Awkward Early Talkie Theatre: "Untamed"

Vildkatten, that satin doll.

Here are some words you will rarely, if ever, see in the same sentence:

"Kim Kardashian" and "talent."

"Downton Abbey" and "rowdy."

"Joan Crawford" and "lighthearted."

Yes, I like to pick on Joan Crawford. Hey, at least I'm straight up about it, ya feel me? It's just that she's always so ... so oxygen-suckingly earnest and yet phony-baloney, like a robot programmed to imitate actual human emotion. My favorite Crawford picture is "Mildred Pierce" because her melodramatic style fits the story so well. (When "The Carol Burnett Show" did a parody of that movie, the title pegged Crawford's style perfectly -- they called it "Mildred Fierce.")

Really?

And Crawford is at peak Crawford in her first full-length talkie, 1929's "Untamed." (She had earlier filmed a talkie number or two for MGM's "Hollywood Revue," but it was released afterwards.) In all fairness, "Untamed" would be terrible even if she wasn't in it -- it's a weird collision of embarrassing cultural assumptions and over-baked performances, sitting on top of a supremely uninteresting series of romantic complications that, like Crawford's grimaces, you can see coming from a mile away. (With dialogue by Willard Mack, bitchez!)

On the up side, Robert Montgomery isn't bad. (It is his first talkie as well.)

How to dance like no one is watching.

We open in the picturesque Valley of Zoro in South America or something, where lives a penniless Englishman and his daughter Alice, aka Bingo because ... she was conceived during a heated game? ("B-12! Oh, my God! B-12!")

Anyway, Bingo is the hit of the valley because of her spirited movements that approximate dance, and because she runs around in skimpy loincloths.

Accompanied by her pet monkey Chico, Bingo lives life as if it were a gay, mad game! She is as unspoiled as the jungle, as direct as a child, as graceful as a ... well, let's settle for two out of three.

Bingo's father is visited by two old friends, Murchison (Ernest Torrance) and Presley (Holmes Herbert). Father is then quickly stabbed, mostly so that Crawford can have a death to emote over; see for yourself, although I wouldn't blame you if you watched only a few seconds of this clip -- it seems to go on for hours.

So, it turns out that before Bingo's dad kicks off he tells his friends of a deed he has that's worth millions in oil rights. So if he's had that all along, why live in poverty?

Upon dad's death, Murchison and Presley swear to protect Bingo and her right to be rich, rich, rich, and they become her guardians. "The sweetest flowers grow in the mud," Murchison says in a non-creepy way about Bingo.

Then before you can say "Sydenham's chorea," we are on a ship bound for New York City. The oil rights have come through, or been established, or whatever it is you do with oil rights, and Bingo and her guardians are flush with cash. On board the ship, Bingo locks peepers with Andy (Montgomery), who's squiring an older rich woman, and it's B-12 all over again.

Since this is an early talkie, it's required that both Crawford and Montgomery sing, which they do in a nice untrained way. Their theme song is "That Wonderful Something," a ditty that's just made for plinking on the ukelele:

The scenes between Andy and Bingo, when they aren't weighed down with drama, are actually nicely played. But they also offer vivid illustrations of each actor's style. Montgomery is nonchalant -- it's almost as if he doesn't care if he's in the picture or not. Crawford, on the other hand, acts like she'd kill you if you cut even one of her lines.

At first, the devil-may-care Andy doesn't know what to make of Bingo's guileless love for him. But it doesn't take him long to respond in kind. However, Uncle Murchison has a problem -- Andy is without funds. (Which seems weird, considering that he's on an ocean liner and has access to more than one tuxedo.) So Murchison, in his lumbering style -- speed was not an Ernest Torrance specialty -- suggests that Andy and Bingo cool it until she's been in New York for a few months, and then behind the scenes he works to sabotage the relationship.

This leads to lots of breakups and makeups between Bingo and Andy, climaxing with Uncle Murchison offering Andy a bribe to leave. A fed-up Andy gets drunk and confronts Bingo, which triggers her Acting reflux -- er, reflex -- again:

All in all, 1929 was a big year for Joan Crawford -- in June she had married Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., and he supported her as she prepared for her talkie debut by reading English poetry into a Dictaphone. Unfortunately, no one at the time seemed to think about dancing lessons.

"The Big House," or Slammer Time

In the 1930 film "The Big House" people are constantly dwarfed by their surroundings. The prison where most of the story takes place is full of high walls and towers but it's also claustrophobic, crammed with sweaty prisoners sleeping three to a cell and filling the courtyard like a swarm of ants.


We first see the prison from the viewpoint of a new prisoner, Kent (Robert Montgomery). The paddy wagon that transports him to the gates is overwhelmed by the structure itself in a striking opening shot:



Once he enters, Kent is systematically reduced from a normal guy to just another convict -- they're givin' him a number and takin' way his name.

Kent is there because he's been found guilty of being a standoffish prig -- oh, and also of killing some guy in a drunken car accident. His cellmates are Butch (Wallace Beery at his Wallace Beery-ist, full of childlike bluster and yet handy with a machine gun) and Morgan (Chester Morris). They urge Kent not to hang out with the prison stool pigeon -- he's the only convict who's wearing a necktie -- but Kent hopes that he can trade inside information for a reduced sentence.

