Pre-Code vs. Post-Code: "Grand Hotel" and "Week-End at the Waldorf"

Vicki Baum's 1929 novel (and play) "Grand Hotel" was purchased by MGM, and in 1932 the studio released a film version featuring all the big shots on the lot -- Greta Garbo, John Barrymore, Joan Crawford, Lionel Barrymore and Wallace Beery, with Lewis Stone and Jean Hersholt thrown in for good measure.

Then in 1945 came "Week-End at the Waldorf," also from MGM, also based on Baum's work, featuring all the big shots on the lot -- Walter Pidgeon, Lana Turner, Van Johnson, Edward Arnold and Keenan Wynn, with Ginger Rogers (in her first film for MGM), Robert Benchley and Xavier Cugat and his orchestra thrown in for good measure.

"Grand Hotel" takes place in Berlin just before the Nazis come to power, and that setting -- along with the fact that the world seems to be closing in on several of the characters -- gives the film an air of melancholy. In typical pre-code fashion, there are several adult relationships and a cynicism that, by contrast, is almost totally missing from "Week-End at the Waldorf." World War II informs the latter film, which is understandable because it was happening at the time, but everything is covered with that slick, impenetrable MGM sheen. While "Grand Hotel" ends with a sense of disquiet, there's never really any doubt that everyone and everything in "Week-End" exists solely to steer the film toward a multitude of happy endings.

To see how vivid the contrast can be, consider the character who acts as a kind of philosophical narrator in each film -- in "Grand Hotel" it is the doctor (Stone, seen at left), whose face was horribly disfigured by a grenade during World War I. The good doctor is morose, to say the least. He haunts the lobby and is given one of the film's most famous lines: "Grand Hotel. People coming, people going. Nothing ever happens." But he's also given lines that hint at his loneliness and emotional desolation, like "A man who is not with a woman -- is a dead man."

In "Week-End at the Waldorf," on the other hand, our narrator is Randy Morton, played by Benchley. He's a superficial, silly-ass Broadway columnist who spends the whole movie worrying when his precious pooch is going to pop out pups.

Most of the characters of "Grand Hotel" are as alienated as the doctor -- Garbo plays prima ballerina Grusinskaya, whose physical and emotional exhaustion is affecting her work and draining her of life. The Baron (John Barrymore) is all hat and no cattle -- a gentleman with an empty title who resorts to petty theft to keep up appearances. The unfortunately-named Flem (Crawford) is a plucky stenographer who isn't above selling herself to get ahead. Preysing (Beery) is a bullying, hypocritical industrialist trying to set up a shady merger to save his Teutonic tush. Kringelein (Lionel Barrymore) is a lowly clerk in one of Preysing's factories, visiting the hotel for a last fling before being felled by a terminal illness. And Senf the head porter (Hersholt) is anxious because his wife is having a difficult labor offscreen.

But the real tragedy at the heart of "Grand Hotel" lies in the doomed romance between the Baron and the ballerina. They've seen each other around the hotel -- everyone has seen the Baron -- but they've never spoken.

One night, while she is performing, he slips into her vacant room to lift a string of pearls. She enters unexpectedly and he starts a slick line of patter that soon turns sincere. They Hit It Off.

In "Week-End at the Waldorf," the ballerina has been turned into unhappy actress Irene Malvern (Rogers) and the Baron has become war correspondent Chip Collyer (Pidgeon). In one of the best touches in Bella and Sam Spewack's script, their romance parallels that of Garbo and Barrymore, but with a much lighter tone -- and with lines of dialogue that even reference "Grand Hotel," not to mention a couple other MGM movies.

Chip to Irene: "I'm the Baron, you're the ballerina and we're off to see the wizard!"

Irene to Chip: "Goodbye, Mr. Chip -- Collyer."

Ginger Rogers is starting to do that raised eyebrow thing that
would become much more common in her later movies.

