Pre-Code vs Post-Code: "Picture Snatcher" and "Escape From Crime"

If you removed the atmosphere of breezy amorality from the 1933 film "Picture Snatcher," you wouldn't have much of a movie.

And, sure enough, the 1942 film "Escape From Crime" isn't much of a movie.

Both films are based on an original story by Danny Ahearn, but "Picture Snatcher" has that cheerful pre-code let's-see-what-we-can-get-away-with spirit, personified by our hero, Danny Keene, played by James Cagney. "Picture Snatcher" is a pretty typical pre-code Cagney picture, and to me that's not bad at all -- it has spice, irreverence and a bit of a nasty

streak, and it feels no need whatsoever to apologize for itself.

The bare bones of Ahearn's story -- paroled convict gets a job as a rough-and-tumble newspaper photographer -- is the same in both films, but "Escape From Crime" removes all the tasty vices on display in "Picture Snatcher," and the result is flavorless and forgettable.

Here Danny is played, glum and guilt-ridden, by Richard Travis. In fact, Danny, also known as Red, is so surly that Jackie Gleason, in a brief bit as the world's most hilarious convict, can't even get him to crack a smile:



(You have just seen Gleason's entire performance. He doesn't show up again.)

Post-code Danny is cranky because he hasn't heard from his wife Molly (Julie Bishop) in a long while. Yes, this Danny is married, unlike pre-code Danny. And he has a baby daughter. So when post-code Danny gets a parole from Stock Footage Penitentiary, he's on the street with not one, but three, mouths to feed. When Danny gets sprung he heads right to see Molly, and whatever disagreement they were having instantly disappears. So why give Danny an attitude at the beginning? It's not the last time that this movie won't make a lot of sense.

In "Picture Snatcher," things also begin with Danny's release from prison, but it's a much jollier affair. Danny's old gang comes to pick him up, and they brought along a couple of women to make Danny welcome. Then Danny indulges himself with a perfumed bath and coolly announces to his buddies that he's dropping out of the crime game. He ends his speech by taking the money that was owed him as part of the job he went up the river for and then strolls out. In other words, Boom.



Post-code Danny, meanwhile, is a painfully straight arrow, and he's broke. But he spent his time in stir taking mugshots, so he's learned about photography, and he appeals to newspaper editor Cornell (Frank Wilcox) for a job. Cornell is as much of a stick-in-the-mud as Danny -- Cornell's pre-code equivalent, editor "Mac" MacLean (Ralph Bellamy), is shacking up with one of the reporters (Alice White) and drinks bourbon on the job. Cornell just sits at his desk and gives the impression that his suspenders are too tight.

Anyway, post-code Danny gets turned away jobless, and as he leaves the office two things happen -- one is that he meets his old nemesis, flatfoot Biff "Biff" Malone, who sent him up; and the other is that he witnesses and photographs a bank robbery.



Compare that to the other Danny's first job, a pre-code situation if ever there was one -- a firefighter is holed up in his own burned-out apartment. His crew was called to a fire there, and the firefighter discovered his dead wife in bed with another man. Danny's job is to get an old photo of the firefighter and his wife, so he poses as an insurance man sent to survey the damage.



That incident illustrates some of the nastiness in "Picture Snatcher" -- we actually root for Cagney to take the poor guy's wedding picture.

Just as post-code Danny has Biff the cop on his tail, pre-code Danny has Det. Lt. Nolan (Robert Emmett O'Connor, who else?). To complicate matters, Danny has fallen for Nolan's daughter (Patricia Ellis), a pretty journalism student. To further complicate matters, editor Mac's squeeze has also fallen for Danny. Post-code Danny doesn't have time for the ladies -- he's got a wife and kid to take care of!

But the story's one big plot element makes it into both movies -- to save his job, Danny is forced to take an illegal photo of someone in the electric chair. When the rival reporters find out, they (and the cops) chase Danny back to the paper. Just watch how Cagney and Travis each handle the scene:






Something else to watch in those clips -- the sets. "Picture Snatcher" actually looks like it was shot in New York City, while "Escape From Crime" is pretty clearly stuck on the Warner back lot. We're supposed to be in Manhattan, but the bank holdup that Danny witnesses is at the "Doreville State Bank." Doesn't sound very cosmopolitan to me. And he and his wife are supposed to live on East 65th Street, but their house looks a bungalow, and you're about as likely to see a bungalow on the Upper East Side of New York City as you are a taxi-driving octopus.

The performances are also miles apart -- at one point, Travis walks into the family home with a "Sure and it's your husband, Mrs. O'Hara!" No. Do not attempt an Irish brogue, Richard Travis. Just don't. You are no James Cagney. You're no Jeanne Cagney, for that matter.

