The 1932 film "A Successful Calamity" begins with the hero being congratulated by the President, and even though it's only Herbert Hoover, we are still supposed to be impressed.
The fellow being congratulated is Henry Wilton, international man of banking, played by, as the credits list him, Mr. George Arliss. In the early 1930s, stage legend Arliss became the "prestige" star at Warner Bros., where he had his own production unit. He formed a close relationship with Darryl Zanuck, and when Zanuck left Warner in 1933 to form Twentieth Century Pictures, Arliss went with him.
Arliss was best known for dramatic roles. He played British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli on stage and in two films -- for his performance in the 1929 sound version he won an Academy Award.
"A Successful Calamity," on the other hand, is a domestic comedy, and Arliss brings a puckish sense of humor to his performance. Some of his deadpan comic takes are downright Charles Butterworth-y.
As we begin, Wilton is returning to his Long Island estate after a year overseas representing Uncle Sam, negotiating payment of foreign debts. He is coming home to his much younger wife (Mary Astor), two grown children (Evalyn Knapp and William Janney) and a life of dinner parties, tea time and musicales.
Wilton is excited to see his family, but he couldn't care less about the other stuff. They, on the other hand, are major dervishes in the social whirl, and Wilton feels left behind, with only the company of loyal manservant Connors (Grant Mitchell).
Wilton's wife has made many changes to the family manse, including redecorating his bedroom in a modern style that doesn't suit him, to say the least:
Connors has saved the old furniture from Wilton's bedroom and has had it placed in his own room, which is where Wilton finds refuge. He doesn't care for tea times or musicales, but he loves his wife -- they've been married only six years -- and he indulges her love of "culture" and her sponsorship of artistic types, including composer-pianist Pietro (Fortunio Bonanova, nine years before he will become Susan Alexander Kane's voice teacher in "Citizen Kane"). In this scene, Wilton withstands Pietro's recital while flanked by talkative matrons:
Night after night of dinner parties and small talk begins to wear on Wilton. He wants to spend some time with his wife and children, so he gets an idea -- he tells the family he's broke.
"I don't know," says his wife, "whether I can bear to be poor."
But wife and children gather around Wilton while keeping stiff upper lips. Son goes to Wilton's business rival to ask for a job, and lets it slip that things are bad. Daughter goes to accept the marriage proposal of her priggish ex-fiance (Hardie Albright), but ex-fiance changes his tune when he finds the Wiltons are without means:
The wife, meanwhile, leaves with her protege and she's carrying a suitcase. Are they running away together?
The movie doesn't get too worked up about this or any other question. Daughter is spared from marrying a prig and ends up with Randolph Scott, who appears for about 90 seconds. Son's confession to Wilton's business rival triggers a series of events that ends in Wilton spiriting a block of stock away from said rival and making a zillion bucks.
"A Successful Calamity" is what used to be known as a star vehicle, showcasing Mr. Arliss in a dignified, slightly stuffy way. Very little is required of him -- mostly he looks bemused while his family grapples with the possibility of poverty. And watching him act that way is fun -- not a lot of fun, but fun.
"The Bishop Murder Case" and "The Kennel Murder Case" take place next door to each other.
Well, close, anyway.
They're both set in mansions in New York City, and they both feature murders solved by Philo Vance, S.S. Van Dine's smooth Shamus who isn't even slightly embarrassed about his first name. (In Van Dine's later book "The Gracie Allen Murder Case," the comic actress keeps calling him "Fido.")
And truthfully, there's hardly a dime's worth of difference between the performances of Basil Rathbone, who plays Vance in "Bishop," and William Powell, who played Vance in "Kennel," among others.
But there's a big difference between the two films -- even though they were made only three years apart, huge advances in film acting, storytelling and technical ability are clearly evident.
"The Bishop Murder Case," released in 1930, is an early talkie. And to get an idea of the film's slow pace, creaky performances and technical timidity, take a look at the opening sequence:
It isn't totally the fault of director Nick Grinde that the movie looks more like a filmed play -- there were limitations on the camera based largely on the new process of sound recording. And it shows.
