder to climb?

"Baby Face" is arguably the ultimate pre-code movie. It has everything -- prostitution, infidelity, spicy dialogue and punchy performances. And if you don't agree, then you tell Stanwyck. I'm scared of her.

Here's the full cast listing from "Baby Face," and a preview: