Category: 1933

Disgraced (1933, Erle C. Kenton)

Like most lame melodramas, Disgraced‘s plot only works because characters all of a sudden act completely differently than the story has previously established them. Disgraced concerns a department store model (Helen Twelvetrees) who starts hanging around a regular customer’s fiancé. Romance ensues.

She’s got to hide the affair from her father, who would rather she marry an insurance agent of questionable professional morality.

Twelvetrees is good when she’s the protagonist, but she loses that role in the narrative during the third act and things get problematic. As the film gets more absurd, her performance suffers.

As her loafing, rich kid beau, Bruce Cabot does a fine job. Disgraced doesn’t give its actors much to do so it’d be hard for one to be bad. Sadly, as Cabot’s unfaithful fiancée, Adrienne Ames is bad. So’s William Harrigan as Twelvetrees’s father. But at least Harrigan is earnest.

Ken Murray plays the insurance agent and he’s okay. Like I said, there’s not much for anyone to do. Disgraced runs just over an hour; there isn’t room for subplots.

Kenton does a surprisingly good job of directing. Not because he’s generally incompetent, but because he finds little moments in the picture where he can really showcase the technical. He’s got a rather nice crane shot for one of the street scenes and he manages to keep it visually interesting.

Besides some decent acting (for a while), Disgraced‘s only singular feature is the fantastic opening cast introductions. They’re little scenes for each actor. It’s ingenious.

0/4ⓏⒺⓇⓄ

CREDITS

Directed by Erle C. Kenton; screenplay by Alice D.G. Miller and Francis Martin, based on a story by Miller; director of photography, Karl Struss; music by John Leipold; produced by Bayard Veiller; released by Paramount Pictures.

Starring Helen Twelvetrees (Gay Holloway), Bruce Cabot (Kirk Undwood, Jr.), Adrienne Ames (Julia Thorndyke), William Harrigan (Pat Holloway), Ken Murray (Jim McGuire), Charles Middleton (District Attorney) and Willard Mack (Defense Attorney).

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She Done Him Wrong (1933, Lowell Sherman)

With her cane and big goofy hat, it’s hard not to think of Lon Chaney in Phantom of the Opera when Mae West breaks out into her first song in She Done Him Wrong.

While West wrote the film’s source, a play, it seems like the film would play better as a silent. Her acting “style” doesn’t lend well to dialogue and the shock value of her lines would work just as well on title cards.

The film drags—it’s barely sixty-five minutes and Sherman has to pad it with four or five musical numbers. He does manage to give the impression he opened it up though. The film takes place in a night club; the one trip outside stays in memory long enough open the picture.

Somehow Sherman and director of photography Charles Lang can come up with nice camera movements to track West and her swaggering strut, but Sherman and editor Alexander Hall can’t do one nice cut. The film’s editing is atrocious. Every time the shot changes, whether between scene or between angle, it’s hideously jarring.

Some of the supporting performances are good. Dewey Robinson is great as West’s flunky and Owen Moore (in a theatrical turn, which I’m not using as a pejorative term) is excellent as her ex-boyfriend. Noah Beery’s okay, nothing more, and Rafaela Ottiano is weak. David Landau has some moments.

Cary Grant, however, has no good ones.

The film and West (it’s her vanity piece, after all) are a chore.

0/4ⓏⒺⓇⓄ

CREDITS

Directed by Lowell Sherman; screenplay by Harvey F. Thew and John Bright, based on a play by Mae West; director of photography, Charles Lang; edited by Alexander Hall; music by John Leipold; produced by William LeBaron; released by Paramount Pictures.

Starring Mae West (Lady Lou), Cary Grant (Captain Cummings), Owen Moore (Chick Clark), Gilbert Roland (Serge Stanieff), Noah Beery (Gus Jordan), David Landau (Dan Flynn), Rafaela Ottiano (Russian Rita), Dewey Robinson (Spider Kane), Rochelle Hudson (Sally), Tammany Young (Chuck Connors), Fuzzy Knight (Rag Time Kelly), Grace La Rue (Frances), Robert Homans (Doheney) and Louise Beavers (Pearl).

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Blind Adventure (1933, Ernest B. Schoedsack)

Blind Adventure is a genial, nearly successful comedy thriller. Robert Armstrong, playing an unexpectedly wealthy working class American who’s vacationing in London, heads out into the fog and finds himself on a wild night. He encounters espionage, British society, a damsel in distress (Helen Mack) and trifle.

Armstrong and Mack are wonderful together (they soon reunited in Son of Kong, along with director Schoedsack and writer Ruth Rose) and the film’s failures are mostly disappointing because it should have launched a franchise for the pair. They’re Nick and Nora, but a year early and less blue blooded. They also have a fabulous third wheel in Roland Young, a burglar they meet.

Rose’s script has some good lines and a brisk pace. It’s not a comedy revolution—though its Marx Brothers influences are interesting in the context of a straight comedy thriller—but it should have been made into a better film.

It’s Schoedsack who primarily fails here. While the film’s modest budget is obvious (any London sights would be obscured by the dense fog), Schoedsack is still essentially inept. His comedy direction is atrocious—he holds the reaction shots to jokes maybe three times longer than he should, so long one wonders if there’s going to be a second joke.

Ralph Bellamy and John Miljan are both good in small roles. Beryl Mercer has a scene and a half with Armstrong and they’re quite funny.

But Armstrong and Mack are just magical; they deserved better treatment than Adventure gives them.

The Fatal Glass of Beer (1933, Clyde Bruckman)

As it turns out–it’s hard to tell from the first ten minutes–The Fatal Glass of Beer is something of a spoof of melodramas. Those first ten minutes though are mostly just W.C. Fields being a gold prospector in a snow storm. There’s very little narrative. Fields introduces one recurring gag and it shouldn’t work, but it does; in fact, it works better on each repeat.

There’s also some odd flashback to introduce George Chandler as Fields’s son.

Eventually, Rosemary Thelby shows up as Fields’s wife and the short becomes about the melodrama spoof. Chandler is getting out of prison it turns out. What’s particularly great about the short is this narrative structuring–the ground situation isn’t established until ten minutes into a twenty minute film.

Even after the introduction of Chandler, there’s more of Fields just being funny as a prospector before the astounding conclusion.

It’s hilarious; Fields is absolutely amazing.

3/3Highly Recommended

CREDITS

Directed by Clyde Bruckman; written by W.C. Fields; produced by Mack Sennett; released by Paramount Pictures.

Starring W.C. Fields (Mr. Snavely), Rosemary Theby (Mrs. Snavely), George Chandler (Chester Snavely) and Richard Cramer (Officer Posthlewhistle).

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A Shriek in the Night (1933, Albert Ray)

For the first twenty minutes or so–it runs just over an hour–A Shriek in the Night seems like it might be a decent, b mystery. Ginger Rogers is appealing as the reporter undercover as a murder victim’s secretary and Purnell Pratt is great as the police inspector on the case.

Unfortunately, it isn’t about the two of them solving the case, which would have been amusing. Instead, Lyle Talbot is playing her newspaper rival slash boyfriend and it’s about him and Rogers on the case. Only there’s not much of a case. I can’t really think of a less interesting mystery than Shriek, as it has none of the genre’s compelling components. There isn’t a large cast of suspects, the motive for the murder is lame and the killer’s method is lame too.

Maybe the film could have still succeeded, even with those three strikes (I’m actually not sure–a mystery without any suspects seems a little handicapped) but it’s also got Talbot to contend with. I’m not sure what’s worse–Talbot’s performance in general or his lack of chemistry with Rogers in particular. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a more mismatched couple–and this film was their second as a pair, so someone must have thought they got along well onscreen; that someone was wrong.

The rest of the cast is weak too. Arthur Hoyt and Harvey Clark, in particular, are awful.

The film seems to be unable to decide if it’s a farce or a serious mystery.

But, who cares?