But the movie is plagued by another problem that can't be blamed on the camera -- aside from Rathbone and Roland Young, who plays a suspect, the rest of the cast doesn't just chew the scenery -- they cram it down their throats while smacking their lips and belching. (Figuratively speaking, of course.) This movie is filled with supporting characters who widen their eyes ultra-theatrically while enunciating their dialogue as if they learned it phonetically. Calm down, people!
The idea is that folks keep getting murdered in the style of nursery rhymes -- a man named Robin is shot with an arrow, just like Cock Robin. A hunchback falls off a wall, just like Humpty Dumpty. And the murders center around elderly professor Dillard (pronounced Dull-AHRD) and his niece Belle (Leila Hyams). Another murder occurs in Central Park, where Belle has been summoned by her fiancee, played by Young, and it's staged in an agreeably creepy way:
The man's name is Jack, and he falls down (well, he was pushed) and breaks his crown.
Vance is on the case, and as always, his frenemy is Det. Sgt. Heath, here played by James Donlan. Heath's job is to consistently reach the wrong, but most obvious, conclusions about murders and suspects, and he makes fun of Vance's theories. In this nice scene, Vance shows Heath just how sound his theories are:
As stilted as "The Bishop Murder Case" can be, that's how slick "The Kennel Murder Case" is. Under the direction of Michael Curtiz, the story unfolds with speed and confidence, and backing up Powell is an expert group including Mary Astor,Eugene Pallette (as Det. Sgt. Heath), Ralph Morgan, Robert Barrat, Jack LaRue and Helen Vinson. Unlike most of the cast in "The Bishop Murder Case," these people knew how to modulate their performances for the movie camera.
The murder story here nominally involves dogs -- it begins at the Long Island Kennel Club, where Vance is showing his scotch terrier in competition against arrogant rich guy Archer Coe (Barrat). Also on hand is Coe's niece Hilda (Astor), who hates hates hates her uncle, and her beau, Sir Thomas MacDonald (Paul Cavanagh).
Sir Thomas's terrier turns up dead (not a euphemism), and suspicion centers on Coe, but it isn't long before he himself is found dead in his locked bedroom. Vance is just about to sail for Europe, but when he hears of the murder he calls the district attorney. Splitscreen powers activate!
The temptation is too great, and Vance jumps ship to solve the mystery.
Meanwhile, back at the Coe mansion, assumptions are being jumped to. Suicide, says the ever-reliable Heath, but Vance proves it isn't. He figures out that Coe was murdered, and the killer used an ingenious little pulley system to lock the door behind him:
Vance's next job is to narrow down the suspects from the list of approximately eight million people who hated Coe's guts. And when Sir Thomas ends up being hurt in an attack that no one actually witnessed, suspicion falls on him:
"The Kennel Murder Case" includes several flashback sequences, which were unheard of in 1930, and a fair amount of humor, mostly involving Etienne Giradot as a fussy coroner who keeps getting his meals interrupted by the number of dead people who turn up at Coe's house. Powell isn't quite as droll here as he would be as Nick Charles in the next year's "The Thin Man," but he's just as sharp and dapper.
Here are the credits for "The Bishop Murder Case," and a trailer:
Here are the credits for "The Kennel Murder Case," and a trailer:
If you're looking for differences between the 1931 and 1941 versions of "The Maltese Falcon," you can start with the hero's hands.
The hero, of course, is private dick Sam Spade, as played in the 1931 version by Ricardo Cortez and in the 1941 version by Humphrey Bogart.
Cortez has perfectly manicured nails, and in one scene he even files them. Bogart, on the other hand, keeps his hands busy by rolling his own cigarettes. We never see Bogart's nails, but it's a pretty good bet they'd be stained with nicotine, and he wouldn't be particularly concerned about it.
Their appearances fit their portrayals. Cortez plays Spade as a cock-of-the-walk -- a fun-loving, unabashed ladies man with a plush apartment and well-tailored suits. Bogart's Spade has rougher edges and a quiet assurance -- his wardrobe and his digs aren't as opulent. He doesn't feel the need to be as showy.
There are other differences between the two films, of course, as you'd expect when comparing a pre-code movie with a post-code movie. The 1931 version of Dashiell Hammett's novel is filled with attractive women and driven by sex; by 1941, sex was being kept on the down low. Violence, on the other hand, was much more acceptable, and the later version of the film has more fighting and gun play.