"Escape From Crime" does give us plenty of gunplay, and why not? Violence is fine in a post-code movie; sex, not so much. But the movie's real failing is that, unlike "Picture Snatcher," the makers forget a simple fact -- a great journalist can, and maybe even should, have a slightly larcenous side.

"Headline Shooter," or Reel Life

In the 1933 film "Headline Shooter," William Gargan and Frances Dee play news hawks who don't really care who they trample over to get to a story, and that is why they are awesome.

Gargan plays Bill Allen, a photographer for Phototone newsreels, and Dee plays Jane Mallory, a newspaper sob sister. Despite the entreaties of friends, family or even the victims themselves, Bill and Mallory -- everyone calls her by her last name -- are pros to the end, and they belong together like Hildy Johnson and Walter Burns in "His Girl Friday."

We first meet the fast-talking Bill as he's getting ready to photograph a beauty contest that will be judged by the head of the Crocker Cracker company, the honorable Franklin Pangborn. Bill has already shot a photo layout with a certain negligeed contestant in bed, eating Crocker Crackers, and he strongly suggests to President Pangborn that if said contestant wins, then a beauty queen will be endorsing Crocker Crackers.

Benchley's having trouble
with his stem. 

Working next to Hobart Cavanaugh?
Sign me up!

The beauty pageant opens the film and we immediately see a cast of welcome faces -- Pangborn, Robert Benchley as the windbag doing pageant play-by-play on the radio, and Hobart Cavanaugh and Wallace Ford as Bill's fellow newsreel photogs.




Immediately after the beauty pageant, there is an earthquake, because Hollywood. And while he's acting all devil-may-care filming widespread destruction, Bill meets Mallory, and together they go looking for scoops. They share a cigarette or two, and then she has to find a way to get back to the paper:

Bill's always been one to play the field, but he can't get this dame off his mind, get me? And Mallory has to admit she likes him, too, but that's a problem, because fiancee Ralph Bellamy is waiting for her in her Mississippi home town. So Mallory scrams home on vacation, but Bill ends up there, too, because a substandard dam has busted and caused a flood.

At first, Bellamy -- the boring town banker, natch -- welcomes Bill and Mallory and hopes they tell the story of how corners were cut in the damn dam construction. But when the faulty work is traced to the town judge, the townspeople rally around him (and don't even try to talk to them about the negro situation). Allen is forced to destroy his incriminating film. Ya think he does it?

Meanwhile, Mallory gets back to town and her editor (our old pal Purnell Pratt) gives her a hot story -- a gangster's moll (our old pal Dorothy Burgess) is in the hospital and ready to sign a statement incriminating her boyfriend. So Mallory hotfoots it over and gets her story and the statement:

Then she leaves the hysterical moll in the hospital. Later, traitor!

But wait! Mallory is taken hostage by the gangster and his goons, and Bill and Ralph Bellamy leave no stone unturned in tracking her down. Once they find her, however, Mallory is more interested in phoning in an exclusive than in marrying Bellamy. This leads him to utter this heartfelt final statement:

Ralph Bellamy: I'm going home.

And, with the help of Bill, Mallory tells her story before the cameras:

Here are the complete credits for "Headline Shooter."

"Dive Bomber," Starring Errol Flynn and ... Jack Benny?

The 1941 film "Dive Bomber" was released a month or so before the attack on Pearl Harbor. America wasn't yet formally involved in World War II, and it would be a few more months before Jack Warner started strutting around the Warner lot in the Army officer's dress uniform he'd had custom tailored in Beverly Hills.

But like a lot of films from that time, "Dive Bomber" anticipates America's entry into the war and gives us a lovingly-presented parade of military might -- in this case it's air power, in Technicolor, yet, and flanked by the rugged faces and forms of Errol Flynn, Fred MacMurray and Ralph Bellamy. "Dive Bomber" looks great, and director Michael Curtiz never wastes a patch of blue sky -- there are always planes flying across it while troops and/or equipment pass by below. Dig:

World War II is a thing we're used to seeing in black and white, so the Technicolor scenes in "Dive Bomber" -- especially of real-life settings like an aircraft carrier staffed with actual people -- are riveting:



Based on a story by former Navy flier Frank "Spig" Wead, who also gave us "Ceiling Zero" and "Test Pilot," "Dive Bomber" oozes testosterone -- watching it makes you want to put on a khaki uniform and light up a Camel. Because there is smoking, always smoking -- in fact, the movie is positively Hawksian in the amount of cigarette-related male bonding that occurs. If you like a guy, you offer him a smoke. If you don't, you don't. And the symbol of ultimate bro-ness is to have the same cigarette case as your buddies.