Before Midnight (1933, Lambert Hillyer)

Ralph Bellamy gets top billing here, but he doesn’t deserve it. I’m always stunned when, with a reasonably early feature motion picture like Before Midnight, the filmmakers are clearly exhausted with the genre.

Midnight‘s a big house mystery (enclosed setting, certain number of suspects) but the opening establishes the majority of the film is set sometime in the past. Bellamy’s character could have died of old age for all the audience knows, as there’s one guy telling another a story about this great mystery, which we then see.

The mystery seems like it might be an interesting one for a while, as Bellamy interrogates each suspect, one by one; it seems like he’s going to solve the case out based on the interviews, a unique film approach.

Instead, Bellamy amiably investigates in the standard mystery fashion, giving some of the supporting cast a little time to themselves. Unfortunately, the supporting cast is boring and–even at only an hour–the film feels way too long. Because of the structure, the suspects don’t have any subplots not related directly to the murder and, because he’s not really a character, Bellamy doesn’t get a love interest. It’s all about the mystery.

And the mystery isn’t bad, just not good enough to carry the entire hour.

Hillyer’s a rather indistinct director. I don’t remember a single well-directed moment in the film (but no badly directed ones either).

Good performances from June Collyer, Claude Gillingwater, Betty Blythe and Otto Yamaoka help a lot.

1/4★

CREDITS

Directed by Lambert Hillyer; written by Robert Quigley; director of photography, John Stumar; edited by Otto Meyer; released by Columbia Pictures.

Starring Ralph Bellamy (Inspector Steve Trent), June Collyer (Janet Holt), Claude Gillingwater (John Fry), Bradley Page (Howard B. Smith), Betty Blythe (Mavis Fry), Arthur Pierson (Doctor David R. Marsh), George Cooper (Stubby), William Jeffrey (Edward Arnold), Joseph Crehan (Captain Frank Flynn) and Otto Yamaoka (Kono).

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Don’t Bet On Love (1933, Murray Roth)

Ayres is a degenerate gambler (who cleans up nice) and Rogers is the girl who loves him, despite herself, of course, in this breezy melodrama. In terms of particulars, it has almost nothing to recommend it. Ayres is a little bit too believable as the callous lead, who purposely eschews all advice as he lucks into horse win after horse win (at least if he’d had a system, it might seem purposeful, but apparently, he just guesses well). It makes for problems with making him sympathetic. He doesn’t deserve a happy ending, much less one where Rogers saves him from homelessness.

As for Rogers, she’s a little bit better than Ayres, but she’s uneven in this regular girl role. It’s unbelievable she’d wait ten minutes for Ayres, much less two or three years.

The best acting is from Charley Grapewin as Ayres’s father and Tom Dugan as his sidekick. Grapewin masterfully combines the knowing elder with the concerned parent, with a dash of the disapproving parent thrown in. His performance might be the film’s showiest in some ways, but it’s also the truest. Dugan’s just the faithful sidekick, who only has to be sturdy when Ayres’s acting like a gambling addict moron, which comes up a lot in the second half. And Dugan does have the film’s only funny sequence.

Roth’s direction isn’t flashy–he does move the camera for dramatic effect quite a bit, sometimes to good effect–but it’s solid.

Don’t Bet on Love‘s almost a decent hour.

1/4★

CREDITS

Directed by Murray Roth; written by Howard Emmett Rogers, Roth and Ben Ryan; director of photography, Jackson Rose; edited by Robert Carlisle; music by David Klatzkin; produced by Carl Laemmle Jr.; released by Universal Pictures.

Starring Lew Ayres (Bill McCaffery), Ginger Rogers (Molly Gilbert), Charley Grapewin (Pop McCaffery), Shirley Grey (Goldie Williams), Tom Dugan (Scotty), Merna Kennedy (Ruby ‘Babe’ Norton), Lucile Gleason (Mrs. Gilbert) and Robert Emmett O’Connor (Edward Shelton).