The story begins at the San Francisco office of Spade and Archer, private eyes. Here's how we first see Spade in the 1931 version:
No sooner does he get rid of one conquest than he starts flirting with gal Friday Effie (Una Merkel). Then comes a call from Iva Archer (Thelma Todd), the wife of Spade's partner. Spade and Iva do a little canoodling over the phone, and Spade doesn't know it, but Archer (Walter Long) is eavesdropping. The 1941 version opens with Spade in his office, alone, with no phone conversation. Enter a client (Bebe Daniels as Ruth in the 1931 version and Mary Astor as Brigid in the 1941 version), who says she wants her sister followed that night. Archer enters. When Brigid/Ruth flashes her gams and a wad of cash, Archer volunteers for the job. And he gets plugged -- it happens off screen in the 1931 version, but in the 1941 version we see Archer get it right in the gut.
Miles Archer's death leads to a funny little moment in the 1941 version -- as Bogart looks over the crime scene we see a movie poster on the wall behind him. It's for a 1937 film called "Swing Your Lady," a hillbilly musical that Bogart was forced to appear in as a Warner Bros. contractee and supposedly hated. Makes you wonder if director John Huston put it there as a joke or if it's an allusion to a murderess being hung.
In addition to Archer's death, the man Archer was supposed to follow is found shot. The cops start quizzing Spade. Cortez taunts the officers and laughs at his own witticisms. Bogart, on the other hand, delivers Sam's wisecracks with a straight face, and they're funnier that way. For instance, when Sam becomes a suspect, he jousts with the police. "How'd I shoot him?" he asks them. "I forget." Bogart says this as a throwaway line, while Cortez makes it too obvious -- he builds it up like the punch line of a joke. Bogart does much more with less -- when the cops start pressing him, he stops it with a hand on one cop's shoulder and a simple line -- "Don't crowd me, Tom."
Then comes a scene between Spade and Brigid/Ruth. The client's not telling the whole truth to Sam, and he knows it, so he has a little fun with her, in what I like to call the "you're good" scene. Here are the two versions -- judge for yourself which one plays more effectively:
Brigid/Ruth, of course, is wrapped up in the pursuit of a priceless jeweled statue of a falcon that dates to the 1500s. And there are others after the falcon as well -- seedy adventurer Joel Cairo (Otto Matieson in the 1931 version, and Peter Lorre in the 1941 version) and fat man Caspar Gutman (Dudley Digges in the 1931 version and Sydney Greenstreet in the 1941 version).
As you can see by the stills, there's no contest about which duo looks more threatening -- and more visually memorable. In terms of casting, first-time director Huston knocks the ball out of the park in the 1941 version. After years of playing two-bit bad guys, Bogart is entering his hero-matinee idol phase here. Astor is a perfect picture of prim sexuality. Lorre is appropriately creepy, and Greenstreet -- making his film debut -- is a memorable, charming villain.
Spade ends up in fights with Lorre's character and with Elisha Cook, Jr. as Gutman's gunsel Wilmer Cook. When Spade overpowers Lorre, who's come to search his office, Bogart sports a nasty smile while he's rabbit punching the guy. Here's a comparison of the Spade-Cairo fights in both films:
Later in the 1941 film, Spade overpowers Wilmer by pulling his overcoat down off his shoulders, and Wilmer gets back at Spade by kicking him when he's down
-- after he's been drugged by Gutman. In the 1931 version, there's no kicking -- Wilmer just watches as Spade passes out.
Finally, everyone ends up at Spade's apartment, waiting for the delivery of the black bird. Brigid/Ruth is holding an envelope with ten thousand-dollar bills for payment, which Spade gives back to Gutman. Gutman counts the money and one bill is missing. In the 1931 version, Spade confronts Ruth in his kitchen and has her strip to prove she hasn't got the missing bill. In the 1941 version, the incident is a symbol of a rare moment of trust between Spade and Brigid -- she tells him she doesn't have it, and he believes her. Gutman admits pocketing the bill.