The three guys with the same cigarette case at the beginning of "Dive Bomber" are Navy flyboys Joe (MacMurray), Tim (Regis Toomey) and Swede (Louis Jean Heydt). Watch them frolic and light each other's smokes!



Alas, tragedy occurs when one of the three (the guy whose name isn't as prominent in the credits) passes out during a steep dive and he crashes. On the ground, working in vain to rescue him, is Dr. Doug Lee (Flynn), whose fancy-pants education at Harvard and Johns Hopkins means nothing -- Nothing, you get me? -- when he can't bring the pilot back from the great beyond.

Dr. Doug decides to become a flight surgeon and try to solve the problem of pressurization and oxygen deprivation. In a weird coincidence, he begins flight lessons on December 7 (not 1941, but still). Then Dr. Doug is forced to team with the surly Dr. Lance Rogers (Bellamy), who is bitter because he is a grounded pilot. He doesn't even offer Dr. Doug a cigarette!

So Joe doesn't like Dr. Doug because he couldn't save Joe's friend. And Dr. Lance doesn't like Dr. Doug because he doesn't like anybody. And Joe doesn't like Dr. Lance because he thinks all that medical talk about pilot fatigue is a bunch of mumbo-jumbo. So nobody likes anybody. And we lose World War II, the end.

No, just joshing. Everyone ends up respecting the heck out of each other and working together to keep 'em flying. Joe joins the team when one pilot's death due to fatigue hits him right in his cigarette case:



"Test Pilot" is chock full of delicious propaganda -- Hollywood always knew how to sell a war -- and our leading men, especially Flynn, deliver solid performances. There are, however two unnecessary inclusions -- one is Alexis Smith, who spends the movie chasing Flynn even though he doesn't seem that interested. The other is "comic relief" by Allan Jenkins as Lucky, a bumptious sailor who's trying to escape from his equally bumptious wife.                

Since "Dive Bomber" was a big hit at the box office, it was fair game for a parody on "The Jack Benny Program." The show aired on October 26, 1941, so there are opening jokes about Halloween, including this exchange between Benny, sidekick Mary Livingstone and announcer Don Wilson:

Don: You don't have the excitement nowadays that you used to have on Halloween.

Jack: I guess you're right.

Don: I remember when I was back in Denver as a kid. We used to have the time of our lives!

Jack: Denver? You should have seen the way we celebrated Halloween in Waukegan! The old-fashioned pranks we used to play. But -- kids don't have fun like that anymore.

Mary: Whaddya want -- plumbing or fun?

Then comes the parody of "Dive Bomber," with Jack unable to decide if he wants to play Flynn, MacMurray or Bellamy. Finally, the production gets underway, with bandleader Phil Harris as Flynn, Dennis Day as MacMurray and Benny as Bellamy.

"West of Broadway," or Haunted Honeymoon

"Whatcha watching?"

Old movie.

"THERE'S a shocker. What's it called?"

"West of Broadway," 1931. With John Gilbert and Lois Moran.

"John Gilbert? The guy with the good-looking girlfriend?"

Greta Garbo, you mean? Yes.

"Tell me his story in five short sentences."

Heavy drinker. Hated Louis B. Mayer. Died young. Left at the altar by Garbo. And talkies killed his career. At least that was the conventional wisdom for years.

"That was six sentences."

Whatever.

"He looks sad."

He does indeed. I'm trying to figure out if it's acting or not. He plays a guy back from World War I whose fiancee has jilted him. So that's sad. And his sidekick is played by El Brendel. Maybe that's why he's sad.

"El Brendel? That's a person? Sounds like the Spanish name for blender."

Hm. Anyway, Gilbert's home from World War I and when his ship comes in he hangs around the dock while the band plays "Smiles" about fifty times and his girl still hasn't shown up. So he goes to her apartment and she greets him with a handshake.

"After being in the war and everything? Not even a pity kiss?"

Not even a pity kiss. Now he's really sad.

"But he doesn't just look sad. He looks -- haunted?"

Yep. Again, I'm trying to figure out if he's acting or not. Anyway, he meets a new girl, Dot, who's come to a party at his house.

"I ain't sayin' she's a gold digger, but she ain't going with no broke --"

You're right, but don't finish that sentence.

"She's kind of a little hottie."

Her name is Lois Moran. She had an affair with F. Scott Fitzgerald, made a few more movies, married a Washington big shot and then retired.