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Central Airport (1933, William A. Wellman)

Maybe the film should have been called The Lecher, the Floozie and the Rube, because Central Airport doesn’t have anything to do with the plot. I kept waiting for it to turn into a Grand Hotel at an airport, but it’s really a soaper about pilot Richard Barthelmess who romances air show parachuter Sally Eilers only to lose her to his younger brother, played by Tom Brown.

The film’s pre-code so there’s premarital sex and wedded sex. Eilers is frequently in lingerie. When she and Barthelmess meet, he can’t keep his eyes or hands off her. Only after her brother explodes does Barthelmess control his hands.

But Barthelmess doesn’t want to marry her because fliers shouldn’t get married (I think someone else dies or something). And now Eilers is a tarnished woman. Conveniently enter younger brother Brown who’s devoted to her. He’ll marry her–even after she tells him everything.

Barthelmess finds out, runs off to Mexico and becomes a hero in China, Chile and Nicaragua. He’s devastatingly heroic and Eilers gets bright-eyed whenever anyone says his name. When they meet again, they’re all set to make a cuckold of Brown, but then he’s in a life threatening situation.

My favorite part of the picture is when Eilers is upset Brown’s survived his ordeal.

Wellman’s direction is fantastic. There are some great models and effects shots.

It’s a story about nasty people doing nasty things to each other and the viewer is supposed to feel bad for them.

0/4ⓏⒺⓇⓄ

CREDITS

Directed by William A. Wellman; screenplay by Rian James and James Seymour, based on a story by Jack Moffitt; director of photography, Sidney Hickox; edited by James B. Morley; music by Howard Jackson and Bernhard Kaun; produced by Hal B. Wallis; released by Warner Bros.

Starring Richard Barthelmess (Jim Blaine), Sally Eilers (Jill Collins), Tom Brown (Neil Blaine), Grant Mitchell (Mr. Blaine), James Murray (Eddie Hughes), Claire McDowell (Mrs. Blaine), Willard Robertson (Havana Airport Manager) and Arthur Vinton (Amarillo Airport Manager).

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The Vampire Bat (1933, Frank R. Strayer)

It’s hard not to be, at least, somewhat impressed with The Vampire Bat, if only because it came out in 1933 as a knockoff Universal horror picture. Except at this point, there’d only been Frankenstein, Dracula and The Mummy. The Vampire Bat brilliantly resembles a Universal horror picture in every way but the filmmaking. There’s the burgomaster, played by the same guy as in Frankenstein (Lionel Belmore). Dwight Frye plays a role somewhat similar to Renfield. It’s only the three principles who don’t really fit–and Lionel Atwill would go on to do a lot of Universal horror pictures.

The screenwriter Lowe eventually did write a Universal horror picture. It took him eleven years, but he wrote House of Frankenstein.

It’s a knockoff, but it’s an effective knockoff made on a lower budget without music. By Bride of Frankenstein, in 1935, music was very important in the Universal horror formula. Seeing one of these pictures without the music is very interesting–it’s a transitory step, but made by a different studio.

The film was shot on the Universal backlot at night. But the set isn’t directed like it’s a Universal horror picture. Frank R. Strayer had time to do a lot of crane shots. His interior shots aren’t impressive (way too much headroom), but the exteriors and transition shots, it looks like Curtiz shot it during his exterior movement phase.

It distracts the viewer from realizing he or she has never seen the exterior of Lionel Atwill’s house. It’s referred to as the castle, but it’s never shown.

Atwill is pretty bad. He would go on to develop a certain character and he hasn’t gotten to it here. Fay Wray’s in it, just before Kong. They don’t use her much. She’s the girl in peril, but only a little bit. The movie only runs sixty-five minutes. She’s second-billed and it’s like they couldn’t get her to stay up late to shoot.

The most interesting thing is Melvyn Douglas, being someone who went on to greater fame. He’s fantastic in this film. He’s very aware of what film he’s in, almost mugging for the viewer when he has to deliver crazy lines–actually, when the other actors deliver the crazy lines to him, you can feel his understanding of how absurd the viewer feels watching the exchange.