Once the bird is delivered and determined to be a fake, Gutman and Cairo resume their search. Spade puts the cops on their trail, but he also has to deal with the fact that the woman he loves has killed his partner. In the 1931 version, the confrontation is filmed as the same leisurely pace as the rest of the film, and in the same wide shots. Huston, on the other hand, knows that this is the emotional heart of the picture and films it in tight, intense closeups:
The 1931 version ends with a sympathetic Sam visiting Ruth in jail with "good news" -- he's been made chief investigator of the District Attorney's office. Huh?
The 1941 version, on the other hand, builds to an unforgettable climax -- Sam describing the bird as "the stuff that dreams are made of" and Brigid behind the bars of an elevator door, foreshadowing the bars she'll soon be behind, with a possible death sentence. Swing your lady, indeed.
The 1932 film "Red Dust" is ironically titled -- dust has very little to do with what happens in the movie. Moisture, however, plays a starring role -- moisture in the form of sweat, rain, steam and humidity, with a very special appearance by Jean Harlow's bathwater.
Set on a rubber plantation in Indochina, with the nearest large city being Saigon (they pronounced it "say-gone" in those days), "Red Dust" deals with Denny (Clark Gable), a rough-and-tumble plantation boss who's torn between two women -- earthy goodtime girl Vantine (Jean Harlow) and icy yet smouldering Babs (Mary Astor). The three of them face one crisis after another -- windstorms! Rainstorms! Tigers! Fever! The Chinese cook's bad teeth!
Vantine appears first -- we see her in bed, where she has gone to sleep and hide from a drunken worker (Donald Crisp), and she's illuminated by Denny's flashlight. This happens on a steamy night when Denny just happens to be in a bad mood -- he's on one of his periodic rants to the wizened McQuarg (Tully Marshall) about how he'd love to leave the whole grueling business: "Swallowing dust one month, wading in mud the next -- just so some old woman can take a hot water bottle to bed with her."
Vantine has taken the boat (On water!) to the plantation to hide out from the authorities. She doesn't say why she's in trouble, but from her appearance and filmy wardrobe we can guess.
Vantine: What else do you do around here besides work? Know any games?
McQuarg: If it was the summer of 1894, I'd play games with you, sister.
Then she tries to strike up a conversation with Denny:
In a nice touch that Howard Hawks would steal -- er, adopt -- in "To Have and Have Not," Denny and Vantine make up different names for each other. She calls him Fred, and he calls her Lily. And they end up playing other games together, if you know what I mean, and I think you do.
Both Harlow and Gable are surprisingly assured in their roles -- even more so for Harlow. Her star was still on the rise and it was during the making of this film that her husband, MGM executive Paul Bern, committed suicide. But Harlow gets all the film's best lines and knocks them out of the park -- for instance, while cleaning a bird cage, she
asks the occupant, "Whaddya been eating? Cement?"
Fast forward a few weeks, and Vantine is ready to board the boat back to civilization. Arriving on that very same boat is Willis, the plantation's new surveyor (Gene Raymond), and his wife, Babs.
You can tell that the Willises aren't quite prepared for the rugged conditions they find -- they've packed tennis rackets, and when she sees the plantation headquarters, Babs asks where the main house is. On top of everything else, Willis has a tropical fever and he spends the next week or so sweating like crazy. Denny nurses Willis through his fever, and earns the gratitude of Babs. He likes that -- he likes her. Meanwhile, Vantine's back -- the boat has had mechanical trouble.
So there's a full house, and once Willis has recovered, Denny sends him on several long-distance missions so that he can make a play for Babs. He takes her on a tour of the plantation, and they get caught in a downpour, which has a way of breaking down, um, formalities:
Vantine can't figure out why Denny goes for a cool customer like Babs. But she just goes her own merry way while she's waiting for the boat to be repaired. This includes using the camp water supply as a bathtub, with Denny as a flustered observer -- not flustered for his sake, but for Babs's sake, for God's sake:
(By the way -- when Harlow basically played herself in the great 1933 Hollywood satire "Bombshell," there's a scene when her character, Lola Burns, has to do "Red Dust" retakes in the bath barrel.)