Irene isn't nearly as depressed as the ballerina, and Chip is no thief, although he's mistaken for one at first. The give-and-take between the two characters is geared more to romantic comedy than high drama, but so what? Rogers is great at romantic comedy and Pidgeon more than meets her halfway. When they end up having to pretend to be married, we just go along for the ride.

In "Grand Hotel," the ballerina and the Baron spend the night together, and he tells her his simple and cynical story.

Baron: "When I was a little boy I was taught to ride and be a gentleman. Then at school, to pray and lie. And then in the war, to kill and hide. That's all."

That is not a speech you would hear in a movie released in 1945.

The Baron and ballerina share a room -- hell, they share a bed. Hell, they may even have shared more than that!

In "Week-End at the Waldorf," Chip spends the night in Irene's suite because the house dicks think he's a thief and he has to hide out. But you can bet your bottom dollar that they stay in separate rooms, mister! They even make a big deal out of piling furniture against both sides of the door. We get it, 1940s people!  

In other remake news, Lana Turner takes Crawford's role as the stenographer and Lionel Barrymore's character is played by -- Van Johnson? Yep. Turner is Bunny -- that's her name -- and Johnson is Hollis, an Air Force Captain who will soon undergo a dicey operation to remove a piece of shrapnel that's dangerously near his heart (!). Bunny dreams of a nice place on Park Avenue, while Hollis just wants to get well and go home to small-town California. Oh -- and he also is carrying a song, written by a dead war buddy, that he wants Xavier Cugat's orchestra to play. You can pretty much guess what happens there.

Bunny, meanwhile, is torn between Hollis and the shiny things dangled in front of her by Edley (Arnold), an unscrupulous entrepreneur. And Wynn is a cub reporter snooping on Edley's shady doings.

Nice interacting there. Baron.

In the 1932 film, the plot threads are much more intermingled than in the 1945 film. The Baron, in fact, pretty much interacts with every character in the movie, and he is the real heart of "Grand Hotel." His death at the end of the film is genuinely affecting, devastating the ballerina, who loved him, and Kringelein, the odd duck whom the Baron befriended while everyone else dismissed him. The last indication of the Baron is his beloved dachshund, left behind to be cared for by the staff.

There's also a dog in "Week-End at the Waldorf," as we mentioned, but it's just a symbol of silly rich people. That's just one of the many reasons why "Grand Hotel" seems to have more of a heart -- even if it's a sad heart -- than its remake, which is entertaining enough, even if it has a whole lot less on its mind.

My Romantic Comedy Blogathon Entry: "Monkey Business," or My Chemical Romance

This is part of the Romantic Comedy Blogathon co-sponsored by Backlots and Carole & Co. Visit them for more entries!

Cary Grant enters the 1952 film "Monkey Business" bespectacled and befuddled -- so much so that he is given verbal direction by Howard Hawks:

Hepburn ...

... Rogers.

Seeing Grant like this brings to mind "Bringing Up Baby" -- also directed by Howard Hawks, also featuring Grant in glasses as an absentminded man of science, also featuring a female lead (Katharine Hepburn in "Baby," Ginger Rogers in "Business") wearing a dress without any back to it.

So can I help it if I like "Monkey Business" more than "Bringing Up Baby"? To me, it's a more consistently funny, if sometimes too silly, movie -- on the other hand, to me the charms of "Bringing Up Baby" have always been intermittent.

"Monkey Business" also has a quality that I value more as I grow older -- perspective. The married couple at the center of this romantic comedy, Barnaby (Grant) and Edwina (Ginger Rogers), have been together for a while, but are still very much in love. They tolerate each other's imperfect qualities with an easy affection and can look back fondly on a past when they were more physically romantic with each other. Considering their numerous real-life marriages, Grant and Rogers play a contented, committed couple very convincingly.

Miss Laurel displays the new stockings that Barnaby
helped invent. He's very interested in her acetates.