"Well, isn't SHE the only Coke in the Coke machine!"

What?

"That's an expression where I come from. Means she's special. So what's happening now?"

So they go out together, and Gilbert sees his old flame -- the one who jilted him. And he introduces his new date, Dot, to the jilter, Ann. He says "Dot, this is Ann. Ann, this is Dot. Dot the I and cross the Ann." Then he looks at Ann and says, "Or is it the double cross? I forget."

"Burn!"

Yes. So he's nursing his broken heart, and he gets drunk and marries Dot. The next morning, while extremely hungover, he tries to tell her it was a mistake:



"That guy has a really convincing case of the shakes."

Yeah. I'm trying to figure out if he's acting or not. So, anyway, he tries to dump Dot by offering her money, but it turns out she's in love with him. And in return he's kind of a jerk to her.

"I miss El Blender."

Brendel.

"Whatever."

So back to the story. Gilbert is a millionaire and he has gone out west to his really cool ranch to recover from his war injuries and to ditch Dot. El Brendel is there too.

"Thank God."

And that's Ralph Bellamy as the ranch foreman. And whattya know -- Dot has followed Gilbert out west because she wants to help him overcome his melancholy.

"She looks cute in her little cowgirl outfit."

Yes. She keeps trying to melt Gilbert's cold heart, and he keeps being mean to her. But it's handled in sort of a good-natured bickery way. Meanwhile Bellamy has become attracted to the little filly himself.

"Never mind that -- why is the Chinese cook wearing a sombrero?"

Because we are about to have a festival of ethnic humor with Willie Fung, who plays the cook, and El Brendel. Hold on to your shorts:



"Wow. Thanks for sharing that."

You're welcome.

"I was kidding."

By now, Gilbert is starting to warm up a little to Dot, who has helped him stop drinking. He decides to go to her room for a visit:



"And they share a cigarette. Ooooh. Do they live happily ever after?"

Well, there are a few more rough spots first. And with Gilbert, who can tell from happy? There's something melancholy -- haunted -- about him all through this movie.

"I'm trying to figure out if he's acting or not."

That's my line.

"Whatever."

"Below the Sea," or Love and Depth

Ronald Reagan is credited with a great line about his days of making B-movies: "They didn't want them good, they wanted them Thursday."

And that's the standard rap -- they were projector fodder destined to belong at the bottom of double features with forgettable actors, mediocre scripts, blah blah blah blah.

But the thing is, despite low budgets and tight shooting schedules, the Hollywood assembly system in the 1930s was still capable of cranking out movies that were better than they had any right to be. "Below the Sea" is a good example. This 1933 film boasts a script by Frank Capra collaborator Jo Swerling, creative direction by Al Rogell and vivid performances by Ralph Bellamy, Fay Wray and Frederick Vogeding.

Frederick Vogeding?

Vogeding appeared in several dozen movies between 1933-42, usually in small parts as doctors or military men. Beginning with 1939's "Confessions of a Nazi Spy" he made frequent appearances as Gestapo officers. "Below the Sea" features one of his rare leading roles.

We open during the final days of World War I, in a German sub commanded by Vogeding's character. The men converse in their native tongue, with no subtitles. And right around the time one of them says something that sounds like "I want a Zima," there's an explosion.

Then, in battle footage thrillingly borrowed from the RKO movie "Suicide Fleet" (and who knows where else), the sub, she is sunk. There are only two survivors -- the captain and some other guy. Both of them are aware that the sub was carrying a load of gold bricks, and while they dry off on a desert island the other guy draws up a map of the location, which gives the captain nasty ideas:


(By the way, in a post-code movie the guy just would have fallen off the cliff; only in a pre-code movie would you see the body go all the way down, bouncing off outcroppings along the way.)

Fast forward twelve years, and the captain has changed his name to Schlemmer. He's been waiting all this time to retrieve the precious stash, and he's talked a waterfront bar owner/floozy (Esther Howard) into financing the trip in exchange for a cut. He's also hired a deep sea diver, Mac, played by snarling Ralph Bellamy.

Their first trip out to get the treasure is doomed because there's a big storm, and because Schlemmer keeps the destination a secret, so the crew doesn't know where to go. This doesn't quite make sense to me, but it gives Bellamy a chance to wear a rain slicker and hat like the Gorton fisherman on those old TV commercials.

Another three years pass, and Schlemmer has signed on as the captain of a scientific expedition, and he's bringing Mac with him. They're aboard the good ship Adventure, funded by socialite Diana Templeton (Fay Wray in full-blown hottie mode). Templeton is sincere about science, but she also knows the power of public relations, so she does things like pose for photos in Mac's diving suit.