Maude Eburne plays Wray’s aunt. It’s never explained why Wray works for Atwill or why Eburne lives there with them (Wray probably lives here because she’s Atwill’s assistant). It’s also never explained what kind of medicine Atwill practices (or why he needs the Universal horror bubbling devices).

Thinking about The Vampire Bat at all, it collapses–which isn’t to say it holds up. It’s an interesting debacle. It ends on a joke and it’s one of the most unfunny jokes you could end on. There’s a whole comic element to the film. Eburne’s played for laughs and it makes no sense.

For a sixty-five minute film to be as meandering and as loosely constructed as this one, it’s impressive.

1/4★

CREDITS

Directed by Frank R. Strayer; screenplay by Edward T. Lowe Jr.; director of photography, Ira H. Morgan; edited by Otis Garrett; produced by Phil Goldstone; released by Majestic Pictures.

Starring Lionel Atwill (Dr. Otto von Niemann), Fay Wray (Ruth Bertin), Melvyn Douglas (Karl Brettschneider), Maude Eburne (Aunt Gussie Schnappmann), George E. Stone (Kringen), Dwight Frye (Herman Gleib), Robert Frazer (Emil Borst), Rita Carlyle (Martha Mueller), Lionel Belmore (Bürgermeister Gustave Schoen), William V. Mong (Sauer), Stella Adams (Georgiana) and Harrison Greene (Weingarten).

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The Prizefighter and the Lady (1933, W.S. Van Dyke)

The Prizefighter and the Lady mixes a couple genres–the philandering husband whose wife can’t stop loving him standard and, additionally, stunt casting. Heavyweight contender Max Baer stars as a heavyweight contender, who fights the champ, played by champ Primo Carnera. Myrna Loy plays the suffering wife, while Walter Huston and Otto Kruger finish the supporting cast. There are boxing and wrestling cameos–the biggest being Jack Dempsey.

The film culminates with the fight between Baer and Carnera. Loy’s supposed to be cheering for Baer’s defeat, while Huston–Baer’s boxer is an almost unparalleled narcissist–I can’t remember a feature with a more despicable protagonist who the viewer is supposed to adore and admire–is quietly cheering his fighter on. Kruger sort of stands around, looking doe-eyed, as former love Loy can’t resist the manliness of Baer.

What’s strangest about the scene is the film’s relationship with the viewer–it certainly appears the audience is supposed to be cheering Baer win, after spending forty minutes of him acting like a complete jerk and however much time before with him acting like a moderate jerk. The film opens strong because of Huston, whose performance as a broken down, drunken boxing manager who gets another shot, is utterly fantastic. Every line Huston delivers is perfect. He’s marvelous.

The big fight isn’t even directed with an emphasis on the exhibition. Instead, the film cuts between fight shots and reactions in the crowd and among the main cast. The sequence has great sound, with the background rumble overpowering everything else. Van Dyke has some excellent shots here, but the emotional impact is obviously more important.

Except it’s not, because Baer’s a jerk. The conclusion’s even ambiguous as to the future of his philandering. Whatever lesson Baer’s supposed to have learned through the running time, whatever change he’s going to make to his life, whatever development… the film’s indifferent. He’s a hero because he’s a real-life boxer; he’s not accountable for his actions.

Van Dyke’s got some great shots and some fine moments throughout the picture. Kruger’s gangster with a heart of gold is okay–he and Loy have some good scenes together. She’s fine, if completely unbelievable in the role as it gets towards the end. Like I said before, Huston’s superb. There’s some nice work from Vince Barnett and Robert McWade. Carnera shows more charisma in his practically wordless performance than Baer does as the protagonist.

There’s a lot of filler–musical numbers, mostly, trying to obscure the lack of story. Baer isn’t terrible–he can’t emote, of course–which might have been from Howard Hawks working with him… or not (Hawks was going to direct before MGM signed Baer, then may or may not have stuck around to work with him while Van Dyke finished up a different picture). He can’t make the character likable, which makes the whole premise fail. But he could be worse….

A lot like the film itself. It could be worse–and I had to keep reminding myself of that one.