Barnaby is preoccupied because he's a chemist working on a new formula that won't come together -- a kind of youth elixir that will be marketed as B-4, with a phoenix rising from the ashes as its logo (in today's market it would be a smiling guy giving a woman a footlong hot dog). Barnaby's elderly boss, Mr. Oxley (Charles Coburn), is particularly interested in perfecting the formula for many reasons, not the least of which is his secretary, Miss Laurel (Marilyn Monroe). As Oxley explains to Barnaby, "Anybody can type."

Back in the lab, Barnaby still isn't having any luck with B-4, and to make matters worse, the test monkeys keep escaping from their cages. While the janitor is changing the bottle on the water cooler, one chimp mixes his own formula by dumping chemicals into the cooler reservoir. Going against scientific protocol, Barnaby tries his formula and then washes it down with some H2O from the cooler. Then he tries it out.

(To be able to turn cartwheels in your late 40s? Well played, Cary Grant.)

Barnaby thinks his own formula has worked, but we know the truth -- hey, the movie isn't called "Barnaby Business." Barnaby's dose of the simian solution is enough to revert him to the showoffy teenage stage, and he hooks up for a day of fun with Miss Laurel that includes driving a new MG and going swimming:

Next to try the formula is Edwina, whose energy level goes through the roof and who dances the evening away with an exhausted Barnaby:

Edwina has taken Barnaby to their honeymoon hotel. There she reverts to her wedding day, which means she locks herself in the bathroom crying and Barnaby falls down a laundry chute. It's totally nonsensical, and it brings to mind this exchange from "Bringing Up Baby," just after Grant slips on an olive dropped by Hepburn and crushes his hat.

Hepburn: Well, Joe here was just showing me a trick, and the olive got away. 

Grant: First you drop an olive and then I sit on my hat. It all fits perfectly.

Finally, both Edwina and Barnaby unknowingly take larger doses of the mixture and revert to childhood. Child Barnaby smears his face with war paint and recruits the neighborhood kids in his plan of revenge against a romantic rival (Hugh Marlowe) for Edwina, and Hawks favorite George "Foghorn" Winslow adds spice:

Oh -- and Barnaby and Edwina get into a Laurel and Hardy-style paint fight:

Meanwhile, back at the lab, Oxley is convinced that Barnaby's formula is successful, and an effort is made to buy him out:

Soon enough, the origin of the formula is discovered, the chimps are put back into their cages, and Edwina and Barnaby emerge older and wiser. We end where we begin -- with the Fultons going out for the evening:

Barnaby: You're old only when you forget you're young. ... It's a word you keep in your heart, a light you have in your eyes, someone you hold in your arms.

Edwina: My, I'm glad I'm going out with you tonight.

As much as I love "Monkey Business," it disconcerts me to read about what Howard Hawks thought of it. Apparently only Grant's character drank the formula in the original script, but when Rogers saw that she was missing the fun, she wanted the script changed so that Edwina drank the formula as well. To Hawks, Rogers's desire messed up the picture.

I couldn't disagree more -- I'm not always a fan of Rogers's late-career performances, but her comic work in "Monkey Business" ranks right up there with her work in "The Major and the Minor" or "Bachelor Mother." That accomplishment is all the more impressive when you consider that Hawks reportedly badgered her on the set and let her know she wasn't his first choice for the role. For a guy who had a hand in creating some memorable feminist characters, Hawks definitely had his piggish, crotchety side -- maybe he could have used a dose of B-4.

"Chance at Heaven," or Miss Rogers' Neighborhood

The year 1933 was a good one for Ginger Rogers. She starred in two huge musical hits, "Gold Diggers of 1933" and "Flying Down to Rio," and at the same time came into her own as a dramatic actress with vehicles like "Chance at Heaven." 

"Chance at Heaven" is a pleasant but minor movie, and Rogers is its heart and soul. She plays Margie, called "Mug" by her longtime boyfriend, Blackie (Joel McCrea). They've grown up together in a small Massachusetts coastal town (actually the San Fernando Valley masquerading as Massachusetts) and Mug has been waiting patiently for Blackie to propose. In the meantime, she meets him at his charming little bungalow after work and cooks his favorite chicken pot pie, and then goes home to her parents.