Mac in turn is so nasty to her that there's really no doubt how he really feels, especially since Diana gives as good as she gets:



The byplay between Wray and Bellamy is one of the highlights of "Under the Sea." He scowls and puffs his pipe as she runs around the boat wearing anchor-accented outfits. And she kisses other guys in front of him just to get him hot. But when she puts on Mac's diving outfit and goes down without his permission, that's a bridge too far. He purposely takes his time rescuing her and she passes out. He gets in trouble for it, but she shows her mettle by apologizing to him. And he finds himself torn between Diana and the loot in the sub:



Meanwhile, Schlemmer and his floozy are ready to bring the gold to the surface and cheat Mac out of his cut. They drug him and take off to collect the booty. Mac awakens just in time to discover that Diana is down in the diving bell again and it's being attacked by an amorous octopus, so instead of heading off Schlemmer he changes into his suit and dives in to rescue her:

This also seems like a good time to mention that the diving bell looks just like the isolation booth on the 1950s quiz show "The $64,000 Question," except that the diving bell doesn't have a giant lipstick on each side of the window (the show's sponsor was Revlon).


In the end, the captain's nefarious scheme comes to naught, and Diana and Mac end up together. As a couple they generate actual heat -- it's nice to see Bellamy playing something other than the milquetoast role he essayed in romantic comedies, and Wray's character is tough and likable. Their clinches seem unusually enthusiastic -- makes you wonder if something was going on in real life between them, as well.

Here are full credits for "Below the Sea."

"Picture Snatcher," or Cagney and Racy

Whenever I talk about my love for old James Cagney movies, my kids remind me of this clip from "Family Guy":

To them, those movies are little more than that -- people in out-of-style clothes speedtalking to each other. To me, they're fast-moving star vehicles with a streetwise style, sharp wit, just the right amount of cheerful cynicism and the strong presence of a pugnacious star with great physical style. Actually, in the 1930s, James Cagney was more than a star. His films ended up symbolizing the style of the Warner Bros. studio -- tough, unpretentious, good-naturedly brash. 

The 1933 film "Picture Snatcher" combines two staples of the studio -- the gangster picture and the newspaper picture. (Actually, at Warner's there wasn't much difference between the two.) Cagney plays Danny Kean, who's just been released from Sing Sing. His old gang, led by Jerry (Ralf Harolde), is ready to welcome him back to the criminal fold, but Danny has other ideas. This is revealed when Danny's being measured for a new suit, and he tells the tailor not to leave room for the shoulder holster. Tailor: "You're gonna be the best-dressed goniff  (Yiddish for thief) in America."

No, Danny is going to go legit -- or at least legit enough to be a newspaper man. So he pays a call on editor McLean (Ralph Bellamy) at the Graphic-News, the sleaziest rag in town. McLean met Danny while he was in stir and told Danny to look him up, but he's reluctant to hire him because of his lack of experience.

Danny's chance comes as a result of a pre-code situation if ever there was one -- a firefighter ended up being called to a fire at his own apartment. He arrived to find his wife there, dead, in bed with another man. Danny's mission is to get past the fireman, who won't let any reporters into the apartment, and find a photo of the dead wife:



He's hired.
   
Danny then meets met Patricia (Patricia Ellis), a journalism student who's taking a tour of the newspaper. She likes him, but her dad (Robert Emmett O'Connor, forever playing a cop) is the flatfoot who put Danny behind bars. So they see each other on the sly. Meanwhile, another reporter, Allison (Alice White), also has eyes for Danny -- she even invites him to her apartment to play, um, ping pong. But she's also McLean's girl, and Danny is loyal to the guy who hired him.

Danny's next assignment is based on a real-life newspaper story -- in 1928, photographer Tom Howard, working for the New York Daily News, snapped photos of Ruth Snyder in the electric chair. Patricia's dad helps Danny get into an execution, where he does the same thing, in a scene that has echoes of "The Green Mile":



The cops and rival reporters find out what Danny did, and they give chase. He hightails it back to the newsroom:



Because of his death house escapade, Danny is in dutch with daddy, but he fixes that one by infiltrating his old gang, getting some great photos during a shootout, and then arranging it so that Patricia's father gets the credit for capturing Jerry. McLean goes to speak to Patricia on Danny's behalf while Allison pops up again:



The movie ends with a topical reference -- "Vas you dere, Sharlie" was the trademark phrase of radio comic Jack Pearl, at the peak of his popularity in 1933 as Baron Munchausen.

Here is the trailer for "Picture Snatcher," and the full cast listing.