Despite Denny's infatuation, it's pretty clear that Babs isn't right for him. Unlike Vantine, she calls him "Dennis" and wouldn't think of joking around or pitching a double entendre. And when Denny goes to visit Willis in a remote location, he finally understands how much the guy loves his wife and how out of place Babs would be on a rubber plantation. (Babs, in fact, is the film's only sweat-free character, making her seem even less human.)
So Denny gets noble and comes back to break up with Babs. She doesn't take it well, and she has a gun, so Denny gets shot. Then Willis arrives, and Vantine steps in:
For them, the plantation is home, sweat home.
Here are full credits for "Red Dust," and a trailer:
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."
(Caution: Spoilers ahead, and we aren't talking about the wings of the biplanes.)
Richard Dix made his film debut in 1917, and although he was active in sound films until 1947, his looks and acting style were very much out of the silent days. He was a beefy guy, usually in take-charge roles, and in 1932's "The Lost Squadron" he is Gibby, the official (during World War I) and then unofficial (after the war) leader of a ragtag group of flyboys -- Woody (Robert Armstrong), Red (Joel McCrea) and Fritz (Hugh "woo woo" Herbert).
The movie opens on Armstice Day, 1918, and as soon as Gibby's watch reads 11 a.m. on November 11 he stops shooting at his German targets and gallantly salutes them.
On the ground, the guys celebrate by getting drunk and then they return to America, and various disappointments -- Woody is broke, thanks to a cheating business partner; Red is out of a job (he passes it up so that an older co-worker won't be fired to make room for him) and Gibby comes home to his love, Follette (Mary Astor), only to find another man in her opulent apartment. "I've been bad, Gibby," she says. Awkward!
So the boys are out on their own again, and then time passes pretty quickly -- we go from the victory parades in 1918 almost immediately to the crash of 1929. (Really? What happened to the roaring '20s?)
Anyway, it's 11 years later and Red, Gibby and Fritz, against all odds, are still hanging together, being bums and stuff. They have hopped a freight to California because Woody is there, working as a stunt pilot in movies for autocratic director Von Furst (Erich Von Stroheim), a preening Prussian with a production company logo that looks suspiciously like a swastika.
"Meet my husband -- he's recently
divorced from Norma Desmond."
Von Furst is known for encouraging dangerous stunts -- and lo and behold, he is married to Follette ("they say he beats the behoozis out of her," Woody tells Gibby).
Before you can say "madame is the greatest star of them all," all the flyboys are working for Von Furst -- and Gibby and Follette have had a reunion, much to the displeasure of her husband. This really puts Von Furst in a bad mood, although for him it's a short trip, and he takes it out on his cast and crew:
Gibby also has eyes for Woody's sister (Dorothy Jordan), nicknamed "Pest" because she chides Woody about his constant drinking. Unfortunately for Gibby, the Pest has eyes for Red. If Richard Dix represented the leading man of the 1920s, Joel McCrea was the shape of things to come -- tall, effortlessly handsome and already performing with the relaxed manner that would serve him so well into the 1930s and '40s.
"The Lost Squadron" takes a wonderfully dark turn when Von Furst sabotages Gibby's plane. But Woody secretly takes out the plane instead, and ends up seriously killed. In revenge, Red captures Von Furst and holds him hostage in the hangar (say that three times fast). Then there's a struggle with a gun, and Von Furst ends up ventilated. This leads to a great scene where Fritz, Red and Gibby prop up the dead Von Furst to throw suspicion off themselves:
But Gibby knows that the jig is up, and as the squadron leader it's up to him to do something about it:
"The Lost Squadron" offers a cool look at behind-the-scenes Hollywood of 1932, and it screams "pre-code" in its portrayal of Follette sleeping her way to the top, in Woody's drinking and even in allowing a lead character to get away with murder. The script is co-written by Herman Mankiewicz and was the first picture to credit David O. Selznick as Executive Producer. The movie isn't exactly up to the level of Mankewicz's "Citizen Kane" or Selznick's "Gone with the Wind," but it builds to a suspenseful, atmospheric and even darkly funny climax in the airplane hanger. The movie begins with "Auld Lang Syne" being sung at the end of the war and concludes with the same song, accompanying a pair of ghostly fliers in the haunted sky.