Blackie loves Mug, but he's wrapped up in running a thriving little filling station ($1.85 would fill you up in those days) and marriage is not a high priority.

Then one day, rich Glory (Marian Nixon) arrives on the scene and works her way into Blackie's heart while slamming her Packard into his service station, and that is not a euphemism:



Glory is engaged to Sid (George Meeker), a whiny rich guy with bad posture. She goes for Blackie because he's everything Sid isn't -- tall, strong, handsome, hardworking, decent. The couples meet at a nightclub, and when she's alone with Glory, Margie starts to realize she has some competition:



Then Glory pays a visit to Blackie's gas station, and they steal a kiss just before Margie enters and realizes that the jig, she is up:  



One night Glory invites Blackie to a party at the family mansion, and as they sit outside Glory sees the lights of an amusement park in the distance. Blackie explains that it's a place called Pleasure Park, where all the regular folks go. Glory tells him she wants to go to Pleasure Park, too. Every night, if you get me.

Then, before you can say "pre-nup," Glory and Blackie have eloped. They move into Blackie's house, followed by newspaper photographers who want to see who the heiress eloped with. Then comes Glory's snobbish mother, who disapproves of the match. Finally, there is Margie, who still wants to be friends with Blackie -- and Glory, who's feeling a little out of her element.

Margie and Glory become such good friends, in fact, that when Glory learns she is pregnant, she tells Margie before she tells Blackie. And since this is 1933, they celebrate by drinking gin -- pregnancy, schmegnancy.

Blackie is thrilled, and Margie is resigned. Once the news is out, Glory's mother insists that her daughter join her in New York City for the pregnancy. After a few months, Blackie insists that Glory come home, but she isn't coming back. He rushes to New York to get the news -- Glory is ready to move on with her life and wants a divorce. The regular life is not for her. And what about the baby, Blackie asks. Glory's mother looks at him stonily: "The doctor was mistaken." Hmm -- interesting pre-code allusion to abortion there.

Blackie is crushed, and returns home. You can guess who's waiting for him with a smile on her face and chicken pot pie in the oven.

"Chance at Heaven" is an interesting glimpse at Rogers in a warmer, more domestic role; she gives the movie its emotional core. She's so winning, in fact, that you can't really figure out why Blackie goes for Glory -- compared to Margie she's silly, superficial and not as attractive. On the other hand, if he didn't go for her, there wouldn't have been a movie.

Here are the complete credits for "Chance at Heaven."

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:

"Flying Down to Rio" and the Power of Intimate Dance

Fred Astaire made his film debut in 1933's "Dancing Lady" as a dancer named, um, Fred Astaire. Preceding that film there had been a screen test where the evaluator wrote these infamous words: "Can't act. Slightly bald. Can dance a little."

In his second film, 1933's "Flying Down to Rio," Astaire has worked his way up to a fictional last name -- he's Fred Ayres, musician and best friend to dashing bandleader Roger Bond (Gene Raymond). The dominant storyline of the movie is a romance between Roger and the fair Belinha (Dolores Del Rio), even though she has been promised in wedlock to Roger's best friend (Raul Roulien).

But in film and dance history, of course, the importance of "Flying Down to Rio" has very little to do with that plot -- it has to do with the pairing of Astaire and Ginger Rogers as a sensual, elegant, in-sync dance team.

By the time she appeared in "Flying Down to Rio," Rogers had already appeared in two huge musical hits for Warner Bros. -- "42nd Street" and "Gold Diggers of 1933" -- that contained elaborate production numbers choreographed by Busby Berkeley. But she really hadn't been a featured dancer in either film -- in fact, in "42nd Street" her character is chosen to replace the tempramental star (Bebe Daniels), but Rogers steps aside to give the role to the endearing, leadfooted Ruby Keeler in a star-making turn.

