Tag Archives: Bruce Cabot

1933, ⓏⒺⓇⓄ, Classics

Disgraced (1933, Erle C. Kenton)

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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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1934, ★★★, Classics

Murder on the Blackboard (1934, George Archainbaud)

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As its title suggests, Murder on the Blackboard concerns a murder in a school, specifically an elementary school. Only one student appears; Blackboard concentrates on the rather shady goings-ons of the staff. There’s a drunk janitor, a lecherous principal, not to mention a love triangle between teachers. And, one mustn’t forget, Edna May Oliver’s Ms. Withers.

Blackboard is the second in the Withers and Piper (James Gleason) series, though it’s not a direct sequel to the first. Here, Oliver and Gleason bicker and flirt in their charming and funny cantankerous people of a certain age way, but without any relationship development.

Willis Goldbeck’s script has a great structure, which makes Blackboard sail along–ably assisted by the aforementioned bickering. It’s a full ten minutes before Oliver even appears, as Blackboard establishes not just the suspects, but the possible victims, and then it’s a real-time investigation for a while once Gleason shows up. Archainbaud’s direction is okay, though he apparently didn’t give Archie Marshek enough material for smooth cutting. Nicholas Musuraca’s photography–Blackboard almost entirely takes place in the school–is real nice.

There supporting cast is competent, but they don’t make much impression after those first ten minutes. Bruce Cabot, Gertrude Michael and Barbara Fritchie are the teacher love triangle; Cabot’s easily the best of the three. Tully Marshall’s amusing as the principal, particularly opposite Oliver.

Oliver, Gleason and Goldbeck produce an excellent diversion. They distract from the mystery’s lack of mysteriousness for nearly the entire running time.

3/4★★★

CREDITS

Directed by George Archainbaud; screenplay by Willis Goldbeck, based on the story by Stuart Palmer; director of photography, Nicholas Musuraca; edited by Archie Marshek; music by Bernhard Kaun and Max Steiner; released by RKO Radio Pictures.

Starring Edna May Oliver (Hildegarde Withers), James Gleason (Inspector Oscar Piper), Bruce Cabot (Ad Stevens), Gertrude Michael (Jane Davis), Barbara Fritchie (Louise Halloran), Tully Marshall (Mr. MacFarland), Frederick Vogeding (Otto Schweitzer), Regis Toomey (Detective Smiley North), Edgar Kennedy (Detective Donahue) and Jackie Searl (Leland Stanford Jones).

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1941, ★, Classics

Sundown (1941, Henry Hathaway)

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The majority of Sundown is excellent. Hathaway sort of mixes the Western and British colonial adventure genre with a World War II propaganda piece. New Mexico stands in for Kenya—it’s an interesting war film because there aren’t any Americans. Lead Bruce Cabot is playing a Canadian.

Cabot does well throughout. He handles the colonial scenes well, handing off his command to George Sanders in the first act. Sundown’s peculiar because it takes a self-indulgent pace getting to where it’s going. There’s the tension between Cabot and Sanders, but none of it is necessary to get to the finish. Neither is Joseph Calleia, who has a nice supporting role as an Italian prisoner of war who’d rather cook than fight. Or Harry Carey, who shows up in the second half as the local white hunter.

And Gene Tierney—who gets top-billing—is barely in the film until it’s a third over. It’s an early performance from her and there are ups and downs. Some of it has to do with the role (Sundown’s the one where Gene Tierney plays an Arab), but she’s also not quite ready yet. She does well with Cabot though, selling their attraction right off.

Hathaway’s direction is often fantastic, especially how he shows life on the outpost. The night scenes are problematic, Charles Lang shoots too dark and then the finale’s in a dank cave, which doesn’t film well.

The end brings in the propaganda and lays it on so heavy, Sundown sinks.

1/4★

CREDITS

Directed by Henry Hathaway; screenplay by Barré Lyndon, based on an adaptation by Charles G. Booth and based on a story by Lyndon; director of photography, Charles Lang; edited by Dorothy Spencer; music by Miklós Rózsa; produced by Walter Wanger; released by United Artists.

Starring Gene Tierney (Zia), Bruce Cabot (William Crawford), George Sanders (Major A.L. Coombes), Harry Carey (Alan Dewey), Joseph Calleia (Pallini), Reginald Gardiner (Lt. Roddy Turner), Carl Esmond (Jan Kuypens), Marc Lawrence (Abdi Hammud), Gilbert Emery (Ashburton), Jeni Le Gon (Miriami), Emmett Smith (Kipsang) and Dorothy Dandridge (Kipsang’s Bride).

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1939, ⓏⒺⓇⓄ, Classics

Homicide Bureau (1939, Charles C. Coleman)

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Oh, those silly liberal apologists, not letting police detective Bruce Cabot beat confessions out of suspects. Don’t they understand these criminals are really working for the Nazis?

Okay, Homicide Bureau never actually says Nazis, just warring foreign powers, but they mean the Nazis.

The funniest part of the movie is the end, where the police commissioner decides Cabot’s right and his tactics work (liberals and laws be damned). Also amusing at the end is Cabot’s romance with Rita Hayworth. It’s maybe Hayworth’s fifth scene in the film–and for a short running time, Homicide Bureau has a lot of scenes, probably one every two and a half minutes–and her romance with Cabot has never even been mentioned before. They’re friendly co-workers to this point, nothing more.

Cabot’s performance is occasionally dismal, occasionally passable; when he and Hayworth meet, the scene practically lifts dialogue from King Kong, as Cabot explains to Fay Wray–sorry, sorry–Hayworth why he doesn’t like women around.

The supporting cast is generally solid, for a b movie, with Marc Lawrence doing a great job as a thug. Hayworth’s role is so small, it’s hard to say much about her performance itself. She’s enthusiastic against all odds (a weak script, Cabot looking old enough to be her father).

Coleman’s direction has its good points. He’s especially effective with close-ups. So effective it makes Bureau seem like a much better film.

It’s mostly a curiosity for its leads and being pro-fascist, but anti-Nazi.

0/4ⓏⒺⓇⓄ

CREDITS

Directed by Charles C. Coleman; written by Earle Snell; director of photography, Benjamin H. Kline; edited by James Sweeney; music by Sidney Cutner; produced by Jack Frier; released by Columbia Pictures.

Starring Bruce Cabot (Detective Lieutenant Jim Logan), Rita Hayworth (J.G. Bliss), Marc Lawrence (Chuck Brown), Richard Fiske (Henchman Hank), Moroni Olsen (Police Captain H.J. Raines), Norman Willis (Ed Briggs), Gene Morgan (Detective Blake), Robert Paige (Detective Thurston), Lee Prather (R.E. Jamison), Eddie Fetherston (Henchman Specks) and Stanley Andrews (Police Commissioner G.W. Caldwell).

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