"Min and Bill," or Punch Drunk Love

By the time she appeared in the 1930 film "Min and Bill," Marie Dressler was in her early 60s and had been performing for 38 years. Along the way she had befriended a powerful ally in screenwriter Frances Marion, who had adapted "Min and Bill" from a book written by her friend, Lorna Moon. The final screenplay bore little resemblance to Moon's work; Marion told MGM to buy the book rights mainly to help Moon financially. And she created the role of Min specifically for Dressler, to give her a starring role and more bargaining power with the studio. It worked -- "Min and Bill" was a huge hit, and Dressler won a Best Actress Oscar. (Marion would also be a kind of good-luck charm for Dressler's co-star, Wallace Beery. She would be the guiding force behind three of his best-known films -- this one, "The Big House" and "The Champ," which would result in Beery winning a Best Actor Oscar the year after Dressler's win.)

When she played roles in lesser pictures -- see "The Girl Said No" and "Chasing Rainbows" for just two examples -- Dressler would mug her way through scenes like a bulldozer tearing through topsoil. "Min and Bill" gives her a little more to chew on -- the film is an expert mix of comedy, drama and sentiment, compact and well paced.

Min is a crusty-but-lovable battle axe who runs a waterfront hotel-saloon. Her star boarder is Bill (Beery), a fisherman who's also her drinking buddy and confidant. The two of them bicker with an easy rapport, as illustrated here as Min gives Bill a shave:



The working girl Min is barking at in that scene is Nancy (Dorothy Jordan), who has been raised by Min after she was abandoned by her hard-drinking mother Bella (Marjorie Rambeau). Min loves her, but you'd never know it from the way she barks at her. Funny thing is, Nancy does know it and works willingly in the hotel.

Then two things happen -- one is that one of the other fishermen (Russell Hopton) is making advances to Nancy.  The other is that, after more than a decade, Nancy's mother is back on the scene. Min tells her that Nancy is dead, and then sends Nancy off to live with the local schoolmaster without any explanation. Then Min takes even more extreme steps to protect Nancy from her mooching mother:



Meanwhile, back at the hotel, Bill and Bella are making time with each other.

Bella (to Bill): You ain't so bad -- I've seen worse.

Bill: I've been told that before.

This provokes Min's wrath. She throws Bella out and then deals with Bill:



Nancy goes to boarding school for two years, and returns for a reunion with Min. She has news -- she's engaged to the son of a wealthy cannery owner. But as bad luck would have it, Bella also reappears, and she has discovered that Nancy is her daughter. But before she can ruin Nancy's life, Min stops her -- with a bullet, but not before Bella burns Min with a curling iron.

It's Nancy's wedding day, and Min is determined to protect her to the end. Bill wants Min to escape with him to Mexico, but Min can't resist taking one last look at Nancy:




"Min and Bill" shows the softer side of Dressler -- and as a result, she won an Oscar and became, you should excuse the expression, the biggest actress on the MGM lot in the early 1930s. 

Here are the complete credits for "Min and Bill." 

"Street Scene," or Slum Like It Hot

The 1931 film "Street Scene" opens with Alfred Newman's theme music -- music that is so evocative of a city that it was being used as "New York Music" in 20th Century-Fox films twenty years later. And unlike many film scores of the time, it has a sophisticated orchestration -- you hear it and you expect to see a movie from the 1940s instead of one from the early 1930s:



The Hell's Kitchen apartment building at the center of "Street Scene" would today be filled with condominiums selling for hundreds of thousands of dollars. But in 1931 it contains the most diverse group of tenants this side of Ellis Island -- the Kaplans, the Maurrants, the Joneses, the Fiorentinos and the Olsens, to name a few. Within the space of 24 hours, on a hot summer day, they gather on the front stoop to gossip, fight, argue and witness a double murder.

Setting the story on a broiling summer day is a great way to get everyone outside and introduced -- the Maurrants include mother Anna (Estelle Taylor), crabby father Frank (David Landau) and daughter Rose (Sylvia Sidney). Then there are the Joneses, the most vocal member of which is mother Emma (Beulah Bondi), a buttinski, a gossip and a know-nothing with views on poverty and evolution that would place her comfortably within the ranks of today's Republican party. Her son Vincent is an angry ignoramus and her daughter is a floozy. The Kaplans include radical father Abe, schoolteacher daughter Shirley and sensitive Sam (William Collier, Jr.), who's always reading a book and who is sweet on Rose. The Olsens are a Swedish couple with a new baby and the Fiorentinos include an Italian husband and his German wife.

The daily routine -- life as it plays out on the stoop -- revolves around incessant talk about the weather and gossip about the neighbors -- particularly Anna Maurrant, who's having an affair with the guy who collects for the milk each week. Meanwhile, Rose is being pressured into a sexual relationship by her piggish boss, while Sam Kaplan has a hard time working up enough nerve to tell Rose how he feels -- or to counteract the constant catcalls of "Kike" from the bullying Vincent Jones.

King Vidor directed "Street Scene," and in a way the film is an extension of his towering 1928 film "The Crowd." "Street Scene" is also about urban alienation -- in this case, an alienation that the characters experience even as they live cheek to jowl in a crowded apartment building. 

After the characters are introduced, we move to the next morning. Sam sits on the front stoop reading a book. There's a music lesson being conducted in one of the apartments. Two marshals are there to evict one of the residents. Mr. Maurrant has just left to go out of the town, and Mrs. Maurrant has just pulled down the shades to entertain her gentleman friend. Here's the beautifully paced scene:



Rose has been at her boss's funeral, and when she gets back to the block she knows something's wrong. Within a few hours her mother has become today's tabloid headline:



Then it's time for Rose to say goodbye -- Sam wants to come with her, but he isn't mature enough yet, and she knows that:



"Street Scene" is based upon Elmer Rice's Pulitzer Prize-winning play, and he also wrote the screenplay. The film's heightened realism doesn't seem quite as daring or as incendiary as it probably was in 1931. But the proof is in the pudding -- you've seen a lot of movies and TV shows like "Street Scene" since 1931.

Here are the complete credits.