So even though Rogers was the better known of the Astaire-Rogers pair, she really hadn't had a chance to show her dancing chops onscreen.

Here Rogers is the band's singer, Honey Hale, and she and Astaire aren't romantic partners, at least not overtly -- they just like to dance together, and "The Carioca" is the first opportunity they get to strut their stuff:



And in one other scene, Astaire does some freestyle stuff, and the actors look like they actually are enjoying it, not just pretending:



Astaire comes to this movie fully formed -- of course, he had been a star on Broadway, so his dancing style was established. And his distinctive style of dress is already evident -- button-down collar, tie tucked into his pants, contrasting belt, two-toned shoes to make sure we're looking where we're supposed to be looking.

The finale of the film is the fabled "girls on biplanes" number, and even though it's clearly shot in the studio, it still has the ability to make your palms clammy:

   

The big finish is a nod to the tremendously successful Warner musicals, but what makes "Flying Down to Rio" unique is that it -- and other Astaire-Rogers musicals -- is an anti-Warner's musical. The power comes not from spectacle but from a couple, dancing with and playing off of each other. That's what makes their performances together timeless.

Here are the full film credits, and here's the trailer:

"Gold Diggers of 1933," or Er-way in-hay the Unny-may

"Spare change, mister?"

Everyone on stage for the neon violin number!

Any movie that starts with Ginger Rogers singing "We're in the Money" in pig latin -- surrounded by chorus girls dressed in giant coins and little else -- is automatically a classic, but "Gold Diggers of 1933" is just getting started. Before it's all over, we'll also see the "Pettin' in the Park" number, which involves women stepping out of their step-ins and putting on tin suits, another number where chorus girls play neon violins and, finally, arguably the movies' first protest song, "Remember My Forgotten Man."


The man behind all this pre-code craziness was Busby Berkeley, who used his ribald imagination and startling camera angles to singlehandedly revive the movie musical, which had by 1932 fallen out of favor due to stilted staging and stodgy performances.

First came 1932's "42nd Street," where Berkeley choreographed a title number that included allusions to prostitution, lesbianism, rape and murder -- all acted out to the lyrics of a swell song! "42nd Street" was knowing, cynical, down and dirty, brazenly adult, and a huge hit. It even made a star out of the wan, winsome Ruby Keeler, despite her lack of acting skill and her leaden tap dancing.

The success of that film led to "Gold Diggers of 1933" and a series of wisecracking Warner Brothers urban musicals that flourished until the Production Code cracked down on naughtiness in the mid-1930s. Berkeley's sequences weren't just musical numbers -- they were little encapsulated plays, with the kind of massive spectacle that, in real life, would never fit on the stages where they're presented.

Like "42nd Street," "Gold Diggers of 1933" deals with the drama that occurs backstage at a Broadway show. This time around, the good-hearted showgirls are Keeler, Joan Blondell and Aline MacMahon. They're dealing with the depression with good humor and mock-toughness -- exactly the way the audience members imagined themselves dealing with it.

When Keller falls for Dick Powell, a songwriter who is actually a rich guy in disguise, Blondell and MacMahon try to outwit Powell's stuffy brother (Warren William) and his sidekick (Guy Kibbee), who don't want Powell in show business. They act like golddiggers, but their hearts are in the right place, and all ends happily -- even as the final number, "Remember My Forgotten Man," turns World War I soldiers into men waiting in a breadline. Here's the song, 1930s Warner Brothers style encapsulated:

But for sheer Berkeley craziness, you can't beat "Pettin' in the Park," which features, in no particular order, an on-stage rainstorm, rollerskates, women undressing, tin suits, and lecherous midgets posing as babies:


Berkeley's fame didn't last long -- he became a victim of his own success, and couldn't keep producing musical numbers with the same imagination and verve. But for a few years, until the Production Code tamped down on risque stuff in 1934, he was hot stuff, and his visions were the gold standard for naughtiness until censorship standards began crumbling in the late 1950s.