"The Big House" is full of scenes that have become prison movie cliches, showing up in films from "White Heat" to "Birdman of Alcatraz" to "The Shawshank Redemption." One of the best is the mess hall riot, not just because of Beery's violent protest of the dehumanizing effects of prison, but because of the silence -- and the hopeless panorama of convict faces -- leading up to it:



Beery's character is punished for the riot by being sent to "the dungeon," but before he goes he passes his knife to Kent. Then, during a surprise search, Kent slips the knife into Morgan's jacket. As a result, Morgan, a day away from parole, also gets sent to the dungeon. After his 30-day stretch of living in darkness, Morgan fakes illness and escapes through the infirmary. While on the outside, he seeks out and falls in love with Kent's sister (Leila Hyams), and she with him. But it isn't long before Morgan is nabbed and sent back to stir.

While Morgan's been out, Butch has been planning a massive escape to take place on Thanksgiving Day, while the place is low on guards. In a witty scene taking place that morning, all the convicts end up at a church service, singing "Open the Gates (of the Temple)." Then as they all kneel in prayer, Berry starts passing guns and bullets down the row to his fellow escapees.

Morgan refuses to be involved in the break, but he won't rat on Butch, either. That task falls to Kent. When the escape turns into a standoff between the convicts and the guards, Butch blames Morgan. But he finally figures out the truth. Meanwhile, Kent seems to be melting into a puddle of sweat:



Kent is killed in the riot, and Morgan is forced to shoot Butch. But Butch forgives him just before he dies. "The Big House" ends with a focus on Morgan, who's given an early release for his role in stopping the escape and saving a guard's life. The "decent" prisoner, Kent, is revealed as a coward and a stool pigeon, and Morgan effectively takes the place of Kent within the family.

"The Big House" won an Oscar for screenwriter Frances Marion, who adapted the script from Lennox Robinson's play. It was smoothly directed by George Hill, Marion's husband at the time. It represented a career-saving role for Beery, who got the role as a result of the death of Lon Chaney, Sr., who passed away after making only one talkie, "The Unholy Three."  

Here are the complete credits.

My Old Movie Manifesto, or It Happened One Night (at My Uncle's House While I Was Watching Old Gangster Movies)

Now that I have written more than 50 posts, this seems like a good time to stop and explain why I love movies -- especially older movies, and particularly those from the 1929-35 era. And since this is a blog where one picture (or one movie scene) speaks more than a thousand words, here's my lede:

This is what is known as "adding
visual interest," and it is also
James Cagney.

That is a scene from the 1931 film "Blonde Crazy," with James Cagney and Joan Blondell, and it contains everything I love about old movies, particularly the ones made before the 1934 production code. It's racy, it's funny, it's cynical and it's just one scene out of one movie in a year when studios cranked them out at a furious pace, at practically dozens a week. Even though there were nominal limits in place, pre-code movies reflected depression life in a particularly vivid way. They contained rough edges, adult desires and plot shadings that were later sanded down, cleaned up and bleached out by the Hollywood studio system.

Carole Lombard, holla.

The early 1930s was a time of larger-than-life movie heroes and anti-heroes like Cagney, Spencer Tracy, Edward G. Robinson, Paul Muni, Dick Powell, Robert Montgomery and Clark Gable. It was also a time of movie beauties both ethereal and down to earth, from Greta Garbo to Carole Lombard, from Marlene Dietrich to Joan Blondell.

And we cannot forget the character actors and the comics -- Aline MacMahon, Frank McHugh, Frank Morgan, the Marx Brothers, Wheeler and Woolsey, Boris Karloff and Laurel and Hardy, to name a few.

Maybe they weren't more magnetic than today's stars, but they sure as heck were more visible -- movies were the television of the early 1930s, and folks went to the show, as it was often called, at least once a week, so films were cranked out like Model Ts. (It helped that the studios owned the theatres.) And for at least the first half of the decade, these movies were edgier, sassier and more topical than they would be by the end. I personally think that, even though we came close, there are two major reasons why the United States didn't become a fascist state during the Great Depression -- Hollywood movies and Franklin D. Roosevelt. (I sound like Jack Warner, who was a big FDR booster.)

Anyway, watching these movies to me is like re-reading a favorite book, or, um, re-watching a favorite movie. I marvel all over again at the raw storytelling power of "I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang," or the wit of the Marx Brothers. I love watching and listening to James Cagney, with his rat-a-tat style of speaking and his exuberant-yet-contained physical presence, and Barbara Stanwyck's pugnacious performances. And to me "It Happened One Night" is one of the best pure romantic comedies ever -- and, judging by the romantic comedies we see today, contemporary Hollywood agrees, because they keep remaking it. It's also fascinating to me to watch as the industry emerges from the silent era and starts learning how to make talking movies. And it's interesting to see tropes in the making that are commonly accepted assumptions in today's films.

I also love older movies because they are free of the hype or the fashion of the moment. The years have either added or subtracted from their reputation. The older I get, the more I believe in perspective, and I think that in many cases it takes years or even decades to see a movie for what it really is -- and as I grow older, I see these movies through a different lens.   

I'm not a believer that older automatically equals better, but when I watch older movies I'm more likely to forgive clumsy performances or technical snafus and marvel over the ones that still resonate and entertain, sometimes even despite those limitations. Some might argue that it's because these older movies echo my older, clumsier self. Maybe. But I also felt that way when I was 12, and first started developing an appreciation for old movies by seeing Warner Bros. gangster movies on TV at my uncle's house. (My mom wouldn't even let us watch "Dragnet.")

In this blog, my intent is to watch and share old movies, so that if you don't have the time or inclination to watch them yourself, you can catch a condensed (and biased) review here. For 15 years I made a living as a movie critic for a daily newspaper, but I rarely got to write about the old movies that I particularly love. Now I can. And I'm glad to have you along for the ride.